Athletes play sports at the youth level, recreationally for fun during and after work, and at the high end in the collegiate and professional setup. It doesn’t matter where you are within the sport, if you are taking sports seriously or you’re just playing sports for fun, you should go and get an evaluation and speak to a reputable chiropractor.
Every chiropractic program should be specific to that athlete’s condition. The athlete could be a corporate athlete who loves to run on the weekend but sits behind a desk for 40 hours a week. Or it could be an NFL player, or an NHL player. Each sport, particularly at the elite level, requires a specific skillset. A baseball pitcher is going to function differently than an ice hockey player, who’s going to function differently than an NFL player.
In our office, we would meet with the athlete and conduct a detailed consult history. What sport are we playing? How often are we playing it? What movements are involved? What is going to be your main biomechanical function? What’s your training schedule like? What’s your game schedule like? How often and how long are you playing?
We will then go through any symptoms the patient has, “I feel like I’ve got impingement in my shoulder.” Okay, we need to evaluate that. Then we are going to perform a subluxation exam to figure out which joints are subluxated or fixated. We will perform an orthopedic exam, with a range of motion exam to evaluate if there is limited range of motion. Are there any structures within the shoulders specifically that aren’t doing their job? For a neurological exam, is there any dysfunction in the spine that’s driving symptoms? We will take some images to see if the joint is healthy, if it is in alignment, or if it is degenerative.
We piece that together and come up with a specific plan. In our office it would be a blended approach. It would be adjusting the affected joint and/or joints around it. You’ve got to always look above and below the joint. Are we tractioning the joint? If we’ve got a lot of shoulder and upper back dysfunction, we need to find out if that is driven from the neck.
When a joint is subluxated, it means it is stuck, fixated, or it is out of alignment. It could be caused by trauma from playing recreational sports all the way through high level sports. If you’re playing football, you consistently smashing into people and landing on the ground. Joints are going to shift, they’re going to be out of alignment, they’re going to become fixated.
So now as you start using that joint and functioning with your biomechanics, running, jumping, lifting, bending, or twisting, if that joint’s not moving well, it’s going to increase the stress and tension within the joint, the tissue, the nerve, which over time is going to create compensation. It is going to lead to injury and us breaking down.
Chiropractic can essentially manage that by performing a range of motion evaluation of the spine, the extremities, and figuring out if the joint’s fixated, if it’s subluxated, and if it’s not moving well. And if it isn’t, then that joint needs to be addressed. We need to get that joint moving. A chiropractor will be able to manually adjust the joint, which is going to get the joint to move better. It’s going to improve its range of motion. We’re going to be able to do some soft tissue treatment, break down the adhesion that forms from joints that don’t move well, which limits range of motion, increases stress and tension, and over time breaks us down. We’re going to be able to treat that soft tissue and then follow it up with a rehab program to address all those muscle imbalances that over time can occur, and lead to pain and poor performance.
For example, for a baseball pitcher, we need to improve range of motion so we are going to be adjusting the shoulder. We are going to be treating the rotator cuff manually with soft tissue treatment. We’re going to be doing a mobility program and then a stability program to supplement that shoulder so we can get full extension and full follow-through. We’re doing that movement with maximum range and stability, which can maximize performance and limit pain and dysfunction through compensation and injury.
For all athletes we are then going to perform a rehab program. Goal one, improve mobility. Goal two, stability. Goal three, strength. To incorporate that, we’ve got to be doing a ton of soft tissue work to make sure the soft tissue is healthy so the joint moves well with some freedom and stability. That can be done for a youth athlete or an NFL athlete.
The goal is, depending on the patient, to get them out of pain and improve functionality. Then we get them on a prehab program, so they are not coming in reactively because they are in pain, they are coming in proactively to stay out of pain and improve performance. That athlete will be getting work to do pre-training game, post-training game, and they’ll be coming in on a schedule that’s going to supplement and assist their training and game schedule.
