About Us
Elite Sports Medicine and Conditioning was founded in 2016 by Matt Leech with the aim of providing the best care to athletes and active people in Whitby and the Durham region.
Experiencing an injury can bring a whirlwind of emotions and questions - Why did this happen? How long will it take to heal? Am I going to fully recover from this? Will I get hurt again? Should I play again? This is completely normal, and we understand. Our goal is to take you through the entire injury rehabilitation process and address each of these points along the way by challenging you and your body to heal, get stronger and become more resilient. Many of our patients come in with fears of surgery or never returning to their sport. Our work looks to alleviate these concerns by promoting understanding of what their injury means, how they can treat it, and how they can return to their sport safely. We’ll keep you in the game.
Right from your first visit, our goals are to understand, educate and empower you. During the initial assessment, we'll discuss your current injury, past injuries, and overall health. You will then go through some functional movements and special tests to really hone in on the injury. Once we have an idea of the cause of your injury, you will learn a bit about the anatomy and pathology of the injury, how it developed, what the outcomes are and how we will manage it. We will develop a treatment plan that is appropriate for you, as well as outline how we will progress you through the rehab process. Finally, we will send you home with an exercise program to complete between appointments. This will be tailored to your individual injury and the equipment you have access to. The beauty of the home exercise program is that it allows you to treat and manage your pain and injury 24/7 when you’re not in the clinic (but we’ll always be there for you through email or a phone call).
At ESMC, we are big proponents of movement and exercise as our main treatment modality. Ultimately, we believe that pain and injury occur when our body, or a specific tissue, is exposed to a load greater than what it can tolerate or a load it is not accustomed to. This can be a one-time event like rolling your ankle, or over time. While rest can be beneficial in the short term, movement and exercise loads the body to help drive positive adaptation, and help your body become tolerant and resilient to the loads you will be placing on it again. Our role as practitioners is to guide you through that process, helping you know when it is appropriate to challenge yourself as you get closer to returning to your sport, or when to ease off to avoid setbacks.
While we do support movement and exercise, we also understand the role manual therapies can have in the rehab process. Manual therapy and hands-on treatment techniques can help decrease your pain and increase your range of motion, allowing you to complete exercises in a much more comfortable and confident manner. Besides, who doesn’t love a massage treatment to help with aches, pains and stress?
Our methods are evidence-based. We focus our time on routines that are backed by research. We believe in the biopsychosocial model of pain, which means that pain and injury are multifactorial. There is no single cause or contributor to your pain or injury experience; rather there are many factors that may be influencing your injury journey. While that might be frustrating, it also means there are many ways we can address your injury to help get you feeling confident in yourself again.
That’s enough about us - we want to know about you! Book your initial assessment to start your injury rehab journey filled with knowledge, empowerment and confidence. We’ll keep you in the game. Still not sure if we’re the right fit for you? Book a complimentary consultation with one of our therapists so that you can come in, see our facility and have a deeper discussion about your injury and how we can help you through it.