Professional athletes have been flocking to doctors of chiropractic ever since the US Olympic medical team enlisted one in the 1980 games. As a matter of fact, almost all top-level sports outfits now have a DC in their ranks. And there’re some good reasons why you too could use the services of a chiropractor — even if you’re not part of the elite cadre yet.
Chiropractic Provides Pain Relief
Different sports stress the human body in varying ways. For instance, baseball’s overhead throwing motions exact a heavy toll on shoulders and elbows. Football players are bound to throw their legs out of whack from incessant heel strikes when running.
Granted that most pro athletes are resilient enough to endure such stresses. But the toll can really add up when you’re playing week in week out over the course of a season.
This is part of the reason why athletes tend to prescription painkillers more often than the rest of the population. Of course, these drugs don’t really address the root cause of the problem. And most of them have adverse side effects that can degrade sports performance — not to forget dependency issues.
Fortunately, chiropractic care can provide relief from pain sans prescription drugs. DC’s are adept at identifying and remedying musculoskeletal abnormalities that cause strain and pain. In addition, your doctor will prescribe non-invasive treatments such as cold laser and ultrasound for areas that suffer excessive inflammation.
Quicker Recovery from Injury
Yeah, chiro doesn’t just relieve the pain caused by wear and tear. It can also help you recover from injury in less time than you’d need with conventional therapy. Utilizing highly-refined skeletal adjustments, your chiropractor will re-align your body to streamline blood flow to the affected body part(s). This will enhance the delivery of oxygen and nutrients, as well as thwart the buildup of inflammatory toxins.
Chiropractic is effective for a broad range of sports injuries, from muscle pulls and ankle sprains to torn ligaments. As a non-invasive approach, it’ll help you get back in shape without subjecting you to medications or, worse, the knife. Even for injuries that do require surgery, such as fractures, chiropractic might still come in handy. Once a fracture is properly healed, chiropractic adjustments can help restore normal form and function to decrease the overall recovery time.
Enhanced Range of Motion
“Don’t take any short cuts. Always aim for the highest range of motion with every move you make.”
Remember when your high school gym teacher would constantly beat this drum, much to your chagrin? Now that you’re all grown up — and past the blissful ignorance of youth — it’s a piece of advice that you very much appreciate. But just how seriously do you take a range of motion?
ROM might just be the single biggest determining factor as far as your athletic performance is concerned. Defined as the extent to which a joint opens up — a joint’s ability to perform its entire spectrum of movements, specifically — ROM influences how much “work” your muscles can do during exercise.
As previously noted, each sport subjects certain body parts to a disproportionate amount of strain. The resulting aberrations inevitably affect one’s range of motion, with pain only adding salt to injury. Speaking of which, your ROM is further bound to suffer any time you’re sidelined through injury. These factors can quickly add up to severely diminish your performance potential in the field.
So it should come as a relief that chiro is also effective in remedying ROM-related shortcomings. On top of the adjustments we’ve just highlighted, a chiropractor can also employ active-release therapy techniques to alleviate tension along with the muscles. They’ll further recommend appropriate range-of-movement exercises to get you back into peak shape and form.
Chiropractic Stimulates Athletic Performance
There’s plenty of evidence demonstrating that chiropractic care can improve sports performance in various ways:
– Muscular function: A recent study indicated that a single chiro session can increase muscular strength along the calf and lower foot. It’s worth mentioning that the spinal column also serves as an anchor for muscles across the body. Consequently, spinal manipulations have been found to have the potential to enhance muscular function by up to 7.5 percent.
– Balance and agility: It’s pretty obvious that your balance will improve once a chiropractor has addressed the musculoskeletal anomalies caused by your favorite sport. Indeed, a 1991 study showed that athletes who undergo regular chiro therapy sessions perform better when tested for balance and agility.
– Reaction time: Beyond making your body nimbler, chiropractic can also sharpen your senses. The spinal column also serves as a conduit for the nervous system. The better shape it is in, the faster that signals can travel from your wits to your limbs. This explains a group of military personnel involved in a 2019 study performed better in whole-body motor response tasks after completing just one chiropractic session.
So yeah, there’s no need to wait until something goes wrong to seek chiropractic care. Schedule an appointment with your local DC today and start the journey towards unlocking your full potential.
