Doha, Qatar: When Lulwa Al Marri became the first Qatari woman to complete a full Ironman, she opened new horizons in the world of sports. A triathlete, cyclist, mountaineer, and presenter, Lulwa is no stranger to high performance. But when a knee injury abruptly pulled her out of training, she found herself confronting a different kind of endurance; the kind it takes to heal.
“It wasn’t just about pain,” she says. “It was about identity. I didn’t feel like myself when I couldn’t move.”
Rather than opt for surgery or sit on the sidelines, Lulwa turned to Korean Medical Centre (KMC) in Lusail, a healthcare destination known for blending modern medical precision with holistic, patient-centred recovery. There, a comeback plan was devised through a science-based system that focused not just on pain relief, but also on restoring mobility and enhancing performance.
Her journey began with a full-body scan on the EXBODY system, an advanced Korean innovation that uses motion analysis technology to understand how muscles, joints, and body posture work together.
“This machine doesn’t guess or estimate,” Lulwa explains. “It showed me exactly what was going wrong, even in places I couldn’t feel yet.”
The EXBODY report revealed muscle imbalances and poor load distribution, a chain reaction from her knee injury that even affected her spine and hips. Armed with data, the KMC team built a recovery plan tailored to Lulwa’s unique biomechanical needs.
Lulwa’s treatment at KMC was a hybrid of clinical innovation and traditional Korean therapies: shockwave therapy, cryotherapy, ultrasound-guided manual therapy, dry cupping, and acupuncture.
“My first cryotherapy session? Really, really cold,” she laughs. “But I came out feeling like my body had renewed vitality, and I got addicted to KMC’s cryotherapy machine, the biggest I’d seen in the country.”
KMC’s approach is rooted in its belief that movement is freedom; a philosophy deeply embedded within its Mobility care unit, which encompasses orthopaedics, rehabilitation, and pain management.
“For most patients, mobility is about daily function,” says Dr. Louis Holtzhausen, Sports and Exercise Medicine Physician at KMC. “But for athletes like Lulwa, it’s about reclaiming performance. That means optimising, not just treating, how the body moves.”
What makes KMC different, Lulwa says, is the loop between data and feeling. “We’d do another scan after a few weeks, and the progress was right there. I wasn’t just feeling better. I was seeing clear proof that I was regaining my strength.”
“Before, I thought strength meant pushing through. Now, I think strength means knowing when to pause, recalibrate, and rebuild the right way.”
Guiding her recovery was Dr. Youngwoong Back, Head of the Spine & Joint Centre at KMC and an expert in musculoskeletal rehabilitation. His focus wasn’t just on the knee, but the kinetic chain.
“An injury is rarely isolated,” Dr. Back explains. “At KMC, we look at the body as an integrated system. We aim not only to restore range of motion, but to correct underlying patterns and prevent recurrence.”
