As an athlete it is important that you look after your body the best that you can. Then you can perform at your best in your chosen sport. This can be through diet, exercise, stretching, and getting enough sleep. Another thing you can do to keep your body performing at its best is to see a chiropractor. Chiropractic care can benefit athletes in many ways. Furthermore it can give you that extra edge to be able to perform at your very best in your chosen sport.
Here are a few of the ways that chiropractic can help athletes.
- Injury recovery
As an athlete, injuries can severely slow down your progress. Depending on the severity of your injury, you will likely need to take some time off of training to recover. Therefore, this can slow down your progress, especially if you have specific goals or events you are working towards. Therefore it is important you are healing from injuries as quickly as possible.
There are a couple of ways chiropractic care can help speed up the recovery process after an injury. One way is by looking at the structure of your musculoskeletal system. If there are misalignments in the area you have injured, whether this be your spine or your extremities, this is going to place excess stress on the muscles and joints in this area. This excess stress can prevent the area from healing quickly or properly. Chiropractors are able to correct any misalignments in your structure to minimise the stress in this area and allow proper healing.
The other way chiropractic care can help athletes heal after an injury is by looking after your nervous system. Furthermore, your nervous system is how your brain and body communicate with each other. If your brain is not able to send and receive messages to and from the injured area efficiently this can slow down the healing process. Hence why this interference to the nervous system can come from areas of your spine that aren’t moving correctly. Additionally chiropractors are able to locate these areas of nerve interference and adjust them, to restore the flow of information between the brain and the body and to allow for optimal healing.
All of this combined can help you to recover from your injury as efficiently as possible and get back to training.
If you would like some more information on how chiropractors can help with injury, here is a good article that explains this: https://drwardchiro.com/improve-your-recovery-time-with-chiropractic-treatment/ - Injury prevention
Not only can chiropractors help you recover from injuries. In addition to this they can also help to prevent injuries in the first place. That is to say, chiropractors can help to ensure that there are no misalignments in your musculoskeletal structure. Having everything aligned correctly ensures strength and stability of your joints and muscles. This not only helps healing when you do have an injury, but it also prevents injuries from occurring in the first place. Keeping your body strong and injury free will help you greatly in your chosen sport, and is just one of the ways that chiropractic can help you be a better athlete. - Improved awareness of your body
No matter what your chosen sport is, having a good awareness of where your body is in space is going to benefit you greatly and help you to perform at your best. To clarify, your nervous system is how your brain and body communicates. Sometimes there can be interference to this system by segments of the spine that aren’t moving correctly. Therefore, if there is interference to system it can reduce your brain’s ability to know exactly where your body is in space and what it is doing. This may reduce your accuracy within your chosen sport. By adjusting the incorrectly moving segments of the spine, chiropractors can restore nervous system function. This allows your brain to more accurately perceive where your body is in space. In short, it can know what it is doing, in order for you to have greater accuracy in your sport.
This has been shown in a study in which people had their joints placed in a very specific position, and then were asked to recreate this, to see how accurate their joint position sense was. After that they were then adjusted by a chiropractor, and the test was then repeated. The people who were adjusted showed an improvement in their joint position sense. This shows that chiropractic care can help improve your awareness of your body, which will help you greatly with your chosen sport. Furthermore, if you would like to read more about this study, you can follow this link here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0161475410003611 - Improved range of motion
Sports is all about movement, and athletes need to be able to move their bodies correctly. Over time, if you have joint misalignments throughout your body, this can lead to stiffness within the joints, and an overall decrease in range of motion. This is going to hinder you from performing at your best. Chiropractors are able to ensure you have correct joint alignment and proper joint motion. In short, it will ensure your body can move correctly, without limitations to your range of motion, that may slow down you ability to perform at your best within your sport.
Improved overall wellness
As an athlete you want to be in the best possible health. Chiropractic is great for improving an athletes overall wellness. As mentioned above, chiropractic can ensure that the nervous system is free from interference. Therefore your brain and your body will be able to communicate properly. The nervous system controls everything little that your body does. By looking after this system, the rest of your body is going to be functioning at its very best.
Your immune system will be boosted. You will have more energy. Additionally your body will just overall feel a lot better. The best part about it is that it is all natural, you are not having to rely on medicine. No more trying to stay healthy, your body just does it all for you. By staying in your best possible health you will be able to function at your best. This can be for your training as well as other aspects in your life.
