Horsham-based female personal trainer, Becky, is a cancer exercise specialist with experience working in rehabilitation. Here she shares some of what she learned at a recent exercise oncology study day…
I can’t quite believe that this was my fourth time attending the Royal Marsden’s annual exercise oncology study day. It feels like a long time ago that I returned to the hospital that treated me as a fitness professional to benefit from medical expertise in a different way. It’s always a valuable experience, although this time – due to both a monster heatwave and needing to be elsewhere on the same day – I attended online and just for the morning. I’m going to share some of the most powerful things I learned…
Exercise and lung cancer
The day began with a talk by Catherine Granger of the University of Melbourne. The work she presented relates to lung cancer patients, and given that I currently work with a client who’s undergoing treatment for lung cancer, and that I have a specialist qualification in COPD, I was excited for this talk.
Probably the most powerful thing for me was confirmation of a belief I’ve held since completing my COPD qualification: pulmonary rehabilitation offers a great exercise model that can be transferred to cancer care. COPD is well-researched, and the model for rehab has been in place for a long time, ensuring that it’s delivered and monitored well. It’s great to hear an expert confirm that it ought to translate well to other patients.
Catherine’s work has found that wraparound care is important – behaviour change must be supported, and exercise programming individualised, with continuous support from a professional given throughout. This talk really made my heart sing, and was a great start to the day.
Cancer and elite athletes
I’ve met Rebecca Robinson previously, and I’m impressed by her multi-disciplinary approach. As a sports medicine specialist, she also works within oncology, and whilst many people might not think those two things go together, this is a reminder that cancer can unfortunately happen to anyone.
Rebecca shared that, over time, she’s noticed that, “my fitter patients are doing better” when supporting them through cancer treatment, and that this led her to wonder how she can help sick people get fitter. It was also interesting that she drew a parallel between the kind of fatigue an elite athlete can suffer from due to over-training and under-recovering, and what she sees in people undergoing cancer treatment.
Wraparound care was again mentioned: whilst some of the people Rebecca has worked with have had cancer treatment via the NHS, they have benefitted from the additional care of a broader team of experts that they have access to due to being an athlete. Again, this is recognised as a privilege, but one wonders what would happen if this instead were standard of care, and how other patients could benefit from support and services that aren’t just medicine.
Exercise post-stoma surgery
I learned a lot from Sarah Russell and Kerry Archer’s talk about EXPASS – the post-stoma return to exercise guidelines that they have developed. Many experts are nervous about supporting people who have had stoma surgery, regarding these patients as complex and risky, so much of the advice given is overly-cautious, generic, and outdated. It also can be incredibly unhelpful as a result – we are all individuals, and we deserve to have personalised advice that suits our circumstances and goals.
I was shocked to learn that 73% of people never return to work post-stoma surgery. I think that a lot of people still perceive this surgery as life changing in the negative sense. Whilst it can be a challenging procedure to get through, with a lot of new skills to learn in terms of caring for yourself, I find it even more sad that people still aren’t properly supported in this journey.
Kerry made my heart sing as Catherine had earlier: she supported my own belief that, “exercise is everyone’s responsibility”, meaning that medics at the top of the chain need to be discussing exercise with their patients, and not leaving that conversation to nurses, physiotherapists, and other practitioners. She and Sarah also spoke about the fact that core muscle rehab should be standard practice, which I again wholeheartedly agree on.
Ultimately, the talk was a positive look at how to help people – there are some recommendations that apply to the vast majority of patients in this demographic, but the biggest take home is to work with the person in front of you – how they arrived at their current situation matters, and will likely determine how they progress. We need to move away from generic and unhelpful advice, and towards more concrete and individualised guidance.
This was another excellent conference, and I’m already looking forward to the 2027 edition. But first, we will have the inaugural International Society of Exercise Oncology conference – more on that coming soon!
