Sports Chiropractic
Sports players from all abilities have used chiropractic care to help with increased performance, sporting injuries and to aid recovery. Many sports stars from around the world of sport are now taking advantage of the benefits of chiropractic. Did you know that sports stars such as Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong had chiropractic care in their career? Even the US Golf Tour in the United States has a team of chiropractors that travel around the country specifically to work with the players.
Sports players from all abilities have used chiropractic care to help with increased performance, sporting injuries and to aid recovery. Many sports stars from around the world of sport are now taking advantage of the benefits of chiropractic. Did you know that sports stars such as Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong had chiropractic care in their career? Even the US Golf Tour in the United States has a team of chiropractors that travel around the country specifically to work with the players.
When it comes to sports people, chiropractic care focuses on more than just injury recovery. Chiropractic care in general focuses on the mechanical function of the spine and its relationship to the nervous system. For it’s the nerves that supply the muscles and co-ordinate them to perform as an athlete requires. Chiropractic can help restore better mechanical function to the spine and body so that muscles, tissues and nerves can work better. So not only can chiropractic help with injury recovery but also help a sports person to prevent injuries from occurring. For example, many lower extremity injuries such as knee and ankle problems can arise from hip or pelvic problems higher up. A lower back or pelvis restriction/misalignment can change the biomechanics of the joints and put different pressures on the knee and ankle. Chiropractic care helps to restore better alignment/function to the spine and pelvis and therefore helping lower limb mechanics to work more optimally.
Ever
since chiropractic began sports players from all abilities
have used chiropractic to help with sporting injuries
and to aid recovery. Many sports stars from around
the world of sport are now taking advantage of the
benefits of chiropractic. The majority of sporting
injuries seen are extremity injuries such as ankle,
knee, wrist, elbow and shoulder as well as spinal
pain. Many
sports injuries are treated with physiotherapy that
tend to work on soft tissues and treat patient's symptoms,
using a variety of soft tissue techniques but fail
to recognize the cause of soft tissue injury. Research
has shown that tight musculature, weakness and trigger
points (muscle knots) arise due to pressure on the
nerve that works a particular muscle. If a nerve supplying
a particular muscle or joint is irritated or has pressure
on it from misaligned vertebrae then the vital messages
that the brain sends out will not be relayed to the
muscle/s as it should do and the muscle will constantly
fail resulting in injury. Chiropractic
care accesses not only soft tissue symptoms but also
the underlying cause by taking the pressure of the
nerves responsible with specific spinal and extremity
adjustments. Sports
Chiropractic care also accesses the biomechanics of
the human skeleton and posture analysis. For example
many lower extremity injuries such as knee and ankle
pain can arise from misaligned pelvic joints. A misaligned
pelvis changes the whole biomechanics of the joints
in the knees and ankles causing pain to arise in these
areas. Chiropractic care specifically realigns the
misaligned joints and restores the normal biomechanics. Dr Gonstead
pioneered extremity analyses and adjusting. He not
only recognized the importance of addressing the biomechanics
of the spine and pelvis, but also to make sure that
the joints in the rest of the body had correct alignment.
For example if a patient has shoulder pain after injuring
the shoulder in a sporting event it is highly likely
that the joint has become misaligned. And so chiropractors
will specifically and gently with care reposition
the misaligned joint as well as well as assessing
soft tissue injury giving the body the best chance
to heal.
