How Chiropractic Care Can Enhance Your Sports Performance

It doesn’t matter if you’re a starting running back for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers or a four-times-a-year high handicap golfer, you can improve your game.

 

Sure, there are lessons, and attention to diet and exercise don’t hurt, but what you might not know is that regular chiropractic care is helping your performance when you’re in recovery, or simply helping your body work at peak levels.

 

This isn’t just my opinion. Every National Football League team has a chiropractor on call. More than three-quarters of all pro-level trainers refer their players to chiropractors, and an estimated 90% of world-class athletes in all sports seek chiropractic care to recover from and prevent injuries, as well as to maximize their performance. So, how does chiropractic treatment aid an athlete?

 

Injury Prevention
The principle behind chiropractic care isn’t so much about “fixing” problems as it is about creating conditions for your body to work at peak efficiency. Proper alignment of the bones of your spine and other joints encourages proper blood flow, full mobility, and no issues of pain from impinged nerves. Each of these elements plays a role in not only keeping you healthy but also preventing injury.

 

Receiving chiropractic adjustments regularly – particularly when you’re not actively suffering from an injury – permits your body to do what it does to the best of its ability. You may still suffer overuse injuries, for example, but these may require greater amounts of exertion, as your optimized musculoskeletal system absorbs and responds to your extra effort.

 

Performance Recovery
Even if your sports efforts don’t result in injury, they can still take a lot out of you. Your body is nearly always in some form of recovery, and as with injury prevention, proper spinal and joint alignments improve the efficiency of the process.

 

However, spinal manipulation isn’t all that chiropractic offers. It’s effective at restoring alignment and avoiding irritations within the body, and there are other treatments that complement the effectiveness of your adjustments, too. Massage, cryotherapy, and electrical stimulation can each contribute to faster healing and recovery.

 

Drug-Free Alternatives
If you’ve ever succumbed to the temptation of painkillers as a way of coping after a tough game or workout, you’re hardly alone. Painkillers and anti-inflammatories are readily available, and they can mask the pain you’re feeling after your athletic endeavor effectively.

 

However, these medications can be hard on other systems in your body, piling up complications silently. As well, pain is a signal that often shouldn’t be ignored. We all know the difference between the good aches of a healthy workout and the “something’s not right” feeling of injury or overexertion. When these feelings are masked by medication, we lose awareness of what’s going on in our bodies.

 

Once again, the body that’s optimized through chiropractic care is better able to deal with self-recovery, which naturally reduces the amount of pain you experience. Similarly, recovering from injuries through chiropractic treatment can provide instant pain relief by restoring alignment. If you’re under regular chiropractic care, you’ll likely feel enhanced effects, since your body’s already used to being in alignment, and there may be less treatment needed to restore balance.

 

Cumulative Effects
Trying to race a car on which wheels are out of alignment is wasted effort. It simply won’t go as fast as a well-tuned competitor, and that’s before the skill of the driver is factored. Chiropractic treatment can give you that extra advantage over your weekly tennis partner. Working on your serve-and-volley game is still up to you, but you’ll be in the best position to make an effort.

 

Notes: Most of us know that chiropractic care is useful in treating sports injuries without surgery or drugs, but regular visits to the chiropractic can also prevent sports injuries and enhance your performance.