Sports Injuries and Chiropractic Care

Goals of Treatment and Rehabilitation

• Protect the injured tissues to allow healing and to control the early inflammatory phase.
• Rehabilitate flexibility, strength, proprioception, and muscle imbalance, and control physical activities with the aid of taping and splinting.
• Sport-specific activities must be tested to ensure the athlete can return to sport safely.

If proper rehabilitation is not undertaken, the athlete may be competing too soon, with residual instability, proprioceptive disturbance and muscle weakness and imbalances. Individual programmes must be planned and implemented per athlete. This would include sport-specific exercises, adaptation to new postures to correct muscle imbalance, taping and strapping and a home exercise programme. Overtraining must be very carefully avoided in all of these phases, and training is monitored so that full activity does not occur before full recovery has taken place. It is obvious that prevention is better than cure and your Chiropractor will always advise the patient on how to prevent recurrence of the injury on return to sport.

Helpful Tips for Athletes:

• Never train hard when stiff from the previous effort.
• Introduce new activities very gradually.
• Allow lots of time for warming up and cooling off.
• Train on different surfaces, using the right footwear.
• Shower and change immediately after the cool down.
• Stay away from infectious areas when training or competing very hard.
• Be extremely fussy about hygiene in hot weather.
• Monitor fatigue. If tired, ease off training.

Please call your Chiropractor at Impulse Chiropractic on (02) 9939 8817 or visit our clinic at 15/64 Pitt Road in North Curl Curl for more information.]]>