Sports medicine seemed a natural choice for Dr Roger Tian when it came to choosing his area of speciality. After all, the recently promoted Senior Resident Physician has an interest in sports that dates way back to his school days.

While in university, he was competing as a canoeist and was in the canoe-polo team. At the same time, he was also an instructor with the People's Association Sea Sports Club. For almost a decade, his weekends were usually spent out at sea.

Even after entering the workforce, Dr Tian continues to remain active in sports. His current interests include yoga, sailing, marathons and multidisciplinary endurance events. He feels that everyone should make exercise a part of his or her life.

"There's a need to educate the public on the importance of staying active, especially after they join the workforce or start having families. The demands on their time would have increased threefold, and exercise is often their least important priority. Many choose to delay it until their kids have grown up, or until their retirement. By then, chronic illnesses such as hypertension, Type II diabetes, coronary heart disease, which can be reduced by regular exercises, would have had a chance to take root," he says.

Dr Tian, who joined CGH in 2003, has a MBBS, MRCSEd, MMed (Surgery) and a Master of Sports Medicine from the University of New South Wales. He is also an accredited Exercise Specialist with the American College of Sports Medicine. At the Changi Sports Medicine Centre,he sees patients at all levels of fitness, ranging from the elite national athletes, school athletes to the weekend warriors.

Just as broad is his scope of work, which includes treatment of sports injuries, injury prevention, pre-participation screening, exercise prescription, weight management, and sports nutrition. He also gives talks on sports medicine related topics at public seminars, schools and institutions.

But the issue that is closest to Dr Tian's heart is performance enhancement via nutrition and scientific, evidence-based training. He takes a special interest in this subject as he finds it most challenging to convince patients that there are no shortcuts or magic pills.

"To achieve their goals, be it recover from an injury or lose weight, they must be disciplined in complying with rehabilitation or nutrition advice," he says. "The mind must want it!"