Chiropractic care helps enhance sports performance by aligning the spine to reduce stress and tension in the joints to allow for increased range of motion and improved body function.
How does chiropractic care help optimize the body’s biomechanics, and why is this important for athletes?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Great question. Biomechanics is essentially how the body moves. And a prerequisite for any joint in the body, that’s the spine or the extremity, a prerequisite for any healthy joint is full range of motion. Range of motion is supplemented with stability.
So, if you are subluxated, which means a joint’s stuck, it’s fixated, it’s out of alignment, it’s not moving well from playing recreational sports all the way through high level sports due to the trauma. If you’re playing football, you consistently smashing into people and landing on the ground. Well, joints are going to shift, they’re going to be out of alignment, they’re going to become fixated.
So now as you start using that joint and functioning with your biomechanics, running, jumping, lifting, bending, twisting, if that joint’s not moving well, it’s going to increase the stress and tension within the joint, the tissue, the nerve, which over time is going to create compensation, it’s going to lead to injury and us breaking down.
Chiropractic can essentially manage that in regard to performing a range of motion evaluation of the spine, the extremities, and figuring out if the joint’s fixated and if it’s subluxated, and if it’s not moving well. And if it isn’t, then that joint needs to be addressed. We need to get that joint moving.
So, a chiropractor will be able to manually adjust the joint, which is going to get the joint to move better. It’s going to improve its range of motion. We’re going to be able to do some soft tissue treatment, break down the adhesion that forms from joints that don’t move well, which limits range of motion, increases stress and tensions, and over time breaks us down. We’re going to be able to treat that soft tissue and then obviously follow it up with a rehab program to address all those muscle imbalances that over time can occur, and lead to pain and poor performance.
Can chiropractic care improve flexibility and range of motion to help improve sports performance?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Absolutely. Chiropractic care is such a broad kind of scope of practice. You can have straight chiropractors that are only adjusting your spine and/or the extremity. Well, that’s going to improve joint range of motion. And then you have sport chiropractors who work within that 360 degrees of wellness. They’re going to be adjusting the joint and the spine. They’re going to be performing soft tissue therapy, breaking down muscle adhesion, which is kind of like gluing a muscle that limits range of motion. And follow up with a rehab program. Rehab should be following through the rehab paradigm, which is mobility, stability, strength.
If you look at the Head of Sports Medicine at the New England Patriots, a chiropractor. The Head of Sports Medicine at the Baltimore Ravens, a chiropractor. Russell Wilson stated, I think it was last year or the year before, that he spends over a million dollars on his health and wellness, which is essentially headed by a, or several, chiropractors. So, chiropractors play a key role in sports, youth sports, recreational sports, and obviously high level performance.
Many athletes suffer from overuse injuries. How can chiropractic care help in preventing these types of injuries?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Yeah, great question. A lot of injuries are compensatory based, which essentially is overuse or overuse of the joint, extremity, or spine. So essentially, what happens is, when playing sports joints can shift, become fixated, or shift out of alignment. That joint is now not moving well. If the joint’s not moving well, it increases the stress and tension within the joint complex. So, bone, disc, joint, soft tissue, muscle, tendon and nerve.
So, if that joint’s not moving well and it’s got increased stress and tension, over time that joint’s going to break down. It simply breaks down with something called adhesion, kind of like glue in a muscle. Adhesion clinically limits range of motion and increases stress and tension. So, we’ve got that compounding effect, which over time you can get those overuse injuries. Supplement that with poor biomechanics, loading patterns and poor muscle balance, weak pelvic floor, inactive post chain, and all those muscles that control stability and gait functions, so hamstrings and glutes.
Chiropractors can figure out which joint isn’t moving well and address it through getting that joint adjusted to improve its biomechanics, figure out if the joint is full of adhesion while it’s limited range of motion, the muscles that cross that joint aren’t allowing that joint to move well. So then we can clean out the adhesion through specific soft tissue therapy. Then we perform a functional exam to figure out which muscle groups aren’t doing their job, which is creating poor movement patterns and biomechanical dysfunction. Combining all those three essentially creates those overuse injuries, particularly in those mood joints, feet and ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, and they drive a lot of pain and dysfunction for athletes.
