Words by Aisha

Lubana Shah, daughter of a local football legend, had a keen interest in sports from an early age. A surgery when she was young created a sense of fear for her to continue with the same gusto she had before.  Growing up she was intrigued about the world around her and grew up to have many interests and hobbies such as art and crafts and she loved the ocean.

Sports Therapy is a unique field, tell us how you developed an interest in this? What made you choose your career? 

As a child, I didn’t know I was going to go into sports therapy or pursue anything related to sports. But I grew up around sports. My dad was a footballer. All my brothers and cousins played football. I saw my friends and even my dad got injured quite early in his career. But never saw anyone properly get the care or get rehabilitated. I saw my friends stop playing after they got injured. A professional in this field in Maldives will be Dr. Shakeeb, I was inspired by him and was quite interested in what he was doing.

I was set on Biomedicine as my chosen academic field. I always knew I didn’t want a desk job. I considered going for medicine. But growing up, I was very active. Moving about. I came to realise sports medicine is a very niche area. I was very excited to find out about the course on Sports and Exercise Sceience I thought that this would be a very good starting point for me.

At that point, I didn’t realize that rehabilitation was going to be my area. But during my course, I developed an interest in to learning more about movement, fixing people, and learning how to help people move on to sports after an injury and so they do not need to cut short their career.

Can you please elaborate a little about the work you do as a sports therapist?

What I do as a Sports Therapist is a lot of sports massages which help to relieve tense muscles and pairing it with activation drills, more of exercise. The activation drills are done to figure out the movement imbalances that limit or cause discomfort throughout performing a game.

Some practices include Taping, activation and performance enhancement drills, Stretching, dry needling and treating painful areas, and management of pain to move better.

Do you think there are misconceptions about Performance after an Injury? 

When a team is selected, quite often the injured athlete gets labeled and they are perceived not as good as a fresh athlete. But to be fair, even if you take a normal person, they may have movement patterns which are not optimal and which can be fixed to improve and move better to perform better. So that’s what got me interested.  My interest to learn grew as I got to understand this and fell in love with how resilient we are.

Do you think the community accepts Sports Therapy as a norm for better performance?

Not really, but slowly things are changing. I still don’t think the coaches and athletes do realize the importance of therapy and rehabilitation. But we have come far from how it used to be.

In the past 2 years, I have noticed more people are becoming aware and realizing the importance of rehabilitation. For instance, players are keen on getting massages during a competition as they have started to realize they can play better after a massage can perform better.

Tell us a bit about your clientele? 

It ranges from elite national and international medal-winning athletes and sports personnel to recreational sports enthusiasts to regular people who are physically active. My clients include those who are not very physically active too and are dealing with different kinds of pain. Mostly I work to heal soft tissue injury. When it comes to joints and bones after the initial stage of consulting medical professionals upon their guidance, I treat people. In some cases, I would be doing the assessments and treating.

I have had the opportunity to be part of the medical team that traveled abroad with the team that participated in the Indian Ocean Island Games held in Mauritius during the year 2019.  I was taking care of the female badminton team. In that competition, Maldives claimed the first gold medal in Badminton.  I am proud to say I was part of the team who got to experience working with the team.

I have also travelled to Nepal as part of the Medical team who went to SAFF Fames in 2018. We as a group were taking care of our National Athletics Team who made the Nation proud with another gold medal.

Can you tell us the importance of sports therapy that most people may ignore or may not be aware of? 

Giving the body the necessary time to recover and heal is important. If you ignore an injury and neglect getting the right treatment your body may get overly stressed ultimately this may take it a longer time to heal and recover for something that could have been fixed relatively easily.

It is always very important to execute the movements the right way. Even a single squat done in the correct form, activating the muscles and holding the core tight is better than doing many with a heavyweight in the wrong form.

Working as a woman in this field, are there any particular difficulties? 

Yes, I was offered the opportunity by certain teams to be their sports therapist and to travel with them but the offers were turned down by coaches for the mere fact I am a woman. It was disappointing as this had nothing to do with my qualification. In most international events like Euro or the World Cup, we see female therapists assisting their teams by helping players stretch or give massages right on the pitch. I will keep my head up high and try breaking gender stereotypes and prove women can do this job and make a name for themselves too.

What would be the advice you would give to your younger self? 

Don’t doubt yourself! You really are on the right track and don’t overthink.

What would your message to readers be? 

Never give up in life there is always a second chance no matter how hard it is, KEEP pursuing it.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

I’d love to get more specialized in this area and pursue a Master’s Degree or complete another professional course acquiring more knowledge in this field. Also, I would love to start my studio specializing in sports therapy or any such venture of my own.

My heart is full of gratitude to people who have shaped me and made me who I am and I am aspiring to be. I’d continue to keep working and do honest work. Leave rest to God.