The call was made on Joel Bardall’s The Painting and Decorating Show as more painters and decorators suffer life threatening and career ending injuries on the job.

Addressing the issues themed “The aches and pains of working as a decorator” host Joe Bardall said: “My own personal experience with this is that I have always suffered with my knees and one in particular anyway and I always wear knee pads now as part of my routine. When I really noticed it was one night, I woke up around 4 O’clock in the morning and my leg and my knee was completely inflamed, it was killing me, and I had to go to the doctor’s and it was really a manly ailment and it was called ‘housemaid’ knee. I was in absolutely agony, but it made me realise the strain when you are crouching down skating and or painting and the importance of maintaining physical health. From that moment I always wear knee pads and it has made a massive difference because I just saw many people in our trade suffer with things like that.”

Todd Von Joel agreed with Joel on the importance of maintaining physical health and said: “I certainly agree and people don’t realise how physical painting and decorating is because you are not lifting one massive weight or some sort of hero all the time but what you are doing is you are getting into all sorts of strange positions that constrict, stretch and can affect your muscles and your whole body, your knees, your elbows and this builds up over time. Over the course of the week as it’s being repeated you could end up with something like housemaid knee.”

Appearing on the show, Wayne Lakin, a functional movement coach who has a gym in Hinkley, said majority of his clients are under the age of 18 and he helps them with their functional movement patterns to maintain physical health and strengthen body muscle.

Wayne said repetitive strain is the most common issue that decorators, painters and tradesmen tend to face. “That kind of industry, decorators, painters, plasterers, crafters etc, I look at them like elite sports athletes because they are doing the same thing day-in, day-out. So, at some point, unless they look after their body, it’s going to fail, it’s going to cease up or lead to some injury. That’s exactly like elite athletes.”

Wayne urged painters and decorators across the country to start looking after their physical health and taking care of their bodies to avoid career ending or life-threatening injuries. “They have to start doing the strengthening to that joint and the painters and decorators know which ones they are, the knees, elbows, the getting up, getting down all the time they are not working on the quads or hamstrings in the car. If they are not working on the main joints, the knee is going to fail because the muscles around it aren’t strong enough to support.”