Chiropractic Solutions for Athletes
Whether you’re a weekend warrior, training for a triathlon, the Dipsea Race or the Double Dipsea, it’s fairly common to tweak a muscle or joint. Joggers, hikers, mountain bikers, cyclists, golfers, tennis players, soccer players, softball enthusiasts, skiers, even horseback riders all come in with some kind of sports-induced pain or injury.
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Get Help to Get Back in the Game
For any sports injury, the cause and how the injury first manifested itself are important clues to both diagnose and treat the issue. We start with a conversation going over these in detail as well as your past medical history. Next, an exam is needed. We determine limitations in range of motion and use orthopedic tests to arrive at the specifics of the injury. At that point we can make a diagnosis, but a diagnosis doesn’t show the whole picture. Diagnosing an injury such as a Shoulder Strain or Ankle Sprain, doesn’t indicate which joints, muscles or ligaments are involved. It does not indicate what other areas of the body may have contributed due to weakness or past injury. It also doesn’t indicate how the body has adapted to the injury in ways that could lead to more problems. Once the injury is understood on that level, a treatment plan can be made.
Traumatic Sports Injuries
The sooner you are treated by a chiropractor for a traumatic strain or sprain, the better. Here’s why: the same trauma that overstretched the involved muscles or ligaments also shifted the joint surfaces of the joints they cross. As long as those joints stay out of alignment, there will be ongoing irritation, inflammation and pain. The sooner normal joint biomechanics are restored the faster the ligaments and muscles will heal.
Repetitive Sports Injuries
Injury from trauma are obvious, but the most common types of sports injuries are repetitive stress injuries involving the shoulder — volleyball, tennis, baseball, golf. These are also called overuse injuries and show up in the elbow, knee and ankle. These injuries sneak up on you. They start with a little ache, but can develop into chronic pain and limited range of motion. Because the body is so good at adapting, you may be able to get away with using the injured area at first with minimal pain, but adaptation eventually fail and can lead to other problems in overall biomechanics.
Example: A female patient in her late 20s was training for the U.S. Rowing Team and developed shoulder issues. By addressing her neck, ribs and shoulder together, she was back in the boat after just a few office visits.
Chiropractic Treatment for Sports Injuries
Whether your injury is from trauma or repetitive stress the tissues involved need to go through the same healing process. The more you can focus on advancing that process through treatment and daily life, the faster you will heal. There are main goals of treatment:
- Decrease Inflammation
- Restore Range of Motion
- Normalize Nerve Connectivity
- Balance Muscle Tone
Inflammation is the normal response to injury, but it can get out of control. It’s safe to say that everything a chiropractor does to treat an injury is meant to decrease inflammation. That being said, you can accellerate the process by resting and icing the effected area.
Range of motion is restored by addressing the overall biomechanics of the body. We quickly and unconsciously adapt to injury. In traumatic injury we move away from the pain. With repetitive stress injury, adaptation patterns progress with the severity of the problem. Many people think that chiropractors only work on the spine and some do. A Sports Injury Chiropractor must work with the entire body to address not just the injury, but also the adaptation to the injury that may actually be perpetuating it or causing problems in other areas.
Nerve connection can be disrupted either local to the injury or more centrally at the spine due to adaptation. A nerve may be compressed anywhere between where it branches off the spinal cord to it’s final connections. This compression can be the result of either joint dysfunction or becoming pinned down by a tight muscle, fascial tension or scaring. In my office, I use SOT chiropractic adjusting to address joint dysfunction and Nerve Mobilization to clear nerve tethering in the arms or legs.
Balancing muscle tone should be addressed after proper biomechanics and nerve integrity are at least on their way to being restored and the muscles themselves are healing. It is an important step because it helps stabilize the joints and reinforce the biomechanical changes made by chiropractic adjusting. I often give stretches and exersizes to my patients but for a full work up, it’s a good idea to see a Physical Therapist.
In the acute stage of injury or with repetitive stress injuries where there is ongoing inflammation, it is always good to ice the affected area. The standard is 15 minutes on 45 minutes off. That dampens the inflammatory process then allows blood flow to return to the area to clean it up and nourish it. Perhaps the most difficult thing for athletes to do is to rest. A gradual return to exercise is good because it allows soft tissue fibers to align in the direction of tension, but jumping right back in or taking the “no pain, no gain” attitude only leads to reinjury and ongoing pain.
For a full workup specific to you, go ahead and set up a new patient appointment.
