⸺ OUR APPROACH
Why this clinic
is different.
Most back pain care is delivered through a single lens. We built something different — a diagnostic process that draws from multiple disciplines to find what others miss.
⸺ INTEGRATED CLINICAL REASONING
Most clinics look through one lens. We look through many.
If your back pain keeps coming back, it's usually because the real driver hasn't been found. Most people are treated where it hurts. We trace the problem upstream. That's the difference.
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Your back is often not the starting point — it's the area that's compensating. A stiff ankle changes how your hip works. A weak hip overloads your lower back. Repeated loading in one direction irritates sensitive tissues. Protective muscle tension builds over time. The pain shows up last. The driver shows up earlier.
Two people can walk in with identical symptoms and need completely different plans. Same location. Same description. Entirely different drivers.
That's why we classify before we treat. Why we assess the whole system before we touch the problem area. Why we test corrections in real time rather than hand you a programme and hope.
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Direction comes from depth of assessment. That's not a philosophy. That's just how you actually fix something.
DISCIPLINES INTEGRATED
Movement & Biomechanics
SFMA principles, functional movement screening, segmental joint assessment, and directional preference testing — the foundation of every diagnostic.
FOUNDATION
Muscle & Load Testing
Manual muscle testing, endurance and load tolerance measures, and McGill-based spinal capacity principles to identify what the system can and can't handle.
CAPACITY
Targeted Intervention
Precision manual therapy, muscle inhibition and activation sequencing, and light-force laser therapy where appropriate — applied only once the pattern is clear.
TREATMENT
Pain Science & Nervous System Resets
Education on how pain works, sensitivity regulation strategies, and behaviour and load management — because the nervous system is always part of the picture.
NEUROLOGICAL
Structured Progression
Clear 4-week phases — Reset, Rebuild, Resilience — built around your classification. This is capacity development, not symptom management.
PROGRAMME
⸺ GO DEEPER
Low Back Pain Decoded
A 13-minute breakdown of why back pain keeps coming back — and what finding the real driver actually looks like in practice.
⸺ THE SPECIALIST BEHIND IT
Built by someone
who went looking
for better answers.
John Shevlin — Founder, The Back Specialists
Specialist in persistent and recurring back pain
Dublin, Ireland
I didn't set out to build a specialist back pain clinic. I set out to understand why people kept coming back.
​
After years working as a physical therapist — including time at elite sport level, where outcomes are non-negotiable — I kept encountering the same pattern. Smart, active people who had done everything right. They'd seen physios. They'd done the rehab. They'd committed to the process. And their back kept breaking down.
​
The problem wasn't effort. It was that the assessment wasn't deep enough to find the real driver. Single-discipline thinking produces single-discipline answers. And for persistent, recurring back pain, that's rarely enough.
The back is almost never the source of the problem.
It's the victim of it.
The tools existed. The frameworks existed. What didn't exist was someone putting them all together.
Specialist movement assessment. Muscle testing. Load capacity screening. Functional movement analysis. Each one precise in its own right. But in clinic after clinic, they were being used in isolation — a movement specialist here, a pain science practitioner there, someone strong on strength, someone else on mobility.
Nobody was bringing assessment, mobility, movement control, strength, coordination, confidence and pain science under one roof. Working from one coherent system. For one patient.
That gap is why The Back Specialists exists.
When the whole picture is visible, the pattern becomes clear.
​
When you find the real driver, everything changes.
⸺ CERTIFICATIONS & TRAINING
The tools and systems that make the difference.
Each certification represents a distinct lens — a different way of reading the body — that gets used in every diagnostic session.
SFMA LEVEL 2
Selective Functional
Movement Assessment
​
The gold standard in movement-based diagnosis. A top-down assessment framework that identifies the real driver of pain through systematic full-body movement screening — not symptom location.
NKT LEVEL 3
Neurokinetic Therapy
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Advanced muscle testing to identify compensation patterns at the neurological level. Reveals why certain muscles switch off and others overwork — and how to reset the pattern rather than just treat the symptom.
Assistant Educator · International
FCS CERTIFIED
Fundamental Capacity
Screen
​The gold standard in movement-based diagnosis.
A top-down assessment framework that identifies the real driver of pain through systematic full-body movement screening — not symptom location.
First Certified In Europe
FMS EDUCATOR
Functional Movement Systems
​
Gray Cook's foundational movement framework — used to screen, assess, and intervene at the movement pattern level. Identifies where the system is breaking down before treating specific injury sites.
Assistant Educator · International
DNS TRAINED
Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilisation
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Based on developmental kinesiology — how the nervous system establishes movement patterns from the ground up. Used to identify and restore foundational stability deficits driving back pain.
ELITE SPORT
High Performance
Clinical Background
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Extensive experience working with elite athletes — where returning to performance is the benchmark and half-measures don't survive contact with reality.
That standard is what every patient gets.
⸺ WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE IN PRACTICE
The diagnostic.
Then the programme.
1
Full Body Movement Assessment
We begin with the Selective Functional Movement Assessment — a systematic top-down screen that looks at how the whole body moves, not just where the pain is. Restrictions, asymmetries, and breakdowns all become visible here, even when they're far from the back.
2
Muscle Testing And Compensation Mapping
Using Neurokinetic Therapy protocols, we test individual muscles to identify which are inhibited and which are overworking as compensation. This reveals the chain — why the body arrived at the position it's in and where the real dysfunction sits.
3
Pain Classification
We determine the category of the problem — mobility restriction, directional sensitivity, stability deficit, or nervous system sensitivity. This step alone changes the direction of everything that follows. Two people with the same symptom often need completely different approaches.
4
Real-Time Corrective Testing
Rather than prescribing a plan based on theory, we test corrective movements in the room and measure the response. You feel what actually improves your movement or reduces your pain before you leave. The evidence is in your body, not on a handout.
5
Movement Clarity Report and direction
You leave with a written report — your pain category, primary driver, compensation pattern, and the direction of treatment. Plus one or two targeted correctives to start immediately. If further treatment is needed, suitable patients are invited into The Three Phase Recovery Programme.
→
The Three Phase Recovery Programme
For patients where a structured programme is appropriate, recovery moves through clear phases — each building on the last. This is not symptom management. It is capacity development.
PHASE 1
RESET
Reduce protective tension. Restore baseline movement. Stop the cycle of flare and settle.
4 weeks
PHASE 2
REBUILD
Restore the movement and muscle patterns that were driving the problem. Build control and endurance.
4 weeks
PHASE 3
RESILIENCE
Load the system correctly so it holds under the real demands of your life, sport, and training.
4 weeks