For Andy and Claire Taylor, Taylormade Performance and Rehabilitation Clinic in Honiton grew out of years spent working at the sharp end of professional sport. Today, the couple are using that experience to help a much wider range of people, from young athletes recovering from serious injuries to older clients looking to maintain strength, balance and independence.
Based at Fenny Bridges near Honiton, the multi-award-winning clinic combines injury management, rehabilitation, strength and conditioning and Pilates under one roof. The business also offers lifestyle and performance programmes together with wellbeing and nutritional monitoring. It is a deliberately joined up approach which reflects Andy and Claire’s own professional backgrounds.
Taylormade’s approach has earned the clinic repeated recognition. Most recently, it was named Best Integrated Health & Wellness Enterprise 2026 and received the South West England Community Impact Excellence Award 2026 in the SME News UK Enterprise Awards. This follows three wins as Injury Management Clinic of the Year in South West England in the Prestige Awards between 2021 and 2025, as well as being named Health and Wellbeing Specialist of the Year for South West England in the Prestige Awards 2020/21.
The couple first met at Exeter City Football Club, where Andy was a player and Claire was working as a physio. Their careers have since taken them through professional football, education and private practice before they eventually brought their complementary skills together in their own business.
Andy had already experienced the highs and lows of professional football himself. As a teenager he made it to Manchester United, an experience he describes as a dream come true for a 14 year old from this part of the country.
“I worked hard to get there,” Andy says. “It was an experience for a lad coming from this part of the country to have made it to that club. There’s not many that do that.”
His own experience of injury would prove just as influential on what came later. At 19, Andy was told that his football career might be over after an injury and a long period of rehabilitation.
“I was given some motivational advice from top players at the club that kind of said, you know, Exeter don’t always get it right,” he recalls.
Rather than accepting that his playing career had ended, Andy decided to give it another chance. He returned to football, eventually making his way back to Exeter, while beginning to think about what he would do after professional sport.
That experience became an important part of the philosophy behind Taylormade.
From professional sport to a business in Honiton
Andy explains that the transition from professional football was partly about finding a way to build a career while creating a more settled life.
Professional sport can be all consuming, with long hours, travel and contracts that can mean moving around the country. Having already developed an interest in injury rehabilitation and reconditioning, Andy began retraining as a strength and conditioning coach.
He eventually took on a role at Ivybridge Community College, where he spent almost 13 years working with young people and developing athletic ability. At one point he was working with around 350 children on the school’s athletic development programme.
That experience gave him a perspective which was very different from the elite sporting environment in which he had started his career.
“You’ve very much got all those years of professional sporting experience and what professional sport can give you,” Andy says, “versus going into state education and realising that you’ve got 12 year olds coming through secondary school that don’t have a background in the key fundamental movement skills.”
It is an issue which has stayed with him and has influenced Taylormade’s work with younger people. The business runs programmes for young athletes, including individual and small group sessions designed to help with development, confidence and physical preparation.
The aim is not simply to produce better sportspeople. Andy and Claire see movement, strength and confidence as important parts of wider health and wellbeing.
Andy describes what he looks for when assessing how someone moves in simple terms: “Can you get into those shapes with Precision, Style and Grace? That’s what I look for when I watch someone move.”
Helping people who do not know where to turn
One of the most striking things about the business is the range of people who use it.
Some clients arrive after a sporting injury and know exactly what has happened. Others arrive having spent months trying to work out what is wrong and where to go next.
“They’re lost and they don’t know where to go,” Andy says of some of the people who first contact the clinic. “And then, finally, they find us.”
Claire’s clinical background means she will often begin with an assessment, taking time to understand the person’s history, how the injury happened and what they have already tried. That is followed by an assessment of how they move and where their current limitations lie.
From there, the programme can develop according to what the individual needs.
Someone may initially require hands on therapy before moving into rehabilitation and then functional conditioning. The important difference is that Claire and Andy are working alongside each other rather than sending the client from one provider to another.
“If there’s a bit of an uncertainty or a bit of a reaction that the client might not have been expecting, I’m around and on site very quickly able to jump in and give them support,” Claire explains.
That continuity is central to what they are trying to provide.
A client who is due for a conditioning session might arrive having aggravated an injury over the weekend. Rather than simply cancelling the session or sending them elsewhere, the programme can be adapted and the appropriate clinical work carried out.
The result is what the couple describe as a tailored process rather than a standard programme.
It is not just about athletes
Despite the professional sporting backgrounds of both owners, Taylormade is not exclusively a sports injury clinic.
Andy works with men and women in their 70s who want to maintain their strength, balance and coordination. Some clients simply want to stay active for longer and maintain their independence as they get older.
“They don’t have to be a sports person,” Andy says. “They can just be two blocks on the street that is looking to maximise their health for as long as possible.”
That broad approach is also reflected in Claire’s Pilates classes, which are deliberately kept small. Groups have no more than five people and clients are assessed individually so Claire can understand how they move before placing them into an appropriate class.
Rather than dividing people simply into beginner, intermediate and advanced groups, she adapts exercises to the individual.
“The specialty that people get with my experience of clinical Pilates is the in depth understanding of their body and how it moves,” Claire says.
That can be particularly useful for people who have existing injuries or conditions and may otherwise feel excluded from mainstream classes.
Claire says Pilates has also become a place where clients naturally share experiences and conversations about issues such as changing strength and mobility.
Supporting employee health
Taylormade’s services are also available to businesses looking to support the health and wellbeing of their employees.
Andy has confirmed that the clinic is set up to provide employee health support for businesses, extending the same focus on movement, physical health and wellbeing into the workplace.
For local employers, that provides another potential way of helping employees look after their physical health while drawing on the specialist experience of a business based here in East Devon.
A local business with a wider reach
Although Taylormade is firmly based in East Devon, its clients travel from across the county, including Newton Abbot and North Devon.
One Pilates group also continues to operate partly online, a legacy of the Covid period. That has allowed people outside the immediate area to remain part of the group, including clients joining from London, Hampshire and Sheffield.
For Andy and Claire, however, the physical clinic remains at the heart of the business.
They have built a specialist service in an area of Devon where clients can access knowledge gained from professional sport without needing to travel to a major city or elite sporting facility.
Their experience also continues to develop. Andy remains connected with the wider strength and conditioning profession and recently attended a specialist workshop on ACL injuries delivered by an international expert through his professional accreditation.
“It’s those kind of things that we bring,” Andy says. “I’ve learned from the best and now I get to put that into practice straight away.”
It is perhaps a good description of what Taylormade has become.
The Manchester United and Exeter City experiences are part of Andy’s story. Claire’s professional sporting and clinical background is another part. But the business in Honiton is ultimately about bringing those experiences together for ordinary people as well as athletes.
For a couple who once worked around the demands of professional sport, they have created something rather different: a local business built around helping people move better, recover properly and stay active for longer.
Find Taylormade Performance and Rehabilitation
Taylormade Performance and Rehabilitation is based at Fenny Bridges near Honiton and is listed in the Health & Fitness section of the Devon Business Directory.
You can find out more about Taylormade Performance and Rehabilitation through its Devon Business Directory listing or visit the Taylormade website.