PERFORMANCE

Olympic athletes, professional sports teams, college rugby athletes, padel players, and every day normal folks wanting to get into some form of fitness like doing their first 5k all have the same goal: perform the best that you and your body can.

In order to do that, you obviously have to train and put in the work, but the reality is you also have to take care of your body in the meantime. Here’s 3 reasons why:

1.) Injury prevention: Pounding the pavement while preparing for the next Two Oceans Half, cycling hundreds of kilometres for the Argus, shooting the exact same direction with every golf swing, or doing weightlifting as part of your regular routine all increase the amount of force or wear and tear on your body. As such, it’s really important that your body is properly aligned so the muscles, ligaments, bones, and discs don’t eventually give way to a chronic injury pattern. Just think about why we bring vehicles in for a wheel alignment! If you drive around with skew wheels, they’re going to wear out unevenly and a lot faster than they should. Same with the joints in your body.

2.) Injury recovery: When an injury does happen, it’s important that proper evaluations are done and plans of action are followed so that your body can heal as efficiently and effectively as possible, while limiting compensations and future problems. For example, if someone has an injury where they can’t use their left leg properly, during the recovery period you’re going to be favouring your right side. Best to make sure the extra wear and tear on the right side is minimal. Beyond that, you also have to make sure that muscles, bones, ligaments, and nerves around the site of injury are still working properly so that they can support and stabilize the actual injury itself.

3.) Performance Optimization: What if the difference between running a 5km race in 25 minutes vs 23 minutes is a misaligned right hip? Or if the difference between doing an a 100kg bench press and a 105kg bench is that the muscles on the left side aren’t getting an optimized nerve supply telling more of them to contract? We’ve had many example of patients with both these and many other similar scenarios in our offices. There are many studies showing how adjustments increase muscle coordination, strength of muscle contraction, and the speed of that contraction. All because the joints are properly aligned and the nerves are able to talk to the muscle more efficiently

The benefits of Chiropractic Care on performance can not be overstated and that’s why so many professional athletes and high level sports teams all over the world use regular Chiropractic Care. Our Roots Chiropractors do an in depth analysis of the alignment of the joints, tension within the muscles, and take pictures or videos of your overall posture and squatting posture. That way we can best know any alignment issues which would inhibit your performance, cause unneeded wear and tear over time, or keep you from healing efficiently and effectively. Through specific adjustments to correct the misalignments we can make sure that the muscles are coordinated, joints are aligned well, and nerves are firing optimally so you can truly have your best performing body possible.

Reference:
Christiansen et al. The effects of a single session of spinal manipulation on strength and cortical drive in athletes. European Journal of Applied Physiology (2018) 118:737–749
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5843672/pdf/421_2018_Article_3799.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7764559/