My troubles began when my left hip began popping out during leg raises. “Not a big deal,” I thought, putting it to the back of my mind after finding that I was able to push my hip back into its socket.

In 2017, I was now working as a personal trainer and group fitness instructor in Qatar. I lived for new PBs, tracked how much I was able to back squat and bench press, and spent half an hour before bedtime scrolling through Instagram for “fitspiration”. Fitness was my life. That was, at least, until I started to be plagued by joint issues.

First I developed tennis elbow, followed by excruciating patella tendinitis (inflammation of the tendon between the kneecap and shinbone). A few months later, I had a pain in my lumbar spine (lower back) that would not go away. I was in and out of the doctor’s surgery, spending hundreds of pounds on physiotherapy trying to figure out what was going on. I asked my colleagues at work to check my form – was I deadlifting incorrectly? But they assured me that everything was on point. I put it down to overtraining and did my rehab exercises religiously.