Fortius sport doctor Jason Crookham’s career path isn’t what you’d call typical.
After dedicating much of his 20s to cycling – both professionally and on Canada’s national team – the Terrace, B.C. native took up medical studies later in life.
And inner-city Detroit was where he first started practising family medicine.
“It was really hard core – a great experience and a great place to learn,” Crookham said.
After two years, however, it became clear his impact as a family doctor would be limited.
“I came from a sports background,” he said, “but then I was working in an inner city where I was treating tons of chronic disease and tons of problems that don’t have a simple answer in pills or medical prescriptions.”
Part of what steered him toward sport medicine, he said, was a desire to get people active and keep them that way.
“I want to see people get better function and be able to do what they want to do with their lives and improve their health through exercise,” he said.
A sport medicine fellowship at the University of Michigan, a huge NCAA school with 2,000 student athletes, first threw him into what he describes as “the opposite of inner city-type medicine,” dealing with highly motivated college athletes on the Wolverines football, basketball, hockey and soccer teams.
At Fortius Sport & Health in Burnaby, Crookham works with more of a mix.
He admits treating elite athletes, like Olympic freestyle snowboarder Mark McMorris and Canadian-born English national team soccer player Owen Hargreaves, is exciting.
“The interesting part about it is their goals and what they’re going to do with it,” Crookham said. “The depth of the outcomes are really significant.”
But at the end of the day, he said, the underlying question for professional athletes is the same as for anyone else trying to stay active.
“The crux of the question here is, ‘Why does it matter that your shoulder hurts? What do you want to be able to do that you can’t do because of your shoulder?’ That’s sort of the deeper question,” he said.
For more information about the Fortius team, visit www.fortiussport.com.
Follow Cornelia Naylor on Twitter, @CorNaylor
