Nicole Depa
DPT, B.Sc Kinesiology, CSCS
Physiotherapist | Sports Performance & Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation
AHPRA Registration
Nicole is registered with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) as a physiotherapist, meeting all requirements for practice in Australia.
ABOUT Nicole Depa
Nicole Depa is a Gold Coast-based physiotherapist with advanced qualifications spanning clinical physiotherapy, human movement science, and strength and conditioning. She holds a Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) from Bond University — one of Australia’s most research- intensive physiotherapy programmes — and a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology from Simon Fraser University in Canada, giving her an educational foundation that is simultaneously internationally grounded and clinically rigorous. She is also a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), a credential awarded by the National Strength and Conditioning Association that distinguishes practitioners with formally assessed expertise in athletic performance training.
Nicole’s career has been shaped by an early and sustained commitment to high-performance sport — as both a clinician and a competitor. During her time at Simon Fraser University, she competed in wrestling at the collegiate level for the SFU Varsity programme, and simultaneously represented Canada on the international stage as a member of the national wrestling team. Competing at that level — where selection is determined by national ranking and performance across international competition — gave her a first-hand understanding of what elite sport demands of the body: the physical load, the weight management, the periodisation, the psychological pressure, and the fine line between peak performance and injury. That lived experience as a high-performance athlete is foundational to how she thinks and works as a physiotherapist.
Before completing her DPT, she trained and worked in elite athletic environments across two countries — most notably at EXOS in Phoenix, Arizona, where she worked directly with collegiate American football players preparing for the 2024 NFL Combine. EXOS is globally recognised as one of the foremost sports performance organisations in the world, and the NFL Combine preparation programme is among the most demanding and high-profile rehabilitation and performance contexts in professional sport. Returning to the Gold Coast, she has since built her clinical practice across musculoskeletal and sports physiotherapy, bringing the methods and rigour of elite performance environments into everyday patient care.
She currently practises at both Palm Beach Physio and Sports Rehab and Bond Physiotherapy and Sports Medicine, two clinically focused sports practices on the Gold Coast. Prior to these roles, she gained formative experience at Enhance Physiotherapy and as an intern at the Gold Coast Knee Group, where she developed her understanding of complex lower limb conditions and post-surgical rehabilitation pathways.
Alongside her clinical work, Nicole has contributed to peer-reviewed research. In 2025, she was a co-author on a systematic review published in the International Journal of Yoga Therapy, examining the lived experiences of women participating in therapeutic yoga across a range of health conditions. This publication, undertaken through the Bond University Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine, reflects her capacity for rigorous academic inquiry and her commitment to evidence-based practice.
Specialist Areas
Sports injury assessment, management, and return-to-sport rehabilitation
Musculoskeletal physiotherapy for the lower and upper limb
Strength-based rehabilitation and performance physiotherapy
Exercise prescription for athletic and active populations
Injury prevention programming and load management
Post-surgical rehabilitation, including complex knee pathology
Manual therapy and hands-on soft tissue treatment
Dry needling and myofascial release therapy
Pilates-based rehabilitation and core conditioning
Athletic taping and sports strapping
GLA:D® Hip and Knee Osteoarthritis rehabilitation (certified practitioner)
QUALIFICATIONS
Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) — Bond University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology — Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British, Columbia, Canada
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) — National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA)
GLA:D® Hip and Knee Osteoarthritis Certified Practitioner — Good Life with osteoArthritis: from Denmark (University of Southern Denmark)
Clinical Approach
Nicole’s clinical approach is built on the principle that rehabilitation and performance exist on the same continuum. Her training across kinesiology, doctoral-level physiotherapy, and certified strength and conditioning means she assesses and manages injury through a movement-first lens — identifying not just the structure that is painful, but the biomechanical and neuromuscular patterns that predisposed it to injury in the first place.
