Hélder sANTOS

Hi, I’m Hélder, and I’m a Functional Patterns Human Foundations practitioner. My story starts with my body.

At 11, I already felt slower than the other kids and struggled to keep up with them on the football pitch. Hoping to improve my physical abilities for football, my father introduced me to capoeira. However, the training focused heavily on stretching, and rather than helping, I actually felt worse afterwards.

Two years later, at 13, I tore my groin playing football. Poor physiotherapy guidance and inadequate rehabilitation left me dealing with persistent pain for the next two years, while my body developed compensations around the injury. Eventually, I had to give up football — the dream of almost every kid in my country. Only after stepping away from the sport did the pain slowly begin to fade.

Losing football also left a gap in my life. Without sport, and with little interest in school, no real routine and an increasingly monotonous day-to-day life, I needed structure. My brother took me to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in the hope that it would give me some discipline, and it ended up changing my life.

I fell in love with competing: the training, the people and the mindset. But while mentally I wanted to keep progressing, physically my body struggled to keep up. I would often get sick after hard sessions and found it difficult to build muscle.

Around this time, my brother introduced me to Functional Patterns, and I knew the system was different from anything I had tried before. Through myofascial release (MFR) and corrective exercises, I began to make meaningful progress. That progress eventually carried over into my sport, and I went on to win the national Blue Belt Jiu-Jitsu title.

Soon afterwards, I added Judo to complement my Jiu-Jitsu. There was no FP practitioner in my city, so I had to continue training alone, but even without direct guidance my body kept improving slowly.

In 2024, I completed the Human Foundations course at the FP European Headquarters in Madrid. After moving to Brighton to study, I connected with Petros and began training with him. Since then, my body has continued to improve and is now performing better than ever. In 2026, I placed third at the national university judo championships.

Today, I want to help people move beyond pain, improve the way they move and enhance their quality of life, just as Functional Patterns has helped me improve my own. I also want to contribute to the community alongside Petros while staying true to the values of Functional Patterns.

TRAIN INTENTIONALLY, NOT HABITUALLY