Sports Injuries

Whether you are dealing with a traumatic sports injury, an overuse injury, or are just looking to improve your body’s performance, chiropractic care at our clinic has you covered.  We have a wide array of treatment options and decades of experience helping athletes, from professional to weekend warriors.

Whatever the cause of the injury may be, it is important to assess the biomechanics of the injured structure and surrounding area.  If the injury or repetitive stress has created altered biomechanics, the injured structures will heal slower or possibly not at all. 

Chiropractic treatment focuses on restoring the proper biomechanics while utilizing therapies to support structures and reduce pain, inflammation, and muscle spasm.

Electrical muscle stimulation and ultrasound are some of the passive therapies we provide to help reduce acute symptoms, such as inflammation, muscle spasm, and pain.  These therapies are often performed before the chiropractic adjustment.  Decreasing these symptoms before the adjustment helps it be performed with less force and more comfort.

Many injuries will require some form of support for the joint.  The injury may require significant immobilization from a brace.  The best treatment focuses on immobilizing only as necessary while maintaining as much movement as possible.  Healing structures will create scar tissue.  Limiting scar-tissue formation and its influence on adjacent structures is critical.  Kinesiotape is an effective way of providing support and reducing inflammation while maintaining range of motion.  Kinesiotape is now sold in many stores, but how it is applied is critical and is a skill that has a huge impact on its effectiveness.  Our office has been utilizing Kinesiotape virtually since it was introduced 20 years ago.

When you injure an area, you tear some muscle fibers (a strain) and possibly some ligaments (a sprain).

Muscles and ligaments are comprised of many small fibers.  This structural design allows forces to shift and move, transferring and sharing the force among the fibers.  When you tear these fibers, collagen is sent to the area to heal.  Collagen is like the glue that will simply stick everything in the area together.  Unfortunately, this will stick fibers together that need to be able to move independently.  Our knowledge of scar tissue and its adverse effect on healing has changed significantly over the past decade or two.  Years ago, if you injured your knee or had surgery, you would be in a soft-cast and crutches for a month or 2.  Now, you are on a bike, sometimes the next day.  It is critical to maintaining motion to prevent structures from sticking together that aren’t supposed to be.

Scar-tissue will stick groups of fibers together that will then only move as a single unit, called myofascial banding.  This puts excessive strain on nearby fibers.  As forces shift and should be transferred to nearby fibers it can’t because it is stuck to the clump and small numbers of fibers take all the force.  They tear, create more scar tissue, and the process continues to build.  Not only does this make muscles and ligaments more prone to injury, but it also robs the muscle of strength and efficiency.

Graston technique is an instrument-aided, soft-tissue mobilization technique utilized to break up scar tissue. The technique consists of several stainless steel instruments with varying angles and contours to match various parts of the body. Our office has close to 20 years of experience utilizing the Graston Technique and it is easily one of the most effective treatments in our office.