Find Courage, Connections, and Confidence at our Össur Mobility Clinics

Össur

04-04-2025

Blog

In conversation with our North Europe Clinical Specialist Physiotherapists, Rachel Humpherson and Lisan Scheepers.

At Össur we believe that everyone – no matter their ability – should have an opportunity to thrive in the activities and sports they love. That’s why we’ve hosted global running and mobility clinics for over twenty years. In this post, Rachel and Lisan explain how they help to increase confidence, improve health, and make disability more visible, through the work of their clinics.

Rachel: Lisan and I have enormous fun hosting our mobility clinics. We spend the day encouraging people to test themselves, move a little bit faster, try a tricky turn or step, and then witness them surprise themselves when they can actually smash something they didn’t think they could ever do. Our clinics are about learning to maximise mobility, but they’re more than that. They’re about connecting with people in similar situations, gaining confidence to visit new places or meet new people, raising self-esteem and general wellbeing, and of course normalising limb loss and limb difference. I genuinely look forward to our clinic days and feel so pleased seeing people leave a bit worn out but with big smiles on their faces.

Lisan: I think sometimes people can be put off a ‘mobility’ clinic as there’s a perception that it’s all high-intensity workouts and para-level sprinting! But that’s not the case. We get attendees from all ages and activity levels. Sometimes we’ll host ‘advanced running’ clinics where attendees may need some running experience or clinics for specific prostheses like the RHEO Knee or Power Knee, but we’re always clear about that. Our general mobility clinics are for everyone, and that’s what we love; bringing together a mix of people who always end up being really supportive of one another.

Rachel: One of the biggest barriers to sport for people with limb loss is simply knowing where to go. Not everyone wants to join a paralympian-level training scheme, they just want to continue their regular sport or maintain a reasonable level of fitness. Or maybe try something new like a watersport, purely for fun, and it’s not always easy to join a regular sports club.

Lisan: That’s where our clinics fill a gap, by helping people take a first step. We talk about what people are nervous about, their worries about how far they’ll have to walk, where to park the car, and whether there’ll be accessible toilets. All those worries we share as a group and help to boost each other’s confidence by improving mobility and by reminding people that it’s fine to ask for reasonable adjustments to be made.

Rachel: The clinics we’ve held in conjunction with other organisations have worked well too and has meant we’ve been able to support more people. In the UK we’ve had clinics with the Richard Whitehead Foundation. In the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxemburg we run mobility clinics and running clinics with different customers at different locations and we organise Super User days for both lower and upper limb at the Össur facility in Eindhoven. And in Sweden and Norway we have hosted events with various clinic partners. We’ve held them at running tracks, sports halls, and skate parks, and there have been upper limb user days in our office, and all of this means that we can offer more activities and help our limb loss community to build a bigger support network.

Lisan: We’re currently arranging our clinics for this year across North Europe. Of course, we want to reach new people, but we also want past participants to come back and learn something new and pass on their successes to people joining us for the first time. And for those first-timers, all it needs is the courage to try. You don’t even need a lot, just a little courage can make a big difference. It’s one of our core values at Össur and we see everyone who attends one of our mobility clinics leave just that little bit more courageous than when they arrived. And that is all we can ask for.