Inspired Matt Hampson on empowering the disabled
Paralysed former Tiger’s new centre empowers sports people coming to terms with disability
As wind drives rain almost parallel to the wet earth on a bitterly cold February afternoon in the East Midlands, the Get Busy Living Centre represents a bright and bubbly hub of activity. The building, converted from a derelict aeroplane hangar in the middle of rolling fields outside Melton Mowbray, opened last October. It is named after Matt Hampson’s personal mantra.
Coined from a line by Andy Dufresne, Tim Robbins’ character in The Shawshank Redemption, the Get Busy Living message reflects Hampson’s seemingly indomitable attitude in the wake of a scrummaging accident with England Under-21 in 2005 that left him paralysed from the neck down.
Almost 14 years on, and 14 months after Hampson’s brush with death due to pancreatitis and pneumonia, his charitable foundation welcomes a steady stream of beneficiaries, sports people suffering serious injury and dealing with disability. The hope is that a warm yet ambitious environment enhances their outlook on life.
“People look at you differently when you’re in a wheelchair,” says Hampson. “They just do. What we try to do here is empower people and give them tools so that their wheelchair or their injury does not define them.”
Upstairs is a gym with tall windows providing a panoramic view of the landscape. There are rows of state-of-the-art exercise equipment, some of it modified for wheelchair users. Motivational quotes, hand-picked by Hampson, are printed on the walls.
Three wheelchair athletes work on a flywheel machine, pumping a pulley away from their bodies and pulling it back towards them 40 times – 20 on each arm. There is constant chatter. Encouragement bounces around during the sets with a back-and-forth of technical advice in between them.
Two of this trio, David Needham and John Silvester, are colleagues in Leicester Tigers wheelchair rugby team. Silvester broke his back in a car accident in 2017. He comes here three times a week and is looking forward to the summer, when a pizza oven and bar will have been built on the patio.
Needham had motor neurone disease diagnosed five years ago, but proudly reports physical improvements. This is his second session on the flywheel today, because progress feels addictive.
“With my condition, you’re not meant to be able to gain,” Needham says. “Just staying active is the main reason I am still here. The mean survival time from the onset of symptoms is about two years.
“I had two choices – crack on, or give up. And with three young kids, I felt like giving up wasn’t an option. There’s no big deal to it. It’s an easy choice. That’s the best message to anyone, make the most of what you’ve got.”
Paige Murray, a T34 wheelchair racer, is the third member of the group and appears to be relishing an introductory spin on the flywheel. The drills hone coordination, impaired by her cerebral palsy. The Matt Hampson Foundation funded a new racing chair for Murray after she had been forced to borrow one when she first represented Great Britain at the 2015 Anniversary Games.
“I feel incredibly blessed to be surrounded by so many wonderful people,” says Murray, who now works as a fundraising support executive for the foundation. “Just to be looking out at such beautiful surroundings with people that are driven by the same thing, to be the best version of themselves… what more could you want?”
Artwork by Henry Fraser, the Foundation’s first beneficiary, adorns this area. ‘The Little Big Things’ – also the title of Fraser’s first memoir – is emblazoned across one wall. That image is so fitting. Often, the nature of spinal injuries and their consequences mean that sufferers aim for tiny, incremental goals in rehabilitation. Taking a single step, for instance.
As if to emphasise this, numbered stride lengths form a trail on the floor – from ‘10’ leading out of the physiotherapy room to ‘1’ on the edge of a treadmill. One achievement board charts milestones; from floor-to-chair transfers for recently-discharged patients to something more exotic, like Hampson’s recent safari trip to South Africa.
According to Tommy Cawston, the genial chief executive of the foundation, Hampson “sets the tone” for others with sessions on a functional electrical stimulation bike that shocks muscles in time with the motion of its pedals. “Phenomenal” is the word used to describe Hampson by both Needham and the Foundation’s lead physio Josie Ledbetter.
Ledbetter explains the mental boost of standing upright and how doing so, even with assistance, reduces the risk of pressure sores and bone density problems that occur in paralysed people incapable of bearing their own weight. While hospital gyms can be “cold and clinical”, she says, the centre is anything but.
Gary Oleinik and Ross Manester from Perform Better, the company that designed the gym, believe elite sport should take note of the compassionate atmosphere at the Get Busy Living Centre. Indeed, able-bodied athletes have called in. “If you’re out for six months with a bad knee, you can’t fail to leave here with a bit of an altered perspective,” says Cawston.
The aura is collaborative, aspirational and, above all, empathetic. Because the difficulties caused by some disabilities, including incontinence, are stark.
Darrel White, centre manager, met Hampson as a fellow patient at Stoke Mandeville a decade and a half ago. He had fallen off a ladder and broken his back – “a stupid, boring injury,” he says.
“In our gym, if you fall over or p--- yourself, no one gives a f---,” White giggles. “Go and have a shower. We’ll see you in 10 minutes.”
White’s sense of humour must put visitors at ease. He tells a wickedly funny anecdote, recounted in Paul Kimmage’s book Engage, about the day that he and Hampson were informed that spinal cord damage usually leads to erectile dysfunction. Reeling from that “devastating blow”, White enlisted his father to bring pornography to Stoke Mandeville.
These days, he can laugh about the subsequent inactivity and the desolation that followed. But, crucially, he also uses those memories to help others going through a similar experience. White’s domain is the socialising space downstairs, with a pristine kitchen, a large table and sofas in front of a big screen.
“This is generalising, but a lot of people with catastrophic injuries leave hospital, leave their partners and end up single. They’ll be miserable as f---, they’ll fall into a crap lifestyle eating takeaways and sleeping in. In here, we break that down a bit.”
At 1pm each day, everyone at the Get Busy Living Centre, sometimes as many as 20 people, sits down together for lunch. “It’s like massive group therapy,” White says. “Life can be brutal. But you can treat it like an adventure…
I just say you can’t let the b------get you down.”
Reminders of rugby are everywhere. Tiki Tonga Coffee, founded by Saracens captain Brad Barritt, has donated goods. Ian Smith, Oakham School’s director of coaching and a bona fide legend of Leicester with 331 playing appearances and years of coaching, arrives for a visit. He witnessed Hampson’s rise through the Welford Road ranks and calls him “the greatest man I know”.
Awareness of rugby’s dangers has never been more acute. Hampson is passionate about safety measures – educating grass-roots coaches and referees about scrummaging and spinal injuries – yet remains adamant that he owes plenty to the sport.
“My accident happened for a reason. You can play rugby at whatever level, at Dog Poo Park or in the Premiership, but everyone looks after their own. I’m still a Leicester Tiger. I feel honoured to be a life member and I count myself very blessed to be able to call upon friends in the game.”
Phase two for the Get Busy Living Centre is on-site accommodation. A pool for hydrotherapy is not far away. Hampson is relentless. “I feel pretty content… well I don’t know if ‘content’ is the right word,” he says. “I’m always striving for bigger, better things.”
‘A lot of people leave hospital, leave their partners and fall into a crap lifestyle. We break that down’