Sports chiropractors have a very important role to play for athletes and sports performers. Sport, and exercise, can sometimes be a painful experience! No wonder so many people are searching for ‘sports chiropractor near me’. Chiropractors diagnose treat and manage sports injuries that are due to problems with the joints, ligaments, tendons and nerves, especially related to the spine. This includes both soft tissue injuries, and joint pain including shoulder pain, knee pain and neck pain. Appropriate chiropractic treatment can help ease your pain and get you on the road to full fitness again.

Many famous athletes have reported using chiropractors to maintain performance or recover from sports related injuries. These include Usain Bolt, Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps. In the London 2012 Olympic games the US team sent over 100 chiropractors to treat their athletes, while the UK had 28 chiropractors of their own. Many athletes have benefited from chiropractic support.

Broadly chiropractors use chiropractic technique to work with disorders of the musculoskeletal system. Many people think of chiropractic treatment as being the spinal manipulation to free joints in the spine or other areas of the body as a treatment. This is why spinal manipulation can sometimes relieve pain in the nervous system. However, in addition to this manipulation chiropractors also use a variety of other techniques to treat problems, such as ultrasound, therapeutic and rehabilitative exercises including massage therapy (e.g., deep tissue massage), well as providing advice about posture, diet and lifestyle.

In addition to the treatment of sports injuries chiropractors also work with athletes to prevent injuries in the first place, enable exercise to be pain free, and to optimise performance. For example, a person may have a mechanical dysfunction which makes them prone to sports injury and will benefit from advice and treatment. Similarly in sports requiring mechanical movement, such as swinging a golf club, a mechanical dysfunction may mean they are doing so less efficiently and also benefit from advice and treatment. So sports chiropractors provide a full package of diagnosis, treatment and prevention.

This approach to chiropractic care is a holistic way of helping athletes, exercisers and sports performers. It addresses health and wellness generally, the rehabilitation of sport injuries, and maintaining peak physical fitness helps to Improve sport performance.

It is also worth remembering that chiropractors who specialise in sports can also offer sports massage as well as other associated treatments. 

We have specific articles on the usefulness of chiropractic treatments in sport and also if you would like to read some articles on topics relating to some of the issues we have discussed here then please find a growing list of relevant articles on our blog page.