Amjad Albaghdadi is a human movement enthusiast. He excelled in athletics from a young age. Immigrating to Canada with his family when he was 10, he didn’t speak English. Playing sports and participating in physical activity with his classmates in elementary school and high school helped his growth as a person. It allowed him to feel socially accepted and be able to make new friends. That helped him accelerate learning the English language and to be able to complete ESL (English as Second Language) in 2 years. He still makes his family know from time to time of that proud accomplishment.

Growing up, he watched the best athletes in the world, observing their performances, and wondering what it took to perform at their elite level, dreaming of playing at the professional level. Soccer and basketball were his most-played sports growing up. He played on the high-school soccer team from grade 9-12 and broke his right ankle in grade 10. Not having any education about the field of sport medicine and physical rehabilitation, he continued to participate in sports and physical activity without seeing a physical rehabilitation specialist. Unfortunately, his doctor didn’t prescribe anything of that nature at that time. His body never felt the same for a long time after that first injury, as he continued to experience follow-up injuries.

His passion towards human movement and athletic performance pushed him into completing a human kinetics/kinesiology degree. After completing his first degree, he worked as a personal trainer. He worked with clients that wanted to move and be healthy but were experiencing pain that was getting in their way of exercising. He himself also started to feel nagging knee pain that was heavily affecting his work productivity and daily living.

Frustrated with his lack of education of how to treat musculoskeletal injuries/pain for himself and others, he decided to go back to school to complete a second degree in athletic therapy, and in massage therapy. Thanks to his instructors and mentors, he applied the knowledge he attained from his education to rehabilitate all the nagging injuries and pain he has been dealing with since his first injury in Grade 10. He has been practicing for the last 10 years at sport medicine and physical rehabilitation clinics, successfully treating patient’s musculoskeletal symptoms and pain arising from the neck, middle and lower back, shoulder, elbow, wrist/hand, hip, knee, and ankle/foot.