Sports & Fitness

Chiropractic for Sports & Fitness

A natural, drug-free approach to staying on the active list.

Routine chiropractic care can play an essential role in helping us stay active, improve preformance, reduce recovery time, and support overall good health. Let's take a deeper dive in underestanding why having a chiropractor on your team is key:

Sections:

Activity Matters

Why Athletes Choose Chiropractic

Boosting Performance

Finding A Trusted Partner

Activity Matters

Life moves, and we must move with it.

Regular physical activity through sports or fitness is one of the most important things you can do for your health. Being physically active can improve and prevent an array of both physical and mental health risks, regardless of age, ability, shape or size. Active living can support brain health, help manage weight, reduce the risk of disease, strengthen bones and muscles, while also improving your ability to do everyday activities.

Did you know? Low levels of physical activity are associated with $117 billion in healthcare costs each year in the US.¹

If physical activity is one of the most important things we can do for your health, why is it that accoring to the current Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, only 26.3% of men and 18.8% of women meet the national standard² of 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week. Other than finding time in our busy day-to-day schedules, what’s holding us back?

Well for many, it can be a pain – literally. According to a 2022 survey conducted OnePoll on behalf of The Joint Chiropractic, 44% of respondants reported that they experienced discomfort or pain throughout their daily routine; according to the same survey, 49% of respondants reported that their fitness/exercise routine is impacted by their discomfort or pain.

Addressing this pain and discomfort is the essential first steps to becoming more active, reaching long-ter health goals and ultimattely improving quality of life.

Why Athletes Choose Chiropractic

To reduce pain, improve performance and expedite recovery.

Whether you’re active in the gym, a rec league warrior, or have aspirations to become a professional athlete, your spinal column is made up of 24 independent vertebrae that enable your body to move, twist and bend during activities. It also helps protect the delicate central nervous system that controls and coordinates every muscle, tissue and organ of the body.

Chiropractic adjustments performed by a licensed chiropractor, provides athletes with a safe, natural and drug-free option to locate, correct and prevent joint dysfunctions in the spine. Joint dysfunctions can not only lead to pain and discomfort that holds us back, they negatively effect proper nerve communication from the brain to the body. By helping to reduce joint dysfunctions, chiropractors play a vital role in keeping an athletes body balanced, flexible and performing at its best.

Even elite athletes of past and present, like Michael Jordan, Jerry Rice, Tom Brady and Jordan Spieth, choose chiropractic to give them a competitive edge. Experts estimate that 90%³ of all world-class athletes use chiropractic care to prevent injuries and improve their performance. But, why?

Chiropractic just makes you feel so much better. When I walk out of the clinic, I feel like I’m about three inches taller and everything’s in place. And as long as I see the chiropractor, I feel like I’m one step ahead of the game. - Tom Brady
New England Patriots QB, 5x Super Bowl Champion

At its foundation, chiropractic makes sure that you are moving optimally. It provides the body with the ability to best respond to stresses in its environment, such as physical stress— especially as it relates to beating your body up in the gym or on the field.

But let’s take a closer look at four key reasons why athletes choose chiropractic:

Musculoskeletal relief: This is probably the benefit you’re most familiar with, but it’s certainly not the only. By correcting joint dysfunctions, chiropractic care can help reduce, eliminate and even prevent common aches and pains throughout the body cause by the stressors of life wether you’re active or not. Whether it’s back, neck, head or extremity pain, seeking routine care from a chiropractor can help.

Improved range of motion: You’ve probably heard of football players taking ballet classes and that can seem silly at first, but the guiding principle is sound. Stretching and increasing flexibility helps to protect the body from injury. The joint dysfunctions targeted by chiropractors also help to reduce muscle tension and increase range of motion, allowing joints to more easily move through their full range of motion.

Correction of asymmetries: Have you heard of someone having one leg longer than the other? The truth is that no one is exactly symmetrical and that can lead to issues that can make stability in sports a big problem. Chiropractic care helps to prepare your body to deal with these slight differences while ensuring that joint dysfunctions don’t lead to bigger problems down the road that can impact your overall health and performance.

