Chiropractic and Sports
Getting a Leg Up On Your Competition
As you may have read from our website, chiropractic has shown to be beneficial for a multitude of conditions and injuries. This month, I'd like to write about the roles that chiropractic can play in sports such as minimizing the risk for injuries, improving athletic performance and also some of the top athletes who utilize chiropractic as part of their training.
In terms of injury prevention, chiropractic has helped many athletes avoid injury by focusing on biomechanics (the study of how the body and its joints move) and structural management. Together, they play integral roles in athletic performance and are often the culprits for many sports-related injuries. Your body functions most efficiently when it's in its natural balance and alignment. However, between competitions, games, practices and training, athletes place large amounts of repetitive stress on their bodies over time. These stresses can cause your body to lose its natural ranges of motion and movement patterns, muscles can become chronically tight and also cause the body and its joints' natural alignment to be disrupted. These disruptions can predispose athletes to repetitive stress and fatigue-type injuries if they are not corrected. A thorough chiropractic evaluation can help identify these abnormal biomechanics and specific postural and corrective exercises, in addition to adjustments, can be recommended to restore the body's structural balance and reduce the risk for repetitive stress and fatigue-type injuries.
Chiropractic has also helped improve athletic performance. Studies have shown that athletes who utilized chiropractic had more power, speed, better coordination and faster reaction times compared to athletes who did not use chiropractic. If you study how chiropractic works, the reasons for these advantages are fairly simple. Chiropractic helps not only the body, spine and its joints to move correctly and efficiently but it also by maximizing the function of the central nervous system, which acts as the body's main wiring and communication system. The skull and spine houses our central nervous systems (the brain and spinal cord) and spinal nerves exit between each vertebrae and branch out throughout our entire body. If there is any interference at a given spinal level due to a misalignment, or subluxation, it slows down the rate at which your nervous system communicates with the rest your body. With regular chiropractic care, athletes can be assured that these misalignments and interferences are removed, allowing their nervous systems to function at its highest levels, leading to improved performance on the field.
Many of today's top athletes use chiropractic and have credited it as a contributing factor to their success. Numerous professional sports teams have a chiropractor on their training staffs to help keep their athletes in peak condition. Athletes such as Cole Hamels, Dara Torres, Tom Brady, Alex Rodriguez, Maria Sharapova, Reggie Bush, Maurice Jones Drew, Dwight Freeney, Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson and UFC fighters Chuck Liddell, Brock Lesnar and BJ Penn just to name a few, all receive regular chiropractic care. Lance Armstrong has said that he couldn't have won the Tour De France without his chiropractor's help. Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, the NFL's all-time leading receiver, and Emmitt Smith, the NFL's all-time leading rusher, have all credited chiropractic with extending their careers. Jerry Rice is even a spokesperson for the Foundation For Chiropractic Progress. Even Tiger Woods, arguably the greatest golfer ever, despite being in the news more for off-course issues recently, says that chiropractic is as important to his training as practicing his swing.
An analogy I use advocating chiropractic for athletes is a race car. Before every race, the car is brought into the garage and examined by a team of mechanics who make the proper adjustments to the car to ensure that it runs at its best at race time. Why shouldn't an athlete, do the same for their body? Whether you're pro, college or high school athlete or even a weekend warrior, if you are looking to perform at the top of your game and to the best of your abilities as well as minimize your risk for injury, you owe it to yourself to make regular chiropractic care a staple of your training regimen.
For more information on this topic, feel free to check out the links below
Jerry Rice Shares His Personal Successes With Chiropractic
Chiropractic and Sports
Chiropractic and Sports Injuries
Why Athletes Need Chiropractic
Chiropractic in Sports Care
The Foundation For Chiropractic Progress