Your local physio

Having operated in Freshwater Place for close to 10 years, Elite Sports Physio’s Sriyan Peries can safely be regarded as Southbank’s local physiotherapist.

While many may not know it, Mr Peries has been helping locals overcome their injuries for nearly a decade out of a small treatment room at Genesis Fitness.

Having witnessed the area develop around him over the years, he said the growth of Southbank had been both exciting and good for business.

“I’ve spent so much time in the office that I’ll often forget to take a look out and see what’s going on in the immediate area and sometimes I’ll look up and ask myself whether I’ve seen that building before,” he said.

“Seeing Southbank and the Freshwater Place area get as busy as it is has been a huge positive for me.”

As well as providing a friendly and reliable service over many years, Sriyan said much of his business’s success could also be put down to its city-centric location.

“It’s probably a combination of convenience as well as it’s a little bit of a niche area that there’s not a lot of competition around but, with anything to do with Southbank and the CBD, everything is about convenience,” he said.

“You want to be able to duck out for whatever it is on your lunch break or in between meetings to go shopping or, in this case, physio.”

While the business most commonly treats athletes it does indeed cater to all, with services including spinal manipulation, sports physiotherapy, massaging, dry-needling, clinical pilates and a range of rehabilitation programs.

It also treats motor vehicle accident and work-related injuries and, as of this year, has introduced a gap payment of $15 for every Workcover and TAC consultation.

Sriyan said being located in a gym had also provided an added service of convenience for personal trainers (PT) and gym users alike over time.

“You do occasionally get some who are unfortunate enough to injure themselves on the gym floor so you figure, if they have the time to come to the gym three times a week, there’s no reason why they can’t see the physio at the same location,” he said

“If they do need close monitoring by their PT for their injury we’re not sending letters back and forth or anything like that they can just pop in and tell us what injury they have and we can tell them how to manage it.”

While treating local people’s injuries over many years is undoubtedly the most rewarding part of his job, Sriyan said the most satisfying part of physiotherapy was building relationships with everyone he treats.  

“I think one of the best parts about my job is that it’s quite a social job and often you can almost go on auto pilot,” he said.

“You actually do get to learn a lot about the person themselves and not just about their injuries and sometimes you end up getting entire families coming in.”

“I’ve had a few families that I’ve seen every member of their family over the course of time so that’s a very satisfying part of my job.”

Elite Sports Physiotherapy is located at Genesis Fitness at level three, four Freshwater Place in Southbank.

For more information visit
www.elitesportsphysio.com.au