Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ? - Darren Harper: Martial Arts, Rehabilitation and Wellness for Reach for Health

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

In this episode of 'Why Not Me? Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide,' host Tony Mantor engages in a profound conversation with Darren Harper, course leader at the Reach for Health Center in Daventry. Harper discusses his 20-year journey from martial arts enthusiast to rehabilitation specialist, emphasizing the importance of tailored physical therapy and exercise initiatives for individuals with chronic conditions. The discussion delves into Harper's personal challenges with dyslexia, the comprehensive rehabilitation programs at his center, and the key role of mental and emotional wellness in physical recovery. The episode highlights success stories, the significance of adaptive program structuring, and the transformative impact of fostering positive mindsets. Listeners are encouraged to stay active, pursue happiness, and understand the holistic nature of rehabilitation. Meet Darren Harper: Transformative Rehabilitation Leader Darren's Journey into Health and Fitness Challenges and Overcoming Dyslexia Pathway to Helping Others Reach for Health Center: Programs and Impact Daily Operations and Client Support Mental Health and Physical Wellness Connection Success Stories and Community Impact Referrals and Collaborations Final Thoughts and Encouragement INTRO/OUTRO Music: T. Wild Mantor Music BMI The content on Why Not Me: Embracing Autism amd Mental Health Worldwide, including discussions on mental health, autism, and related topics, is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not reflect those of the podcast, its hosts, or affiliates.Why Not Me is not a medical or mental health professional and does not endorse or verify the accuracy, efficacy, safety of any treatments, programs, or advice discussed.Listeners should consult qualified healthcare professionals, such as licensed therapists, psychologists, or physicians, before making decisions about mental health or autism- related care.Reliance on this podcast's contents is at the listener's own risk. Why Not Me is not liable for any outcomes, financial or otherwise, resulting from actions taken based on the information provided. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Why Not Me, embracing autism and mental health worldwide, hosted by Tony Miatur. Broadcasting from the heart of Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join us as our guests share their raw, howful stories. Some will spark laughter, others will move you to tears. These real-life journeys inspire, connect, and remind you that you that you will spark laughter. You're never alone. We're igniting a global movement to empower everyone to make a lasting difference by fostering deep awareness, unwavering acceptance, and profound understanding of autism and mental health.

Tune in, be inspired, and join us in transforming the world one story at a time. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me, embracing autism and mental health worldwide. Wide. Joining us today is Darren Harper. As course leader at Reach for Health Center in Davenry, he drives transformative rehabilitation programs for individuals with chronic conditions, injuries, or disabilities. He oversees tailored physical therapy and exercise initiatives that promote recovery and long-term wellness, targeting issues like strokes, heart disease, and diabetes. His work emphasizes accessible evidence-based interventions fostering physical and mental

resilience. Through community focus sessions, he ensures underserved groups receive personalized support, empowering them to regain independence and improve their quality of life. His leadership helps the charity deliver impactful, holistic care across England. He has a wealth of information to give us today. So before we dive into our episode, we'll be back with an uninterrupted show right after a word from our sponsors. Thanks for coming on. Oh, pleasure. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's my pleasure. If you would, give us a little background on your journey to what you are doing today. So about 20 years ago, I got involved in general health and fitness. So I've always been into martial arts when I was 15. I've always wanted to help people.

So I was learning kung fu and bits and pieces of age 15. Turn 17, I got interested in the film called Twin Warriors, but Jet Li, got into a bit of Tai Chi. Tai Chi's very much holistic about wellness and well-being and trying to help understand your body and all three you are, which led me into. becoming a personal trainer and obviously a rehabilitation practitioner in the UK. And obviously 20 years later, I'm still continuing the same field. And I love every many of doing it because it's always different. It's unique. And every day is a blessing in some sense of the amount of people be able to help and support. Yeah, and it's been basically developing from there, really.

Now, in anyone's journey, there's always challenges. Were there any challenges you faced that you had to overcome that helped you along the way? Oh, so. I mean, my dyslexia was one level. So obviously it's cool having dyslexia, learning about how to perceive things in the right sort of level. Obviously, my thing was when I was younger, I'd read a paragraph or a line, for example, and I'd probably add in extra words, you know, to make it sound differently. That's part of my dyslexia. As you start to work with that, and I think the martial arts helped me a hand of a lot because you're training the different parts of the brain to become reactive.

