Chiropractic Care and Athletic Performance
by Dr. Tim Fargo, Chiropractor
For 15 years, between 1993 and 2008, I was the chiropractor for the Minnesota Vikings football team. On any given season, I might have over 50% of the 53-man roster as patients in my office. To give you some perspective, these players had unlimited and free access to athletic trainers, orthopedists, internal medicine doctors and other allied health professionals, yet they chose to come to my office and pay cash for services that were unavailable to them within the system. They did this, not because of the force of my personality (joke), but because they found that they recovered more quickly, performed at a higher level, and were better able to avoid injury.
These latter three things are desirable commodities for any athlete. Whether we are talking about highly paid professional athletes, or just weekend warriors, everyone wants to run faster, jump higher, hit the ball longer and harder and get up the next day to do it again. This is precisely what chiropractic care accomplishes for athletes and regular people who might not consider themselves athletes yet act that way in their garden or with their grandkids. What we, as chiropractors, do for athletes has the same benefits for those who simply want to be more effective, efficient and pain-free in the various challenges and activities that life presents.
How chiropractic care works is that we identify joints, whether in the spine or extremities, which are either not working properly or are misaligned. Personally, I think this latter concept, “misalignment”, is a bit of an oversimplification, but people understand it, so we continue to use it. When joints in the spine, or extremity joints, do not move properly, then localized irritation (inflammation) ensues. In addition, muscles that bridge those joints may become imbalanced with some being excessively tight (contracted) and others being in a state of lower tone than would otherwise be normal. Lastly, and this is particularly the case with the spine, misalignments will often cause nerve irritation which can cause pain, and even muscle weakness in the tissues downstream from the misalignment.
The net effect of these misalignments is that the body parts don’t move as well as they should, the muscles do not work in a balanced fashion, the person has pain from overloaded tissues, and the part simply does not work to its full potential and is more susceptible to injury. Think of the body as a race car. Of course, one could simply slap tires on a car, make sure that it had gas in it, and send it out on the track. The truth is that peak performance on the track requires a far more nuanced and in-depth look at the functionality of all the different parts of the vehicle. This is precisely what we, as chiropractors, do with the human body. To go back to the car analogy, we are not just waiting until something breaks down to intervene. Rather, we intervene when the athlete, or anyone for that matter, is still fully functional. Even though they are fully functional, they often have parts and systems that are not operating at full capacity. The job of the chiropractor is to then rectify that situation before some critical load causes the system to fail.
So you ask, “What is the role of a chiropractor in the creation of athletic performance”? The answer is that we do for the bodies of athletes what the finest mechanics do for the vehicles that they service. We enable people to run faster, lift heavier, hit harder, and do all of the above with more accuracy and precision because the control system the body, the nervous system, is free to communicate more fully. You are living your life through your nervous system, and the faster you move, the more you need a nervous system that can accurately and quickly assess your environment and respond to it. That is what chiropractors do. All the doctors at Chiropractic Health and Wellness in Edina are trained to care for athletes and are, themselves, athletes. I am 70 years old, but I lift, cycle, golf, downhill ski and work like a maniac in my yard. Dr. Kailey spent years as a collegiate rower at St. Thomas University. Dr. Alderman played high school and college basketball, spent years doing Orange Theory Fitness and works out on a regular basis. We are uniquely positioned with our personal experience and knowledge to help you perform better on your chosen field of play. Come and get it!