In practice, this means her treatment plans are rarely passive. Manual therapy, dry needling, soft tissue work, and myofascial release are used to reduce pain and restore range of motion, but they are consistently paired with progressive exercise prescription designed to rebuild capacity and resilience. For athletes, programmes are built backwards from the demands of their sport; for general patients, they are built forwards toward the activities and movements that matter most in daily life.
Her time at EXOS — working under time pressure with elite athletes whose professional careers depended on peak physical presentation at the NFL Combine — reinforced a rigour and efficiency in clinical reasoning that informs everything she does. She understands how to prioritise, how to adapt, and how to communicate clearly with athletes who are highly attuned to their own bodies. That same quality of attention is applied to every patient, regardless of their level.
Nicole is also an advocate for patient education as a clinical tool. Helping people understand their injury, what is driving it, and what the recovery pathway looks like is, in her view, one of the most effective things a physiotherapist can do to improve long-term outcomes.
Notable Organisations
EXOS — Phoenix, Arizona, USA
EXOS is one of the world’s most recognised sports performance organisations, providing elite training, rehabilitation, and performance services to professional and Olympic athletes. Nicole completed a 10-week clinical internship at EXOS in early 2024, working within their NFL Combine preparation programme. The NFL Combine is the most high-profile evaluation event in professional American football, and the athletes Nicole worked alongside were among the top college football prospects in the United States. This placement is one of the most competitive and internationally prestigious clinical experiences available to a physiotherapy student anywhere in the world.
Gold Coast Knee Group
The Gold Coast Knee Group is a specialist orthopaedic practice focused on knee surgery and complex lower limb conditions. Nicole completed an internship here, gaining exposure to post- surgical rehabilitation pathways, complex knee pathology, and the relationship between surgical and physiotherapy management of knee injuries.
Bond University — Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine
Bond University on the Gold Coast is Australia’s first private not-for-profit university and home to one of the country’s most respected physiotherapy programmes. Nicole completed her DPT there, graduating with a doctoral-level qualification that represents the highest standard of physiotherapy training available in Australia. She also conducted her peer-reviewed research within the Bond University Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine, acknowledged in her 2025 publication in the International Journal of Yoga Therapy.
Simon Fraser University — Varsity Athletics
As a Varsity Strength and Conditioning Intern at Simon Fraser University from January 2021 to May 2022, Nicole assisted S&C coaches across the full SFU varsity programme. She gained hands-on experience implementing strength, speed, agility, conditioning, and recovery protocols for university-level competitive athletes, and used performance testing systems to monitor athlete fitness and fatigue across training cycles.
Expertise
Sports Performance Physiotherapy
Nicole’s most distinctive clinical asset is the combination of elite athletic experience and advanced clinical training that she brings to sports performance physiotherapy. As a competitive wrestler, she represented Canada internationally as a member of the national team while simultaneously competing at the collegiate level for Simon Fraser University — an environment that produces athletes who compete across the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (U SPORTS) landscape. This background gives her an athlete’s intuition about training load, recovery, body composition management, competition preparation, and the psychological demands of high-performance sport, and it gives her immediate credibility with the athletes she treats.
That foundation is reinforced by her clinical experience at EXOS Phoenix — a facility that has prepared athletes for the NFL Draft, the NBA, and Olympic programmes — where she worked hands-on with top-level college football players during the intensely scrutinised pre-Combine training period. This required mastery of high-load rehabilitation, performance monitoring, and collaborative care within multidisciplinary high-performance teams. Few physiotherapists working in Australian private practice hold both a national athletic background and equivalent clinical experience at this level.
Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy
Nicole holds advanced clinical training in musculoskeletal physiotherapy, with particular exposure to complex knee pathology through her internship at the Gold Coast Knee Group. Her clinical skillset covers the assessment and treatment of acute and chronic musculoskeletal conditions across all regions of the body, with a strong emphasis on identifying and addressing movement dysfunction as part of the treatment process, rather than focusing solely on symptomatic relief. She is also a certified GLA:D® (Good Life with osteoArthritis: from Denmark) practitioner for hip and knee osteoarthritis — a structured, evidence-based programme developed at the University of Southern Denmark that combines patient education with neuromuscular exercise. GLA:D® certification reflects a commitment to delivering osteoarthritis care that is grounded in current clinical guidelines and supported by a strong body of research evidence.