So you have underwaptive lobes and they're overactive lobes. In this case here, it was about using like my hands more and my legs more, coordinating more, and they're developing it. different sorts of structures. That was one level, obviously, of me trying to understand how to slow things down from a mental capacity. So working with the public, you know, writing down notes or workout cards or rehabilitation notes of people. Once you decided to focus on helping people, what was your pathway to getting there? What was some of the things that you had to do that taught you so that you could actually do this? Oh, so I became a gym instructor first, a level two gym instructor. And then I became a level three personal training.

trainer and I became what's called an activity on a furorist, which is level three, and then became a pulmonary specialist in level four. Over the course of 20 years of the amount of experience you gain in rehabilitation, my boss back then, obviously, and also my teacher was a physiotherapist and the back specialist, and he was covered in different areas of wellness and different areas of medical understanding in the body. And our location, which is called the regional health center now in the Daventry, we are based on rehabilitation. So we've always been into medical fitness and having him, you know, as my guide and obviously a teacher at the same time, to be involved with the public, to learn how to work in medical conditions, to support the

teachings, I suppose I had from the courses that I did to make it more realistic, more real, and to get my own experiences to understand what's what and why. That was what helped me a lot to understand how the body works and obviously how things are the way he are for. Can you expand and give us a little more information on how the reach for health center helps people stay fit and healthy as they age? Completely, yeah. When we cover all areas of wellness and medical conditions and all age ranges too, from the age of 13 years plus.

So some people might have like neuromuscular system, difficulties, they could have like arthritic joints, they could have cardiac, porn with heart and illness maybe. It could be things like diabetes, it could be weight loss. I mean, you name, we pretty much cover everything. Our clientele, we do definitely work on false prevention, Priority is quite a big factor, as we know, for staying age going forward. It's more recognized now because obviously the more people are more aware of how their structure

of life is. So we're trying to support that classes that we do here, or program developments that we do for certain people depending on what they're trying to go for. With everything that you do, what's your day-to-day look like? Well, at the centre. So it would normally be either consultations where we meet new people for the first time, and obviously we'd have a sit-down chat about a good half an hour. now so to understand who they are, what their primary condition is, like why they're from here for.

It could be like maybe high blood pressure, it could be arthritis, it could be anything you can think of. Then we can work on comorbidies too as well, which would be secondary conditions and obviously help support program for them then. We also develop on one-to-ones. So once that individuals had a consultation, you know, for example, at the centre, then we would put them in for another two sessions as a one-to-one to help create a program on a one-to-one basis for them. And to guide them through it so they feel happy and they're confident what they're doing when it comes down for work. work out. Then we have options to help people like to support that one to one basically if they feel like they need it or maybe like balanced development or they're not feeling really

100% confident what they're doing with their program. Or we also have what's called an assistant scheme as well which is when people who will book into come and see us is completely free but we'll be able to support them in their like setting from machinery which could be like bicycles maybe, come up with cycles, feather cycles, you know treadmills, resistant machines, whatever they feel they're still not really happy with. They can do most of the program themselves, but need that little bit of support sometimes a certain machine just to get the confidence in what they're doing. And after that we have people who have classes that we run in centre as well. We have a functional fitness class we run and that's based on different

sorts of morphologies like cardiovascular, low impact circuit training, a bit of Tai Chi maybe. It could be stretching mobility and it could be force prevention. We cover that all in that functional fitness course or class that we run, which is ongoing throughout the year. To do what's called a board prevention class, which is based on the Otago scheme of training. We call it strength, and balance. We have three times a week. We have a Tai Chi class we run, pulmonary class, working on lungs, and rehabilitation. And pretty much we have a general, like a gym structure. You could say people come for regular workouts. You have your regulars that come every day, course. It could like maybe come up Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or it could be depending on what they

want to come down. Yeah, it's quite a busy day. I'm glad you. We have a lot to go on. Yes, that's a very busy day. Now, you cover a variety of things with all the things that you do. is there a common thread that seems to just stand out? Yeah, I definitely would say Falls prevention, as in Falls is quite a big thing. And that would be due to people from the age of 60 years plus from what we see here, of course, at the centre.

