1
'Jack Nowell is my greatest success, he got his medals'
By Liam Heagney
It was typical tongue-in-cheek Alex Sanderson. Invited last month by RugbyPass to pump the tyres of Bevan Rodd after the loosehead was given the player of the match award versus Harlequins in Gallagher Premiership round one, the Sale director of rugby quipped: “He sleeps in a tent in his house – I told you he is a bit strange… It’s so wet up north you have to sleep in a tent in your house!”
ADVERTISEMENT
The chuckling over, Sanderson admitted: “I have no idea what it is about.” So then, what is the reason for an England international prop forward sleeping in a hyperbaric tent?
Performance and recovery consultant Samuel Newsham is the practitioner in the know, as 10X Performance Recovery, the Lytham St Annes-based company, provide Rodd and fellow Sharks Raffi Quirke and Ross Harrison the equipment that the Sale boss referenced.
Google search hyperbaric oxygen treatments and you will come across the likes of LeBron James, the USA basketball legend, making use of the science way back. It was this type of research that resulted in Anthony Watson picking up the phone to Newsham in early 2017 and becoming an early UK adaptor.
A hamstring injury had limited his involvement with England during that year’s Six Nations, but not long after he was a starter in all three Test matches for the British and Irish Lions tour in New Zealand. Mission complete. “Anthony was a very clever boy, had done his own research to have a look what the Americans were doing,” enthused Newsham to RugbyPass.
“LeBron James had just released a video in 2016 of him using his hyperbaric chamber and (Floyd) Mayweather Junior was using his, and we were the only outfit in the UK at the time. He just said, ‘How can we do it?’ We arranged something, got him back quicker than we should have which was amazing.”
ADVERTISEMENT
To cut a long scientific story short, the mechanics of hyperbaric is spending time in a sealed pressurised environment to reduce inflammation and speed up the rate of the oxygen molecule for recovery. Newsham swears by it. So too do multiple players in American football’s NFL, where the treatment is now prevalent across that sport’s league.
However, rugby has generally remained sceptical despite some notable individual successes, leaving it up to the players to use as an additional treatment in their own time rather than something more centrally prescribed throughout the game.
“We are trying to get in front of the people who make the decisions and it’s just met with either deaf ears or dismissal, which is a shame because it works,” shrugged Newsham. “I was the first to bring over home-use hyperbaric chambers to the UK and my first client was Anthony Watson. He was the first big name I started working with. From there, Kyle Sinckler got involved, Mike Brown and a few others as well. They started coming to me privately for hyperbaric treatment to speed up their recovery.
“Take Jack Nowell, my greatest success, for example. In 2020, he had two finals, had a fractured toe and was told by everyone involved he wouldn’t make the final two games. I got a phone call from him saying, ‘Sam, what can you do?’ I arranged for him to have hyperbaric treatment combined with the infared and he got back for the last two games and got his medals which was a great success story.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Tell us more. “Jack is one of the most modest athletes I have ever met, such a lovely guy. He got my number off Anthony at the time and said, ‘Listen, this is what I am dealing with, this is the injury, what can you do?’ My first response was, ‘Do as you’re told because a lot of boys don’t’.
“We put the initial protocol together for him and we got him back for his first medal game. He absolutely loved it. ‘Yes, it’s working’. Physio did a really good job as well. And then he got injured again in that game (versus Racing 92), so they were like you’re not going to make the next one (versus Wasps).
“So we put him on a different protocol that was a bit more intense and got him back again. At the end of it, I was getting photos of his feet in stitches and all sorts. It was good fun but he was over the moon. He was like, ‘I’m back!’ He was driven and wanted to do it for the lads and for himself… he put the effort in and it worked.”
Congrats to @officialexeterchiefs on doing the double. We spoke to @jacknowell in the week before the game, on @goodbadrugby. Listen or watch now https://t.co/HfoUklGqae pic.twitter.com/xjo1CG0ttz
— James Haskell (@jameshaskell) October 25, 2020
This fast-tracked recovery is something Nowell has spoken about, telling The Good, The Bad & The Rugby: “I did a grade three turf toe. The ligaments that pretty much attach your toe to your foot, I managed to rupture them all in the last 10 minutes against Toulouse (in the European semi-final).
“I was just literally on my toe about to push off and as I pushed off someone tackled me as well. I thought I snapped the bottom of my boot so I was on the floor and I checked my boot and it was fine, but it was actually the ligaments in my foot which snapped.
“It was pretty much a floppy toe… but it was a Heineken Cup final, a Premiership final, there was no way I was going to miss these games, so that’s a prime example of hyperbaric. I would have never lived with myself watching the boys winning and not being part of that, so I was very happy I was trusted and very happy that I was able to play.”
Sale prop Rodd is another success. “He had a career-ender ACL with a few additional things done as well and it was 12 months minimum,” recalled Newsham. “We got him back in four and a half. He was using his system three times a day, an hour and a half each session.
“He was getting the optimum, the maximum amount of the system that he could. He managed something like 2,000 hours in four and a half months, he really did hit it. But again, that is the point, it’s the more you use it… The effect only lasts four to six hours. Four to six hours after getting out of the chamber your body goes back to normal process, so he was in his morning, noon and night to hit his recovery protocols to get back.”
Having recently split his hamstring, a grade three C injury, Rodd is fully invested in the hyperbaric process once more to provide an added edge to get him back on the field next month, but his trust in the science isn’t mirrored across the game.
View this post on Instagram
“Over the past few years I have been at odds with the clubs,” admitted Newsham. “These protocols that we use with hyperbaric, the lads are coming direct for but the clubs refuse to implement and it is a bit of a strange one. Whether it is at odds (with what they do), whether there is no budget… I’m trying to get the knowledge out there to say, ‘Listen, this technology exists, it just needs using in the right way.
“Basically we take one cell and make it perform well. If we can do it to one, we can do it to 69 trillion others. It starts off with the building blocks and goes from there. I don’t know physio, I’m not a club doctor. All I know is how to implement this technology to speed up what the body normally does.
“Bevan uses his every day without fail. That’s his par for recovery, that’s his protocol. Anthony is the same. He has bought one himself for home use, for recovery, spending an hour and a half in it a day. That’s his meditation time or his down time that he uses.
“The clubs themselves or other athletes who want to try it for the first time rent it for their injury and see how they get on. It is catching on. We have been working with Wigan Warriors, Leinster and a few others, but I am quite perplexed that more haven’t implemented it in their recovery process.
“Clubs should listen to the lads. They are the ones that are making the effort to look at these technologies to extend their careers. They don’t want their careers to end, they don’t want to lose their passion, they don’t want to lose their job due to some injury that can be recovered from quickly or can be negated.
“So it’s just a case of listening to the boys and going, ‘Right, they are onto something here, let’s follow it up. Let’s see what they are doing and let’s talk to people qualified in that area and go right, why are they using that? Is there is a reason for it? Is there anything we can do to enhance it?’ There is just, ‘Ah we’ll leave the boys to it’ which is just not fair to them.”
View this post on Instagram
