Meet Tom Woolner, our newest Sports & Remedial Therapist

Another Highly qualified therapist joins the team at Massage Matters.

About 18 months ago, I was asked to spare an hour of my time to answer some questions about what is required to become a qualified massage therapist. The person who asked that question was Tom Woolner, pictured below.

I agreed to meet with Tom and was very impressed with both the quality of the questions and the background research he had carried out. It also helped to know that Tom was also a client of the clinic and knew a little about our work.

I was very impressed with his approach, his general demeanour, and willingness to learn; in short, I believed he had potential.

I had always wondered if we could take someone with no prior experience in massage therapy and train them to a point where they could work within our clinic. If I were going to help, then my priority would be to guide Tom away from the vast number of mistakes that I made when I began my training 35 years ago.

The first thing we did was to send Tom off to the Cotswold Academy to see if he could learn the basics. It can be a real eye-opener to start seeing if you have the ability to give and receive constructive touch, the basis of all massage; many fail when they try. Tom, however, was clearly a person who could. He learned introductory anatomy and physiology, as well as the fundamental basic massage moves, and passed both with flying colours.

We thought this was a good start, but nowhere near the quality of therapist we are looking for, particularly as Tom’s ambition was towards sport, and helping people recover from injury. This form of massage is at a very different level. So, we packed him off to the Oxford School of Sports Massage to see if he could cope with that level of learning. This course is one of the most challenging courses to complete in the UK in terms of the understanding and underpinning of anatomy, as well as learning effective new techniques.

 This was going to be a real test to see if Tom could make it, and whether we would offer him a chance to work within our clinic. Just to keep up the intensity, we also put Tom through the training to learn Hydrotherm, massage during pregnancy and massage for those with cancer. Well, he did it and again passed everything with flying colours.

We took him out for a celebratory curry and told him the good news. The good news was that we have offered him a position as a fully qualified sports and remedial therapist, he will work every Thursday evening from 5 pm to 8 pm and all day on Friday. I thought it best that I give him just one more test and booked in for an hour’s treatment after I had finished my very busy Thursday clinic. He listed carefully and provided an excellent treatment. I felt so much better. Well done Tom and welcome to the Massage Matters family

Please consider trying our new therapist Tom Woolner.