Our practice is in downtown Chicago. Our patient base is predominantly the corporate athlete, so that is someone who is pinned to their desk 40, 50, 60 hours a week in a seated or standing position. So essentially, they are sedentary. When we’re sedentary, several things happen. Joints that should be able to move freely and stably become subluxated, that means a joint is not moving well and/or has shifted out of alignment. A prerequisite for a healthy joint is full range of motion. If you have restricted range of motion and then the sun comes out in Chicago, you hit the beach, you are playing beach volleyball and you’re flying around, and joints aren’t moving, that’s going to increase the stress and tension in the joint. That’s going to break us down, and lead to injury and dysfunction.
Muscles that move us, particularly in gait function, pick up on movement. So, when we’re pinned to our desk and we’re not moving, muscles get weak and lazy. For example, your diaphragm switches off, we’re now breathing through our chest, not through our stomach. Our core gets lazy because we’re just not moving. Our glutes switch off and our hamstrings switch off. Then, you hit Lakeshore Path or Lakeshore Drive and you go for a run and things aren’t engaging and that creates compensation. Compensation over time is going to break us down and lead to injury.
All gait function comes through the lower back, the hips, and then the kinetic chain, the knees, the foot, and the ankle. When we’re moving, the first thing we need to do is have joints that are in alignment and moving. If joints are shifted and they’re not moving, that’s going to create stress and tension which is going to lead to pain, dysfunction, and injury. Where your tailbone and your hips come together is your sacroiliac joint and that joint is designed to move. Again, if we’re pinned to our desk and we’re sitting and that joint locks up, and then we start moving, if that joint’s not moving well, all of a sudden something else has to move too much. Some other muscles have to compensate for muscles that aren’t getting that joint to move. This can increase stress and tension in the joint. It can trickle down the kinetic chain, lead to movement dysfunction or compensation in other joints.
By being under chiropractic care, you can take care of all those things and make sure the joint is in alignment, and it’s moving well. Through an evaluation make sure that the muscles that should be engaging and being used when we’re moving are engaging and being used when we’re moving. Patients who are getting their spine evaluated for alignment and function and muscle groups that they’re going to be using for functionality and engagement are going to do far better than people who are not coming in to get evaluated. They have far less chance of breaking down, pulling a muscle or having pain when they are participating in the activity they enjoy doing, running for example. Chiropractors can make sure the muscles that we are intending to use are switched on.
So runners, we need to make sure our core is really switched on, we need to make sure our hamstrings are long and strong, make sure our glutes are really switched on because they’re the muscles that are going to create stability and move us along. If you’re a runner, you need to make sure the ankles move well, the knee moves well, the hip moves well, and the low back moves well. We need to make sure we’ve got full range of motion. Chiropractors need to make sure that they have stability during that movement, so all the muscles that are going to be moving them along and create stability are switched on.
Shin splints can be a common condition. They are driven from lack of range of motion in the ankle. Knee pain is a real common pain or dysfunction that we have. Runners, in particular, get runner’s knee. Knee pain, unless it’s a big trauma like blowing your knee out playing sport, is a repetitive stress injury. Low back and hip alignment are pretty important because all your gait function comes through your low back and your hips. If your hip shifted and it is not moving well when we go to move, that can create pain and dysfunction in the hip, low back or through the kinetic chain.
So, by seeing a chiropractor, if you go in saying, “I’m a runner, I’ve got a couple of marathons coming up. I’m about to start my training, we just got through winter. I want to be assessed for my gait function”, many chiropractors out there will be able to do that through multiple assessments, individual evaluation of the joint and/or functional examinations of the gait. By finding the missing balance or the imbalances, the joint restrictions, the muscle that aren’t engaging, we can adjust, get them in alignment, treat the soft tissue, get it healthy, give rehab and create stability in the joints.
As you are moving and running, by being under chiropractic care, we can get on top of things that might not be causing any pain or dysfunction that we can feel now but are creating dysfunction that we’re not aware of. The more miles we put into our legs, the more we run, the more chance we have of breaking down. So, by being under chiropractic care, you can prepare your body for training, and then while you’re training, you can make sure that everything that should be in alignment and moving well with freedom and stability is doing exactly that.
When you are playing golf, there’s a massive amount of that rotational work in the lower back. There is an adjustment specific to chiropractic. It’s a side posture adjustment essentially where the patient is lying on the side and then we’re taking the spine through rotation via an adjustment. Spines that rotate well are going to allow us to create more backswing. It’s going to allow us to get more follow through. It’s pretty important for playing golf. So, if you’re restricted and you’re stuck in those movements, it’s going to limit your mechanics, obviously limiting mechanics is going to affect your quality of the golf swing.
By seeing a chiropractor, you can make sure you’re in alignment, your joints are moving appropriately and the muscles that should be doing the job are doing the job. And then by doing that, you’d be more proactive than reactive so you’re getting ahead of it so when you’re out there hiking, running, playing volleyball on the beach, whatever it is you’re doing here in Chicago, you’re doing it knowing that your chance of injuries is far less than someone who just gets out there, just starts running after spending six months inside and not doing anything to guarantee there’s not going to be joints that don’t move well, muscles that aren’t engaging. And then when we start loading that joint repetitively, that’s how we can break down.