It would be neurological, like a lot of stroke victims we have here. So like post-stroke victims, and obviously, depending, of course, on the level of severity of the stroke, of course, we will definitely guide and support them and help them. And I have to say there 12 weeks of rehabilitation from the services. They obviously be discharged,

and they'll continue on reverse. Or they'll come and see us before, as in they're going through the discharge process, and we'll give them a bit of support and guidance to help them through their process on their journey as well. Yeah, that's great. Now, with all the people that you deal with,

do you have mental illness that will come in to be a factor? As we know, if people aren't feeling good about themselves, it can cause depression, anxiety. How do you work with people that have those issues? Yeah, so mental health is a really big, thing for what we did at the centre because as you know, physical development of the body is corresponding to mental wellness in the first place. So how, as a human being, how we perceive

things to be, is a reflection of how we fear of what's something here. So we physically reflect that with verbal physical action. So when we're working with somebody, say it could be a stroke could be someone who's working on, say, improving their strength and their balance for their particular condition. It's about trying to reinforce them to recognize that there's a goal going forward, that we want to try and achieve to give them direction and give them drive and to keep the will go and to keep pushing to achieve that goal. But motivational, you know, to try and keep supporting them and to show them that what they can do is they keep pushing this direction

or keep working on this exercise as movement, then they should be able to see a difference in achieving that goal. And it plays a big part in what they do going forward because it helps them feel more confident as well and more aware of what they can and can't do. Have you had people come in that had the attitude while I'm here but I really don't need to be here. They're depressed, they've got anxiety, whatever they might have.

You can tell they're going through some emotional issues. Because of the emotional issues, they're kind of self-defeating. How do you get around that so you can turn that negativity into positivity? So normally it'd be showing them an exercise they haven't done before. Or let's say take a stroke victim blessing and obviously or a stroke person. And they've obviously had one of their limbs, say the left or right limb, upper limb is not that tick. And they've got too much, not enough extension range in the hand. And just by working on that limb or that particular part of the body,

allowing it to show a difference in what it can and can't do. Because sometimes they just need someone to show them something to give them a visual perception on what's going on. Say their hands in a fish shape. And for a long time, they've not been able to extend those fingers for any particular reason to. By working with those fingers, for example, trying to slowly expand them at a pace they feel constable, so they can actually see and feel the difference of that sensation, and see the fingers that physically moving.

It's a great indication to say, okay, there's a possibility that we can get more movement going long term in here, and we start to see progression. It's those sort of things to visually seeing the change of what's going on. So probably I'd say in this case experiencing a movement or an exercise they haven't done before and then seeing the change and saying, oh, wow, that can actually happen to me. I'm actually doing this. or like, you know, as a possibility, it might improve. It's those sort of things that we find change

from our people's mindsets around to become a lot more confident and more driven to want to do more and see more positivity in it. You work with so many people there and have had so many success stories. Do you have anything that just stands out to you? Oh, God, there's been so many. Can't think of the top of my heads

because we do so much down here. We're so involved with people. And obviously, we meet people in our diaries for that place, but I'd say, they rock seven to eight members of staff that work in rehabilitation. And then we'll flurry between different people, depending on our course, on our diary structure too. I would say the centre itself is one big level

that we've seen a really big progression with because we've seen the change and the involvement and how we've involved as the centre to support more capabilities, of course, that's one level. People who have spinal injuries, for example, I mean, here they'd like say, disability in walking, they're able to walk the end. We have got some stories here and some amazing stories you had.

And in fact, they're actually on our Instagram on Facebook as well. And a lot of that was spawning with difficulties, of course. But there were just, there are lows because of how much we work with, but how much you work with as well, which is the main thing. Yeah, it's awesome, yeah. Yes, that is awesome that you have that kind of success. Can you tell us your areas that you cover her?

