You may have never heard of an exercise physiologist, but they are increasingly becoming a popular and essential part of an optimal health and fitness regime. According to NSW Health, exercise physiologists are “university-qualified allied health professionals who prescribe, deliver, and adapt movement, physical activity, and exercise-based interventions to facilitate and optimise health status, function, recovery, and independence.” Simply put, exercise physiologists help people improve their health through exercise. Whether needing to manage a chronic condition such as type 2 diabetes, anxiety or Parkinson’s Disease or to rehab a broken bone, ligament tear or dislocation or simply wanting to improve performance, exercise physiology can be hugely beneficial.
Once a niche speciality, exercise physiology is a rapidly growing profession and it’s easy to understand why after speaking with Mounties Health and Fitness senior exercise physiologist Nathan Tran. Describing exercise physiologists as using “exercise as a form of medicine,” Nathan applies evidence-based practices to tailor exercise plans both to an individual’s needs as well as their particular conditions or injuries. According to the Australian Physiotherapy Association, unlike physiotherapists who “assess, diagnose, treat and manage acute and chronic conditions, disability, injury and pain,” exercise physiologists do not diagnose and “primarily manage patients using clinical exercise interventions as their main modality.” In the rehabilitation space, Nathan sees physiotherapy as managing the acute side of rehabilitation in the 4-6 weeks post-injury or surgery and exercise physiology as focusing on the last phase of rehab: rebuilding.
Exercise physiology has a wide range of applications both in what Nathan calls, the “healthy population,” as well as amongst those suffering from chronic illnesses or injuries. From using exercise to help symptoms of anxiety, to helping senior citizens or wheelchair-bound patients increase independence and mobility, to people with heart conditions who don’t know what exercises are safe for them or where to start, the exercise physiologist works on what Nathan calls the “refined mechanics of movement” to improve strength, conditioning, balance and stability.
Nathan stresses the importance of understanding the varied ways people respond to exercise and modifying exercise routines to fit while being safe and effective. “If I’m pushing 100 percent compared to somebody that’s pushing 80 percent, the difference in rest is going to be very different, so we need to adjust” states Nathan. For someone with a spinal cord injury, exercises would focus around “making daily living activities easier through the application of strength, functional training and balance and stability work.” Just moving from a sitting to standing position might seem simple, but could require a year of exercises specifically designed with this goal in mind. For someone with anxiety, their hurdle might be just getting started and staying motivated enough to see results. “The same way that medications have a dose response, exercise has a dose response too,” says Nathan. “The key is to find the right intensity to alleviate symptom severity.” Think of it like an exercise prescription.
With all the conflicting information on social media and online about what exercise regime to follow to achieve the best results, exercise physiology is a no-brainer: it’s based on science. You don’t need to overtrain or risk injury or blindly follow an Influencer just because it happened to work for them. Exercise physiology takes the guess work out.
And there’s more good news. This once niche speciality is now becoming more mainstream and accessible. Depending on the injury or condition, exercise physiology, like physiotherapy, is either partially or fully covered under Medicare, NDIS, private health insurance or workers compensation. So there’s really no reason not to try it. If you want to get the most out of the exercise you do.