Strength and Conditioning in Rehabilitation
As a CSCS-certified practitioner, Nicole occupies a rare clinical niche: a physiotherapist with formal, independently assessed expertise in strength and conditioning science. This allows her to bridge the often-siloed worlds of injury rehabilitation and athletic development — designing loading programmes that are both clinically safe and performance-directed. She draws on her earlier work as a Varsity Strength and Conditioning Intern at Simon Fraser University, where she assisted in implementing training protocols for elite university-level athletes across multiple sports, and used performance testing systems to monitor fitness and fatigue across training cycles.
Manual Therapy and Dry Needling
Nicole’s manual therapy repertoire includes soft tissue mobilisation, myofascial release, joint mobilisation, and athletic taping. She is trained in dry needling, which she uses selectively as part of a broader treatment plan to address myofascial pain, muscle inhibition, and trigger point dysfunction — particularly in the context of sports injury and chronic musculoskeletal conditions.
Evidence-Based Research and Systematic Review
Nicole has demonstrated capacity for formal research methodology through her co-authorship of a peer-reviewed systematic review. Conducted under the JBI (Joanna Briggs Institute) framework and published in the International Journal of Yoga Therapy in 2025, the review involved independent critical appraisal, qualitative data extraction, inter-rater reliability assessment, and meta-aggregation of findings across 12 included studies. This background in evidence synthesis informs her commitment to grounding clinical decisions in the best available research.
Publications
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
Cross, T., Elliott, C., Depa, N., Furness, J., & Kemp-Smith, K. (2025). Systematic Review of the Lived Experiences of Women Participating in Therapeutic Yoga. International Journal of Yoga Therapy, 35. https://doi.org/10.17761/2025-D-24-00078
This systematic review, conducted within the Bond University Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine, synthesised qualitative research on the psychological and physical effects of therapeutic yoga for women managing conditions including breast and ovarian cancer, endometriosis, menopause, and pregnancy. Twelve studies met inclusion criteria from an initial pool of 1,896. Nicole served as an independent reviewer throughout the study selection, critical appraisal, and data extraction phases. The review was conducted in accordance with JBI methodology for qualitative systematic reviews and registered on the Open Science Framework (DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/A28YW).
Achievements
Represented Canada as a member of the national wrestling team, competing internationally at the highest level of the sport
Competed in wrestling at the collegiate level for Simon Fraser University (SFU) Varsity programme, combining elite sport with undergraduate study in Kinesiology
Accepted into the EXOS NFL Combine Preparation Internship programme in Phoenix, Arizona — one of the most competitive clinical placements available to a physiotherapy student globally
Co-authored a peer-reviewed systematic review published in the International Journal of Yoga Therapy (2025), contributing as an independent screener, critical appraiser, and qualitative data extractor under the JBI evidence synthesis methodology
Completed a Doctor of Physical Therapy at Bond University, achieving the highest level of physiotherapy qualification available in Australia
Awarded the Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) credential from the NSCA, establishing dual expertise in clinical physiotherapy and athletic performance science
Appointed simultaneously as physiotherapist at two Gold Coast sports physiotherapy practices (Palm Beach Physio and Sports Rehab; Bond Physiotherapy and Sports Medicine) following completion of her DPT in 2026
Secured a Varsity Strength and Conditioning Internship at Simon Fraser University, contributing to elite university athlete performance programmes across multiple sports
LINKS
Current Practice: Palm Beach Physio and Sports Rehab | Bond Physiotherapy and Sports Medicine, Gold Coast, QLD
Published Research: International Journal of Yoga Therapy, No. 35 (2025) — DOI: 10.17761/2025-D-24-00078
Location
9/1 Fielding Street, Currumbin
Conveniently located in the heart of Currumbin, next to Currumbin Medical Centre and just over the Thrower Drive bridge