Chiropractic care helps prepare the body for athletic activity and improves sports performance by aligning the spine to optimize joint mobility and body function.
What role does spinal alignment play in sports performance, particularly with strength and mobility?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Yeah, a great question. Your spine is essentially the structure that absorbs gravity. If you are playing professional sports, the alignment of your spine is going to dictate how much stress load you’re putting into your lower back, for example. So having a spine that’s in alignment, supplemented with a spine that moves well, is going to allow you to, obviously, perform an optimum race. Spines that are out of alignment shift gravity. Gravity that’s shifted and being compressed, obviously, through playing sports or in the weight room is going to increase stress and tension in the spine, the joint, the tissue, the discs, the nerve which in turn is going to break it down and lead to pain, injury, and dysfunction.
For the weekend warrior, who you typically treat in your downtown Chicago clinic, why is chiropractic care critical to prepare them for the summer sport season?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Yeah, a great question. Obviously, speaking from context, our practice is downtown Chicago. Our patient base is what we call our corporate athletes, everyone’s working and working too much. In America we live to work, not work to live. So, then we go from an environment that is really sedentary and then we go to an environment where we’re moving so that might be going for a run on the lake or going to a CrossFit gym or playing flag football in the park for some intramural social sports. Well, the way your spine’s lined up and the way your spine moves really dictates how well you’re going to function. So, obviously, if the spines are out of alignment, joints aren’t moving well, we call those subluxations, muscles aren’t engaging and creating the support and stability while moving. Then that’s how we’re just going to essentially break down our pain, dysfunction and we’re going to be limited in regard to things we should be able to do which is be active and essentially enjoy being active.
So, the way your spine’s lined up and the way it moves is critically important. We treat our corporate athletes just like professional athletes. If you came in to see us at Advanced South, your evaluation would be the exact same as someone who just got selected for the Pro Bowl. Detailed evaluation, orthopedic exam, digital x-rays, figure out pain and dysfunction, what’s driving it, and then create a detailed treatment plan that’s going to address joint function, spinal alignment, muscle health, and, obviously, balanced muscle strength. When you blend that together you can really get great results. And by doing that then you should be able to perform, exercise, and play sports well, optimally without the fear of breaking down due to poor alignment, subluxations, and poor muscle balance.
Can chiropractic care help with recovery after summer workouts or competitions?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Yeah, absolutely. And it all depends on the joint that you’re trying to recover. Recovery could be from someone who’s training for the Chicago Marathon, and they’re ramping up their miles and their cadence and all of a sudden you’re running 20, 30, 40 miles a week. Your recovery should be making sure that after those runs your spine is in alignment, it’s moving well, the tissue is healthy, the muscles are in balance.
Come and see a chiropractor who can do all those things, right? Evaluate the alignment, how well the joint functions. Are the muscles allowing the joints to move well, are they engaging? And then you’ve got your other type of recovery which is post-injury, right? Went out for a run, rolled their ankle. And remember, chiropractic is such a broad scope of practice that you can be an athlete seeing a chiropractor who sports-based. You can rehab soft tissue injuries, joint injuries. Yeah, seeing a chiropractor proactively for your recovery is absolutely essential. Then, obviously, reactively post-trauma is something that we absolutely help patients with too.
We know professional athletes seek chiropractic care on a regular basis. So, for someone just getting started with chiropractic care, what would a treatment plan look like for the short and long term?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Yeah, a great question. The majority of our patients who come in are corporate athletes and they’re coming in for a reason, for musculoskeletal pain. The number one cause of disability in America is lower back pain. More people miss more time from work for lower back pain than any other ailment so let’s start there.
If you’re a pro athlete, you may have pain and obviously, you’re going to rehab that. But pro athletes are going to be more proactive in that approach in regard to making sure they are in alignment and they’re functioning well so they don’t break down in injury. Our corporate athletes typically come in a little bit more reactively. Not everybody but the majority because they’re in pain.
How it would look in our practice, we would do a detailed history, consultation, figure out when the injury occurred, how it occurred, is there any chronicity in the injury, how it feels like, how it’s affecting function. We do some goal setting. What are our goals? Pain-free, improve mobility, stability so we can get back in the gym with our ultimate goal of being able to run a Tough Mudder at the end of the summer. We then evaluate the spine for subluxations, that joints that are out of alignment increasing stress and tension within the joint, tissue, nerve disc which typically drive pain and dysfunction. We’ll evaluate muscles. We’ll evaluate how well that joint’s moving or isn’t moving. Figure out which muscle is crossing the joint. Evaluate those muscles and joints to make sure they’re working well to allow full range of motion and stability.
We’ll then provide an orthopedic exam, neurological exam, and then a real functional exam of the injured area and all the effective areas so posterior chain, for example. Evaluate how the core, the hamstrings, and glutes are working in conjunction with your lower back. We’ll then take some digital x-rays. As you asked earlier, how is your alignment important? Your alignment, the structure of your spine is very important in regard to how you’re physically loading the joint, tissue, nerve. By being out of alignment that transfers weight, increases stress and tension that can drive disc pressure and break us down.
Then we sit down as a team, we figure out exactly what’s going on clinically. We supplement those clinic finds with the patient’s goals. Then we create a roadmap to get them from where they’re at through their goals of being pain-free and all the goals we put in place. Treatment plans are case by case. A typical treatment plan, in our practice and a practice similar to ours, would be spinal adjustments to improve spinal joint function, alignment, and correct the subluxations. Possibly spinal traction through chiropractic biophysics, the most research form of chiropractic applies mathematical engineering principles applied to the spine so about structure and load. If we’re out of alignment, we can objectively change the shape of your spine. Research is very clear; this creates long-term improvement. Then we supplement that with a lot of soft tissue therapy, correcting what we call adhesions like glue in a muscle which really drives a lot of pain and dysfunction. Then physical therapy to adjust muscle and balance that come from just being inactive sitting in corporate America.
When you blend that approach together, you’re not really leaving any money on the table per se. And by doing that, we can improve joint function, spinal alignment, health of the tissue, balance, muscle strength. When you blend that together consistently over an extended period of time you can get real great results. That’s what a typical treatment program would look like for us, for someone coming in for musculoskeletal pain.
What is one thing you wish every athlete at any level knew about chiropractic care?
Dr. Luke Stringer: Yeah, that’s a great question and I’ve been thinking about this one. I feel like, if every athlete, if that’s a professional athlete or a corporate athlete, just knew how important the joint complex of how well the joint moves, how healthy the tissue is and how balanced the muscles are around the joint. Then address chiropractic as more of a proactive approach than a reactive approach. Then athletes and corporate athletes would be able to feel better, function better, perform at a higher level, and then reduce chances of injury while playing sports.
Instead of seeing chiropractors because we’re in pain, see chiropractors, again, at an elite sport level and/or just a corporate athlete level. See them more proactively. By being proactive you say, “Hey, I’m going to run a marathon I want to get my spine checked. Am I in alignment? Am I moving well? Are there things I need to work on?” And then address it proactively. So then as you work towards your goal of playing or running, whatever it is, you’re just going to do it better and reduce the chance of injury.
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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