We're based in Daventry, which is obviously in the Midlands in North Phantomshire in the UK. So we can cover anyone's welcome to come down. We have the villages supporting the town boards. And obviously, we have North Phantom Shear generally. anyone from people like from Kettering, even like from Walshshire, about 45 minutes away from Dammertree, we'll pop in and see it's now come for regular sessions. And it all depends on the financial structure of the individual coming down, you know, what they're happy doing really.

Sure, that makes perfect sense. Are you integrated with other programs or systems similar to yourself or are you a stand-alone entity? We're a charity, but we have different connections with different people, but they're their own individual charities, I believe, as well. So we just support each of us. so we could signpost them to us and vice versa as well to help support where it's necessary. It all depends on what that person needs or what that other charity were beneficial for them, to that individual, so they can support them by them here and vice versa for us as well.

Yeah, that's great. What do you think is important that the listeners hear about what you're doing and how is helping the community that you're in? I would say the key for what we do is rehabilitation, but rehabilitation comes in many different ways. It comes through physical actions. It comes through mental wellness, emotional well-being as well. I would say find out what makes you happy and try and pursue that.

And that's what I would say as a goal. If you're going through rehabilitation yourself, try and find out what you need to rehabilitate on, whether it's physical, whether it's normal, whether it's mental, emotional, and try and keep active to the best you can because physical activity will make such a big difference to lifestyle and overwhelmless as well. Yes, I totally agree. Staying active is very, very important. as you're working with these people helping them towards their goals,

you must take great pride in seeing how their demeanor changes over a period of time. Yeah, definitely. Because they're growing and they're progressing. Because every time you go through an experience where you've had a condition, you change, don't you? You have to adjust and adapt to yourself mentally as well as emotionally how you feel about going on. So as they start to see progression or starts to change themselves, they start to feel better about themselves generally.

And it helps them to kind of see a difference. And they're changing their persona, like you said, across there, to see that they can make a difference going forward. And they can start to feel better. They are able to do more things, whether it's more activities or we call them ADLs, don't we, which are activities of day living. So a lot of people have these, and which we obviously do, of course, like washing, cleaning or, you know, whatever they could be. When these bits get easier to do at home life, that's where you're starting to see a big progression with your capabilities, you know. Go into, like, family events, maybe, or social events. when they feel easier to do and there's less stress, less tension within us individually,

then it's a big way away off our shoulders, of course, because we can do more things and we can enjoy more about what's going on. So yeah, we do see a big difference in people completely because they're seeing more achievements without realizing it, which is really good. What kind of program do you set up for these people? It can be once or twice a week, three times a week, or I guess as many times as they need. After that is set up, how long does it last? once they get to a certain level, does it end?

Or do you extend it and tweak it so that they can continue it? Yeah, so that's a great question actually. So what we would normally do is when we'd create that program from day one, at the consultation, we've had a chat, we've seen where we want to go going forward. So they would have that program roughly, say between four to six weeks, and then when we review the program and do a whole brand new program. And this would continue every six to eight weeks roughly as well.

Because then we always want to keep scene progression. We want to keep supporting everyone and stop the, I wouldn't say the boredom, that's the wrong word, but the people need to see change, don't they? As much they can do. Obviously, to the point they can, in a balanced sense, they're not seeing it too quickly, but knowing that they can recognize that it'll take a bit longer to see the changing this and this and this, where it's a range of motion, or shit, the venom or whatever it could be.

What we also do is, although they've got programs written out for themselves, which they will follow through, either individually, will one-to-one scheme like ourselves too, is that we will go and speak to the member for that person and we'll say on a regularly basis, like, how are things going, How you finding it? Is this getting too easy? That's more change. We add some new movements into your program. And we'll start to tweak it and add things in, you know, all to support them in their development.

