Are you an athlete? Chances are you’re all too familiar with performance-hampering injuries, soreness, and range of motion issues. At Bomberg Chiropractic, it’s our goal to restore normal, healthy functioning of your musculoskeletal system so that you can train and perform at your best.
While you likely practice routine stretching, range of motion exercises, and active recovery techniques, sometimes, your body needs the help of a trained professional for you to achieve peak performance.
Curious about how chiropractic care can help you get there? Read on to learn about the many benefits of routine chiropractic treatments for athletes.
1. Improved Range of Motion
One of the most significant benefits of regular chiropractic treatments (aka wellness care) for athletes is improved range of motion.
Extensive training and competition put substantial stress on an athlete’s musculoskeletal system, which often results in significant tension of muscles, ligaments, and tendons. As tension builds, it can pull an athlete’s joints out of alignment, which causes movement abnormalities, discomfort, and limited range of motion.
Regular chiropractic treatments restore normal range of motion by bringing the spine and joints back into proper alignment. Additional techniques, such as the Active Release Technique, also help improve mobility by breaking up adhesions, knots, and scar tissue that can limit an athlete’s movement patterns.
With routine treatments, chiropractic care can even help prevent athletic injuries that often occur as a result of limited mobility.
2. Reduced Pain & Soreness
When the spine and joints are out of alignment, athletes often compensate by altering their normal movement patterns. And over time, even minor alterations to an athlete’s normal movement patterns can cause imbalances that may lead to discomfort, posture issues, reduced mobility, injuries, and pain.
Targeting chiropractic adjustments, massage techniques, and other therapies can help alleviate that pain and soreness by bringing the body back into proper alignment. Then, as the musculoskeletal system gradually realigns, athletes learn to resume healthy movement patterns that do not cause unnecessary pain and mobility issues.
Athletes who train extensively are also subject to overuse injuries that often involve the joints and surrounding muscles. The shoulders, knees, and lower back are common injury locations for which chiropractic treatments provide significant pain relief.
3. Expedited Healing Time
When you’re an athlete, you understand that injuries are simply part of the game. But the way you choose to treat those injuries will determine your timeline for healing and whether you’re able to continue training during your recovery period.
At Bomberg Chiropractic, we specialize in the following therapeutic techniques that help speed injury recovery and can allow you to continue conservative training until you’ve healed completely.
Kinesio Taping
Kinesio taping is a rehabilitative technique designed to provide stability and support to injured muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints without restricting range of motion.
Active Release Technique
ART therapy, also known as movement-based massage, works to treat soft tissue injuries, muscular adhesions, mobility issues, and pain through the precise application of pressure and active stretching.
TENS Therapy
Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) helps to reduce injury inflammation, decrease pain signaling, and increase blood flow to injured tissues to accelerate healing.
4. Non-Invasive, Drug-Free Treatment for Sports Injuries
Because chiropractic care is a non-invasive form of treatment, it is especially popular with athletes who cannot afford extensive downtime.
While certain serious injuries necessitate minimally invasive or even invasive treatment techniques, conservative care is often highly effective at resolving several forms of mild to moderate tissue damage.
Conservative chiropractic care can also alleviate musculoskeletal pain associated with the spine and peripheral joints without the use of prescription or over-the-counter drugs. Through gentle, precise adjustments, a chiropractor brings misaligned joints back into their proper positions, which alleviates pain and restores range of motion.
Check out the chiropractic techniques we use to provide highly effective, non-invasive treatment that can help any athlete’s body thrive!
5. Improvements in Strength & Athletic Performance
Because the nervous system controls the movement of the entire body, it is crucial that an athlete’s nerve signaling flows freely throughout the body. However, when the spine is misaligned, nerves that stem from the spinal column may become compressed, which can impede normal nerve functioning.
When nerves cannot efficiently communicate with muscles to stimulate contraction, an athlete’s strength, power, coordination, and balance may be compromised.
And research suggests that chiropractic care – even a single session – improves these measures of athletic ability.
6. Relaxation & Recovery
It’s no secret that athletic and performance training place incredible demands on an athlete’s body. And chiropractic treatments allow the body to relax and recover by helping restore normal nerve signaling, releasing painful trigger points, and stretching tense, painful muscles.
When used to augment spinal manipulation techniques, TENS therapy is very effective at stimulating increased blood flow to specific areas of the body.
Increased blood flow enhances nutrient delivery to sore muscles and joints, thereby accelerating healing.
7. Identify the Source of Recurring Injuries
Athletes who suffer from recurring injuries often have various musculoskeletal abnormalities they’re not even aware of.
And those abnormalities can affect several parts of the body because they compromise healthy movement patterns. Then athletes end up moving in such a way that they eventually suffer injuries due to their compensatory patterns.
Unidentified pelvic or spinal misalignment can contribute to chronic hip, knee, ankle, and lower back problems that athletes may suffer from but have little idea why. Other chronic issues like scoliosis or tendon/ligament problems can also negatively affect biomechanics and play a role in recurring injuries, mobility problems, and chronic pain or soreness.
Using imaging tools and palpation techniques, a chiropractor can identify several types of internal issues that often contribute to chronic yet mysterious athletic injuries. And then, using various chiropractic treatment techniques, the doctor can gradually restore proper alignment.
Ultimately, treatment helps the athlete develop movement patterns that naturally help prevent future injuries or, at the very least, lessen their severity.
8. Injury Prevention
While lots of athletes wait to get chiropractic treatment until they’ve already suffered an injury, chiropractic care isn’t only meant as a reactionary treatment.
Rather, chiropractic adjustments, movement-based massage, kinesio taping, and active release technique are also designed to prepare the athlete’s body for rigorous training, play, and competition.
When used as a proactive measure, regular chiropractic treatments can help reduce an athlete’s likelihood of suffering injuries caused by overly tight muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joint alignment issues.
Curious about visiting a chiropractor? Never been before? Then you’ll definitely want to check out 10 Common Questions About Seeing a Chiropractor while you’re here!
Looking for a Chiropractor Near New Hope, MN?
If you’re an athlete in the Twin Cities metro area and are looking for proven methods to enhance your athletic ability and improve your recovery time, let our team at Bomberg Chiropractic help you out!
Using state-of-the-art treatments and techniques, we focus on holistically treating your body to allow you to get the most out of every training session, game, or competition you partake in. Our comprehensive care services will also allow you to maximize your body’s ability to recover, so you can give your sport everything you’ve got, each and every time.
To learn more about our many services or schedule a consultation, give us a call at 763-450-1755. Or, feel free to contact us online with any questions or concerns, and we’ll get in touch!