I spent years as a physio on the pitch at Birmingham FC, juggling sports injuries and million-pound hamstrings. The workflows were slick: an ache reported in the morning was scanned, triaged, and rehab could be planned by lunch. It struck me that the lower back pain that benched a striker for two weeks was akin to the pain keeping a warehouse worker off the job for months – yet outside elite sport, the pathway was anything but slick.