Because the average human being start to get stronger after about two weeks generally anyway. They're doing the same thing twice a week, three times a week. You'll see a big progression quite quickly if they're keeping that regularity of coming down at least here and then working at home as well, doing bits and pieces to it. So yeah, we do try and keep adding things into the program maybe every week to two weeks. like a little exercise or repetition change here and just to kind of keep it working. And to keep them driven as well, so they keep pushing forward,

you know, to want to keep doing more and adding more to their programs and so better themselves going forward. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. If you keep doing the same exercise, your muscles will get used to that same exercise. Yeah. So you have to tweak the exercises

so they can continue to grow. Yeah, completely right. And that happens so quickly as well. It's always good doing the same exercise, but change the methodology behind it, like the method scheme, as in change your rep count, change your resistance, change the stretch of how you do it to. So say you're doing a pet debt machine, just for example,

and you do say reps of 15 repetitions on, say, I know, 10 kilograms, just for example, and you feel it working out with the first two or three sets, then you know you're in a good position. But let's say you go ahead two or three weeks later, and that's got a lot easier, which you've probably done by anyway too. Then you can even increase the repetitions by no five, or you can decrease depending on what you're trying to achieve long, term going forward and add more resistance to it or create a super set of bets when you obviously

have that pet that machine and another chest exercise machine and you can back to it again. There's lots of options you've got as far as like trying to spice up the program you could say and make it more unique. Once you get a person to the range of motion that they're hoping to get to, you want to tweak it, you want to make it better for them to increase their mobility. What would your plan be to change it out without adding a lot more weight so they can still achieve mobility and while they're doing that they add a little muscle tone to it as well. Do you want to keep toned and flexible technically I suppose? So ultimately it's repetitions because

the more reps you do the more you work in the joint. So take the hinge being the elbow joint, for example, you know, we do your bicep curls. So if you do a bicep curl with no weight, flat palm or fist and hand, depending what you feel comfortable. Over time, slow you go. The more the muscles are going to start to work for longer period time through contraction and 11. So they're going to essentially contract longer as well as essentially contract too. Now that itself is going to start to make the muscles stretch

the longer and become literally more mobile for a period of time because the resistance is not there but the control is and the repetition will create the toning effect and the muscle fibers allow the capsule within the joint to become more mobile and more active as well. So I would say to keep that level of flexibility, range of motion and toning within a certain joint either go very slowly with no resistance with the hand movement or start to do a bit more repetitions

like high reps of 10 to 15 repetitions then do the other arm for example and then repeat two of three sets and that way there's no resistance as such with gravity of weight but there is the hand going up and down back and forth have you seen people that have been challenged mentally and when i say that it's more self-esteem rather than mental illness yet it still affects people mentally if they don't feel like they can do something. Have you seen their attitude and just mental awareness change after you set them up with a program and then they finally believe that it's working for themselves? Yeah, so from a motor function point of view, when you move in the part of the body, for example, so let's say they were able to do it first. And obviously, again, they only get so far, for example,

and they get a bit of like, they can still move it, but they're not going as far as range as they would like to go, I suppose you could say. So what we were doing that sense, we would assist by putting a little bit of support behind the hands, to support the hand. Can we open back down, just for example? It would give them the confidence to know that they can do it themselves. They just need a little bit of push, you could say, here, to help engage that motor function.

Because it takes about 1,000 repetitions roughly for a stroke victim to obviously be able to gain sensory development and motor function to a stronger level, of course. But it's about knowing that person, about knowing what they can and can't do, and giving them that confidence to. But, yeah, if your motor neurons are slightly out of action, because they're underactive, which is what happens actually you have a stroke on a particular part of the body, because it's not being used for a period of time.

And it's because it's underactive because it's not being able to be moved around due to the stroke account. If it's a different mental condition as well, and let's say it's to do with not so much a physical condition, but say it's neurological and it's not allowing the transition of movement, then by doing support, it's just the movement. It's a great way of training those motor normal ones to say, okay, that's actually a good movement to do. It's more natural for me. it just takes a while for me to get used to it. Because all you're doing effectively is when you move the body,

the muscles move, but they only move because the brain says to move them. So the brain says a signal to the individual muscle that it then moves the muscle. When the muscle then moves on the tendon pulling, it actually moves the joint at the same time. So the joint's the last part to move. It's really more like brain to muscle and obviously into joint, you could set. So all we're trying to reconnect the opposite way around, then go movement to brain.