Is it possible to tailor chiropractic care treatments for athletes in different sports, such as a runner versus a weightlifter?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Yeah, absolutely. Every chiropractic program should not be cookie cutter like per se. It should be specific to that patient athlete’s condition. So, if that’s a corporate athlete who comes in, he loves to run all day, loves to run on the weekend, but he sits behind a desk for 40 hours a week. Or if that’s an NFL player, or an NHL player. Obviously, each sport, particularly elite level, requires a specific skillset. A baseball pitcher’s going to function differently than an ice hockey player, who’s going to function differently than an NFL player.
Each case is going to present its own clinical findings. So, when you are evaluating and treating these elite athletes, you have to figure out, okay, what is their sport? Not only what is the sport, what is their position within the sport. What’s going to be their main biomechanical function? And then obviously figure out through an analysis, which is going to be orthopedic, neurological, imaging, range of motion, where the dysfunction is, and then tailor a plan around that.
For our athletes in the office, we’re going through a detailed orthopedic exam, range of motion exam. We’re taking digital x-rays for a neurological exam. We use those clinical findings, and supplement that with that athlete’s goals to figure out where is the dysfunction and what we need to improve upon, and then tailor a plan around that athlete. So, for a baseball pitcher, we need to improve range of motion. Okay. We’re going to be adjusting the shoulder. We’re going to be treating the rotator cuff manually with soft tissue treatment. We’re going to be doing a mobility program and then a stability program to supplement that shoulder. So, we’ve got full extension, full follow-through. We’re doing that movement with maximum range and stability, which can maximize performance and limit pain and dysfunction through compensation and injury.
For someone considering chiropractic care to enhance their athletic performance, what is the process like to get started building it into their routine?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Yeah, great question. For me, athletes can be playing sports at the youth level, recreational sports for fun during and after work. And obviously you’ve got high end athletes in the collegiate setup and professional setup.
So essentially, it doesn’t matter where you’re at within the sports, if you are taking sports seriously and/or you’re just playing sports, you should go and get an evaluation and obviously speak to a reputable chiropractor.
In our office, that would be a detailed consult history. Okay, what sport are we playing? How often are we playing it? What movements are involved? What’s your training schedule like? What’s your game schedule like? How often are you doing it? How long are you doing it? Then we go through any symptoms we have. “I feel like I’ve got impingement in my shoulder.” Okay, we need to evaluate that.
Then we are going to perform a subluxation exam to figure out which joints are subluxated or fixated. An orthopedic exam, with a range of motion exam and evaluate, are we limited in range of motion? Are there any structures within the shoulders specifically that aren’t doing their job? For a neurological exam, is there any dysfunction in the spine that’s driving symptoms? Take some images. Is that joint healthy? Is it in alignment? Are we degenerative?
From that, we piece that together and come up with a specific plan. In our office it would be a blended approach. It would be adjusting the affected joint and/or joints around it. You’ve got to always look above and below the joint. Are we tractioning the joint, for example, we’ve got a lot of shoulder and upper back dysfunction, is that driven from the neck?
We’re then performing a rehab program. Goal one, improve mobility. Goal two, stability. Goal three, strength. To incorporate that, we’ve got to be doing a ton of soft tissue work to make sure the soft tissue is healthy so the joint moves well with some freedom and stability. That can be for a youth athlete or an NFL athlete.
Then the goal is to, it depends on the patient, get them out of pain, and then improve functionality as structure and function of the joint spine trumps feeling. And then we get them on a prehab program, so you’re not coming in reactively because you’re in pain, you’re coming in proactively to stay out of pain and improve performance. So that athlete will be getting work to do pre-training game, post-training game, and they’ll be coming in on a schedule that’s going to supplement and assist their training and game schedule.
If you are interested in speaking with Dr. Luke Stringer visit www.southloopchiropractor.com or call (312) 987-4878 to schedule an appointment.
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