About Gurinder Sandhu
My role as a coach extends far beyond being an instructor.
I am Gurinder Sandhu, a personal trainer and back pain specialist in Soho. I help ambitious London professionals rehabilitate chronic and recurring back pain, and build a strong, confident body to go with it. You may arrive at my door frustrated and hopeless, nervous about the smallest wrong move, and quietly convinced nothing will work. My job is to show you otherwise.
The Short Version
How I got here.
I left a career in corporate tax to become a personal trainer, because I wanted to do something I cared about and help people live better.
I started out on a commercial gym floor in 2012. In 2014 a leading London chiropractic clinic recruited me to help train their clients out of pain and back to full fitness, and I worked as part of that team until 2018. The more people I met who were struggling with chronic back pain, the clearer it became that this group was large, underserved, quietly suffering and consistently misinformed about how to get better. So I built my practice around exactly that.
Since then I have focused on London professionals in back pain: you are not a collection of symptoms that a generic sheet of stretches and strength exercises can fix. I work with the human being in front of me first and foremost, with the primary aim of changing how your nervous system perceives threat and, as a result, produces pain, because that is precisely what the conventional model keeps missing.
Not only this, as a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu with almost a decade on the mats, I have seen injuries and pain take people out of the martial art for them to never return to the hobby that they love. With better rehabilitation, education and care, this does not have to be the fate of grapplers. That is why I built the Injury Rehabilitation for Grapplers programme.
How I Work
A detective looking for clues.
My starting point is that pain is not a purely physical phenomenon. If it were, there would be no pain left once injured tissue had healed. So when a new client arrives, the 90-minute initial consultation looks less like a standard fitness assessment and more like an investigation.
I review a detailed injury history, then work through a neurobiomechanical assessment: the visual system, the vestibular system, the proprioceptive system, gait, joint mobility and overall movement quality. I am looking for anything that increases or decreases your symptoms, anything asymmetrical or dysfunctional.
We test, never guess, because the improvements can come from places where you least expect it:
- A recreational cricketer whose back pain could be traced back to the compensations created by an old elbow injury
- A 5-a-side football injury to the ankle that disrupted movement mechanics up the chain and caused pain in the back
- An entrepreneur's neck problem that was driving lower back pain
When you get to the root cause, the pain downstream evaporates. We will leave no stone unturned. That is why the rehabilitation, the resistance training, the nutrition and the lifestyle plan are integrated into a single system to get you out of pain and feeling back to your best.
Nervous System First
Why the Nervous System First approach?
The nervous system governs your experience of the world and how your body functions.
To put it simply, everything you experience in life can have an impact on your brain's perception of safety. If your brain perceives your internal environment (your body) and your external environment (everything around you that your senses absorb as information to be processed by the brain) to be of no threat to your physical safety, then you will go about your day free of pain.
If, however, your brain processes this information and perceives threat, it will create pain. The problem with most interventions is that they start and stop with assessing the physical, which is why they rarely work for chronic back pain sufferers.
Whereas the system I have developed over the years (and continue to develop) incorporates everything that influences how well your nervous system functions, from assessing the nervous system itself, to movement, nutrition, stress, sleep, mindset and beyond, so that we leave no stone unturned in your journey to get out of back pain once and for all.
Pain is not your enemy. Pain is a signal for change. It is not trying to destroy your life, it is trying to help you be better.
Qualifications
Qualified where it counts.
Specialist training in Functional Neurology, Pain Science, Movement Biomechanics, Resistance Training Principles and the Neuroscience of Change that form the foundation of the approach.
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Level 4 Lower Back Pain Specialist (CIMSPA endorsed)
The specialist tier of UK personal training qualification for lower back pain, endorsed by CIMSPA, the chartered professional body for the industry. It is the difference between a trainer who trains around your back and one qualified to rehabilitate it.
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Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilisation (DNS) Certified Trainer
Developed at the pioneering Prague School of Rehabilitation, DNS is a system built on relearning the movement control and stabilisation patterns we naturally went through as developing infants, which teaches the body how to properly support the spine to make pain-free movement.
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NeuroKinetic Therapy (NKT) Level 3 Practitioner
A muscle testing system designed to identify and address the root cause of movement dysfunctions and pain symptoms at the neurological level, tapping into the movement control centres of the brain.
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Pre-Script Level 1
Applied biomechanics for resistance training: how joint structure and individual anatomy should shape exercise selection, positioning and load. This is what lets the strength work be built for your body rather than lifted from a template.
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Animal Flow Level 1 Instructor
Ground-based bodyweight movement that trains the body in every direction rather than one fixed plane. It is a useful way to rebuild coordinated, confident movement in people who have spent years bracing and avoiding.
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Applied Neuroscience and Brain Health Certification (The Neuroscience Academy)
The science of how the brain works: neuroplasticity, stress, sleep, nutrition, exercise, cognition, emotions, and how all these things impact brain health and in turn contribute to the pain experience.
Where I Train
I coach one-to-one at UNTIL Soho.
A private, state-of-the-art facility on 111 Charing Cross Road in central London, with treatment rooms and a fully equipped gym. It is a focused, unhurried environment, a world away from a crowded commercial gym floor.
The Next Step
3 simple steps to get out of pain once and for all.
Follow these straightforward steps to reclaim your life from back pain and achieve the body you deserve and desire.
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Step 1
Book your initial 90-min consultation
Identify the root cause of pain and start treating it.
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Step 2
Discuss programme options
Discover what could work best for you.
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Step 3
Begin your pain-free journey
Join the programme and start transforming today.
The 90-minute consultation is £169, with no obligation to go further.