Faster recovery: All active people and athletes alike suffer from fatigue, soreness, aches, and pains that need time to heal. Recovery is a huge part of any active routine and chiropractic can help to make recovery time more effective. Through regular chiropractic adjustments that reduce joint dysfunctions, you can improve recovery, reduce the chance of injury, and enable your body to do what it was designed to do – which is heal itself.

According to the American Chiropractic Association, chiropractic is not only beneficial to professional athletes, but also amateur and weekend athletes looking to maximize athletic performance and prevent injuries.

Boosting Performance

3 ways chiropractic can help boost performance in the gym or on the field.

We sat down with Steven Knauf, D.C., who sits on the Arizona Board of Chiropractic Examiners and serves as the Executive Director of Chiropractic and Compliance for The Joint Chiropractic, to discuss how routine chiropractic care can boost an athletes performance in the gym and on the field. Here’s a summary of what he had to say:

Coordinating proper movements. Want a more efficient workout? “This is really done through optimizing your range of motion and making sure that you’re able to achieve the correct posture,” says Knauf. “If your body is compensating, or you don’t have the right posture, or if your muscles aren’t firing in the correct pattern, you may not be able to lift as much weight.”

Aiding recovery by lessening DOMS. Recovering quickly helps any gym-goer stay motivated, but sometimes delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) gets the best of us all and threatens to sideline our efforts. “For example, one of the things we see following a chiropractic adjustment is a reduction in the chemical that’s responsible for causing inflammation in the body,” says Knauf. “So you’re able to recover a bit more quickly.”

Helping to prevent injury. If you’re moving better, and therefore are properly coordinating your movements versus favoring one side, then you’re less likely to wear out muscles or joints unevenly. This is crucial for injury prevention. “Athletes don’t want to have to take time off trying to recover from an injury they’ve sustained,” says Knauf. “When you’re moving well, you can better react to different stress and movements.”

So how exactly does chiropractic care help with these three issues? “It’s really about restoring motion back into joints and relaxing sore and tight muscles,” explains Knauf. “There’s also a mental piece to chiropractic care, too. Anecdotally, we have patients who report being in a better mood after their adjustments. And when you’re in a better mood and not stuck in a place of chronic injury or losing out on quality of life, you’re more likely to engage in the activities and hobbies that make you happy.”

A Trusted Partner

Finding a trusted provider shouldn’t be a game time decission.

When it comes to your health and well-being, finding the right partner makes all the difference in the outcome. It’s important to find a chiropractor who takes a keen interest in your overall health, unique medical history, and goals. This is vital to tailoring care to your specific needs and ensures the efficacy of care.

As the nations largest network of chiropractors, we're a trusted athletic partner, commitment to helping athletes stay balanced, flexible and performing at thier best. From collegiate to professional, we've got your back.

The Joint Chiropractic is also the official chiropractic partner of athletic programs from coast to coast. Check out a few of our partners below:

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Sources

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2019). Lack of Physical Activity [Online]. Available from: https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/resources/publications/factsheets/physical-activity.htm [Accessed 09 December 2021].
2. Cunningham, S. (2021). Fitness: The Average American [Online]. The Average American. Available from: https://theaverageamerican.medium.com/fitness-the-average-american-e2353f249ec2 [Accessed 09 December 2021].
3. Chiropractic Economics, Top 5 benefits of sports chiropractic care: https://www.chiroeco.com/sports-chiropractic-care/ [Nov. 25, 2019]

The information, including but not limited to, text, graphics, images and other material contained on this page are for informational purposes only. The purpose of this post is to promote broad consumer understanding and knowledge of various health topics, including but not limited to the benefits of chiropractic care, exercise and posture. It is not intended to provide or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your chiropractor, physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before undertaking a new health care regimen, and never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this page.