Beyond Recovery: How Chiropractic Care Maximizes Sports Performance

Beyond Recovery: How Chiropractic Care Maximizes Sports Performance

Group sport is prevalent in countries and cultures around the globe. Team activities provide needed physical activity, physical health benefits and a conscious regard for fitness goals and healthy decision-making such as not smoking.?For many, participation provides an important social outlet and support network that can reduce stress as well.

For student athletes, participation also enhances other aptitudes.?Many athletes do better academically as sporting activities require skill sets like repetition and memorization that can translate to work in the classroom, and later in life, in the boardroom. Involvement in sports also requires teamwork, communication, problem-solving skills, goal-setting and determination that can all be applied throughout life.

Whether a weekend warrior, participant in amateur sports, on a school team, or part of the professional sports circuit, chiropractic care has become an integral component that goes beyond injury management to focus on the health of the whole athlete, injury prevention and optimizing performance.

Chiropractic and a Competitive Edge

Doctors of chiropractic (DCs) can be seen on the sidelines as crucial members of the medical staff for 90% of professional sports organizations including MLB, all of the NHL teams and all of the teams in the NFL. For decades, DCs have also been a part of Team USA and the Olympic Games with the first chiropractor appointed as a physician for the U.S. Olympic Team at the 1980 Winter Games.

DCs in sports arenas certainly aid athletes in treating and recovering from injuries, however they also go beyond recovery as they work with athletes to focus on prevention and remain injury-free. By adjusting the joints to optimize function, and providing strategies to improve balance, stability and flexibility, DCs also provide a competitive edge as they strive to improve the overall performance and resilience of athletes of all ages.

Balance: Enables the athlete to be agile and exert their body with greater strength, speed and precision. Imbalance can inhibit performance or contribute to situations that can result in injury. DCs can work with muscular imbalances between flexor and extensor muscle groups and provide exercises for athletes to gain and maintain stability between them. In addition, DCs can work to increase proprioceptive skills for the athlete which allow for the body’s ability to inherently sense movement, action and location.

Stability: Allows the body to return to a state of equilibrium after it is displaced or disrupted from or during a movement. Stability directly affects an athlete’s resilience and allows for a strong solid foundation on which to be grounded or defend from opponents. Good balance and stability go hand-in-hand which is why these elements are often addressed together in training programs. Chiropractic care can help stabilize skeletal inequities through spinal adjustments that will restore proper alignment and they can also address uneven shoulders or hips that will affect both balance and stability.

Flexibility: Provides optimum range of motion (ROM) that is needed to maximize speed, strength and overall performance. In track, for example, increased flexibility in the hip and muscles of the leg can allow for a longer stride or ability to position the legs for a hurdle. Flexibility also plays a role in injury prevention as rigidity in tissues that require a specific ROM can more easily lead to sprain/strain injuries.

The Secret Weapon for Enhanced Performance

DCs can provide athletes with a variety of services to help them optimize their performance, stay healthy and reduce the chance of injury. In addition to providing services on the sidelines for teams, doctors of chiropractic can offer personalized care to individual athletes such as:

●?????Regular check-ups to optimize joint function utilizing specific chiropractic adjustments to ensure that athletes are not training or competing with limited mobility or straining joints that may have limited motion.

●?????Exercises, stretches and routines to support balance, stability and flexibility so that athletes will have an edge for speed, strength, precision and performance.

●?????Dietary guidance to ensure that athletes are receiving the calories, hydration and nutrition that they need to maintain or build muscle while training and competing.

●?????Lifestyle support with recommendations for good sleep, stress reduction and other elements that can affect physical or mental well-being.