London Life
21
SPONSORED COLUMN
Every Premier League club has a medical team. Does yours?
The Wimbledon effect
Sport and business go hand in hand. The Wimbledon tennis championships, for example, held in south west London every July brings a massive economic benefit to the capital and beyond.
The local business community have been rising to the occasion with increasing vigour in recent years and vie with each other to theme
their venues appropriately during the fortnight of the championships.
Transformed
Wimbledon town centre and Wimbledon Village are transformed with shops, restaurants and pubs grabbing the chance to showcase their wares to the massive influx of visitors.
www. wimbledon. com
By the time you read this, the Premier League will be well under way. What fans tend not to see is the seven or eight weeks that came before it. Long before the first whistle, every squad went through the same process – individual medicals, fitness testing, injury screening, and personalised conditioning programmes tailored to each player. Some return to full training within days. Others need weeks of individual work before they are match-ready. The season is decided as much in July as it is in May.
Availability is one of the great unglamorous metrics of professional football. A club with its best eleven on the pitch for thirty-eight games will almost always finish above one with the same players managing niggles, playing through injury, or missing weeks at a time. That is why every Premier League club invests heavily in a medical team – a club doctor, physios, sports scientists, nutritionists – working in the background to keep the squad available and performing.
The parallel with business is closer than it looks. September is when most London businesses shift gear – end of summer, budgets tightening, workload building towards year-end. It is the natural moment to look at your own squad. Are there employees returning from long absences who need structured support? Any pre-existing conditions that would benefit from being managed proactively rather than reactively? Roles where
the workstation, hours, or hazard exposure needs a fresh look before the pressure builds? These are the questions that get overlooked when everyone is head-down in delivery.
Across my columns this year I have written about the hidden costs of ill health at work, the early signs of burnout, structured absence management, and the World Cup lesson of playing through injury. The common thread is the value of assessment ahead of the problem – not after it.
Every Premier League club has a medical team. Does your business? If not, get in touch at www. artensiamedical. com. A short pre-season conversation is the best way to find out where a bit of preparation could save you a lot of disruption.
Dr Christopher Levy is an occupational health doctor and founder of Artensia Medical Services, providing pragmatic workplace health support for London businesses.
www. artensiamedical. com