So we're going to actually move the hands, for example, here, the device for kill, and it's going to start to come up to his shoulder. And then the neurological system is going to use that signal going over and over again from repetition, and it'll start to create a stronger sentence. And that's the best way to support anyone really from like a motor functional development anyway. So being in your area as long as you have, do you get a lot of referrals from doctors, nurses, hospitals, people within the business that know what you do and know that you're the ones to send them to? We do, not so much hospitals. We have referrals from the GPs and the practices around our surrounding areas too. And then what have other people who are assigned close to us from different areas in this field, you could say, like physiotherapists or diabetic nurses maybe.

Anyone who feels like we can support them, we will do. But from the hospitals, not so much, unfortunately, we have more GP referrals. Or the public themselves, who have been with us for years and years, you know, for different reasons. They might have came across for medical referral themselves and then explained to their friends and family, they're coming down here to improve their health, their wellness, the fitness, and so forth. And it could be a connection that way. So it could be word of mouth as well. But we do have a lot of specialists, you know, obviously HCPs that obviously do refer people to us as well. Yeah, that's great. Now, is there anything that I haven't asked or we haven't covered that you think is

important that we do cover? I would say we've covered most of it, to be fair. All I'd say is that if you think about generally for rehabilitation, that just be mindful that it covers not just physical, but like we said before, it covers that mental wellness and that emotional wellness. Your emotional wellness is the biggest part to who we are and how we feel and how we express ourselves is ultimately about what we want to be as an individual person. And expression is the key, is all I would say, they're expressions to the key to develop ourselves as humans.

If you get stress related issues that occur on a very emotional point of view, it's because the mental mind is not comprehending what's going on and that reflects physically in different sorts of ways. So I would say be passionate and trust your feelings, what I'd say, try and be expressive. But if I was the centre and rehabilitation, you pretty much covered most things. Yeah, I think it's a really good thing that you brought up the emotional part. It affects the mind in so many different ways. When it affects the mind, it also affects the body. With all that going on, then they can easily talk themselves into a very,

bad mindset. How do you get that negativity out of their mind so they can start focusing on the positive things that they need to do in order to have a better future? Yeah, I think that's a really good question actually about changing the perception somewhere, isn't it? So American allowed them to become more aware of the other angle which they're not seeing from. If you imagine like, not that we see things from a narrow, mindy point of view, but when you're one directional and all you can see is this, it's very hard to see the external around it. So if you could see things from a bird, point of view, you know, let's say you're seeing it from above that person. So so and so is feeling this way because of this particular reason, because of circumstances

around that person, the face of what's happened. Now, we can see, from a bird's eye point of view, the things that were created in the first place to create that situation. Now, for that person to feel low or heavy, and let's say it's down to not being happy with a program they've got or the way a family member was, you know, it could be anything of physical, mental thing or verbal that's made it feel off balance. if we can explain to them or show them another angle out what's going on and say,

okay, you're seeing from this point of view but try seeing from this angle because of this reason and why because we have to explain to people from a mental perception what's going on so they understand, okay, logically, that makes sense why something is the way it is for. If you can break that logic down to show another angle, it starts to open their mind more, their perception will change and then become more willing to accept another angle.

Because when you're emotionally feeling low, as much as you want to change those feelings and emotions, and we all do, we want to have happy and positive and balance the best you can. Until you have that direction or guidance or verbal physical activity or interaction, it's not going to change. You need to have something to show you another angle, another perception of what something is. And as an outsider, it can be easier to do that because you're seeing from a whole different angle too.

And we do have it down here quite a lot when people are very, like, given and very like focused on one thing particular because I think that's going to help them heal them. And it will, of course, to a certain extent, but it won't achieve the whole goal. So we have to logically say to them, yes, you're going to get this and this there. It's going to be excellent. But don't forget about this and this too as well. Because there's a whole supporting mechanism and building bridge you need to have to create something for a different angle. Because you're just trying to create something differently from a different angle.

Yeah, but bird's eye point in view. If you can do your bird's eye view angle, it makes a difference to how we see things to be. Yeah, absolutely. Well, this has been great. Great conversation. Great information. I really appreciate you taking the time to join us today. Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's been great to meet you as well. I've so much about you as well, Tony. So thank you. Oh, it's been my pleasure. Thanks again. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know someone who has a story to share, tell them to contact us at why not me.org. One last thing, spread the word about why not me.

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