The second was entrepreneurial. Okello saw an opportunity to turn his newfound appreciation for stretching into a cash-generating venture, targeting a clientele largely in their 40s and above.

“I was ego lifting, trying to prove to my peers how heavy I could lift. I was lucky I didn’t push the disc out of position,” recalls the 38-year-old of the injury that was so painful that even driving over a bump sent a jolt through his back.

He sought help from a stretch therapist, who worked with him intensively for two weeks. The experience would inspire him to study human anatomy.

Having transformed a painful lesson into a business built around helping others avoid the same fate, Okello cannot emphasise enough how casually he has seen Kenyans treat stretching.

“Kenyans don’t stretch enough. People walk into the gym, lift heavy weights, which automatically creates tension in the muscles, and then go home. It is the same with runners. Even those who don’t exercise, tension still builds up from everyday activities, whether you are standing or sitting for long hours at work,” he tells BDLife as he prepares his stretching therapy table for the next client at his clinic in Village Market, Nairobi.

Many people, he says, lack knowledge of just how important stretching is. Yet, it is just as important as exercising.

“Our bodies are made up of muscle fibres that tighten over time as a result of movement and activity, and they need to be stretched regularly to maintain flexibility and functionality,” he says.

“Over time, if you don’t stretch, that tension continues to build and can eventually lead to injuries or permanently alter your posture. As you age, things can get worse as the tension in your muscles accumulates.”

Office-chair-car-couch crew

His clients are not just gym-goers and runners. He also sees workers, especially those who sit for long hours—the office, chair, car and couch workers.

For those who spend much of their working day seated, he says, the problem often begins around the glutes, which sit at the intersection of the upper and lower body and remain contracted for prolonged periods.

“When your glutes get really tight, your shoulders can also get tight. Then you start experiencing lower back, shoulder, and neck issues, and eventually tension headaches and join the crew that walks around with painkillers. By the time you are experiencing tension headaches, you are at the peak of tightness,” he says.

The problem, he explains, is that muscles are not designed to remain contracted for hours on end.

“Whether you are walking, sitting or running, those muscles are consistently in contraction mode. When a muscle is consistently contracted, it is easy for it to get tired. You need to strengthen it, but you also need to move it into a relaxed mode. Stretching is about trying to relax it,” he says.

The same applies to joints that spend much of the day locked into one position.

“If you sit from 8am to 5pm, those joints have been in one position for hours. They become tense,” he says.

The human body, Okello adds, was designed for movement, not prolonged periods of stillness.

Whenever a person walks into his clinic, he does not begin with a one-size-fits-all stretching routine, but with an assessment of the body posture and alignment.

“A client may arrive complaining of a tight shoulder, for instance, but the source of the problem could lie elsewhere,” he explains.

At the very beginning of a single session that lasts an hour, Okello will check how far the joints can move and whether the discomfort is being triggered by a particular angle or originating from another part of the body, such as the hips, knees, or ankles.

“That gives me feedback on what modality I am going to use in terms of the stretch work, what I need to release, how much I need to release, and the technique I am going to employ in addressing the issue,” he says.

As we age, the stakes become higher. He explains that the body begins to lose muscle from around the mid-20s, while mobility and flexibility become increasingly limited after 35, particularly among people who do little to maintain them.

“I like to work around this category because your body has entered a particular phase of life. You are exposed to work stress, family, career, and all that. That stage, for a lot of people, is very demanding physically, mentally, and emotionally,” he says.

Maintaining mobility, he argues, is not merely about performing impressive gym movements or achieving a certain level of fitness. It is about preserving independence in everyday life.

“You need to be able to bend with ease. You need to be able to jump. If life forces you into those positions, you need to be able to pick up something, pick up your baby, or pick up something heavy,” he says.

As muscle mass and strength decline with age, lack of mobility can compound the risk of injury. A sudden movement that would once have been effortless can become a hazard when the body has lost its agility.

“If you are tight, bending down very fast can become an injury-prone thing. That is why sometimes you hear guys making fun of it, saying, ‘I tried going down very fast or dancing in a particular move, and my back went.’ You started losing that agility; you just haven’t realised it yet, then claim it’s because you are ageing,” he says.

Many of the clients he treats, particularly those over 30, walk into his clinic hunched over and unable to stand upright after years of accumulated muscle tension.

“I have seen numerous cases where guys who sat down for long hours and came in here bent. They couldn’t stand straight. Their backs had accumulated so much tension that they went into spasm,” he says.

In more serious cases, he has treated clients with disc problems, leaving them with persistent back, neck and shoulder pain, as well as severe headaches.

“Constant headaches while assuming you are okay and that it’s just a migraine is a way of the body communicating to you that you are not okay. You will take the painkillers, feel a little bit relieved, but after a while the headaches will be back, and that becomes a cycle until your body can’t take it anymore and collapses,” he cautions.

One case that remains particularly vivid involved a 42-year-old woman who arrived at his clinic with her back bent and was unable to stand upright.

“She had spent more than 10 hours working on a laptop, seated on a sofa in what she believed was a comfortable position. The tricky thing is that when you have your laptop, you keep wriggling your back into that position of comfort. It becomes a tricky angle when you hold it for long hours,” says Okello, who has been in the wellness industry for 18 years.

Do warm-ups count as stretching?

Traditional warm-ups, he says, often focus on getting the heart rate up through cardio without adequately preparing the joints for the specific movements that follow.

“If I’m going for a run, for example, and then plan to do a shoulder press, running will warm me up generally, but it will not necessarily prepare my shoulders for that movement. A shoulder press involves pushing upward, and because the shoulder is a ball-and-socket joint, it needs to be warmed up through movements that prepare it for that specific exercise,” he explains.

His prescription is a combination of mobility work before exercise and stretching afterwards, when the muscles are still warm.

“There is a warm-up phase, and there is a cool-down phase, and it is important to have both,” he says.

For those who dash out of the gym the moment their workout ends, he says the cool-down window is a missed opportunity.

“If you say you are going to stretch later, that is a very good window of opportunity to relax your muscles while they are still warm and pliable. Even the stretching feels smoother and more accommodating,” says Okello, who began his career working in gyms, then obtained certification and worked at Muthaiga Country Club.

He later became an emergency medical technician. During Covid-19, he decided to broaden his practice to include stretch therapy, fascia manipulation, and moxibustion.

The two worlds, he says, gave him different perspectives of the body.

“The gym side shows you how important exercise and body movement are, while the medical world presents what happens when injuries occur. If there is an emergency, what is the human body going to present like?” he says.