Sports Injury in Northwest Chicago IL
Have you suffered a sports injury in Northwest Chicago IL? Have you heard the names Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Aaron Rodgers, Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, and Kareem Abdul-Jubbar before? These are some of the elite athletes who attribute a large amount of their success to the chiropractic care they received throughout their careers.
In addition to the success experienced by these world-class athletes, you may have noticed chiropractors along the sidelines of NFL football games and the most recent Olympic events. Both of these organizations have recognized how vital chiropractic is to their team's success and integrated chiropractic doctors into their sports medicine team.
Not only can chiropractic help world-famous athletes excel, it has also been shown to provide short and long-term benefits for entry-level, high school, and college participants. Elite Total Rehab has been providing care to local amateur and professional sports teams for years and this article will inform you how you can benefit.
How Can Chiropractic Help Northwest Chicago IL Athletes?
Northwest Chicago IL athletes routinely and continually put their bodies through an extremely high level of physical stress. These stressors are different than what we experience as a result of too much school work or demands from the boss at work. Sports participation often involves quick starts and stops, explosive jumping or running, collisions, and atypical body postures that put added demands on the body's physical structure. Therefore, whether you are a football player, wrestler, golfer, or runner, chiropractic can provide the assistance your body needs to be able to adapt to these added stresses. Often, these unusual stresses cause the bones in our back to come out of place. The effects of these changes create a cascade that often leads to loss of motion, flexibility, and speed while increasing the chances of developing headaches or predisposing the body to future athletic-related injuries. For example, many long-distance runners have been shown to develop chronic cases of tendonitis and pain throughout the joints in their legs. Typically, they are prescribed a pain killer to mask the symptoms of pain, providing short-term relief. If pain killers were the real solution to the problem, why would they have to be continually taken?
The truth is that many sports-related injuries begin due to nerve interference caused by misalignments in our joints, primarily the spine. Our chiropractors at Elite Total Rehab in Northwest Chicago IL are specially trained at removing this type of interference. When this nerve interference is removed, the body experiences an increase in blood flow, higher immune system function, proper motor pattern firing, and overall better health. As a result, athletes receiving care at our clinic have noticed increased flexibility, speed, agility, and power during sports participation. These types of results have been seen at chiropractic clinics all across the country. In fact, a recent study published in the Journal of Chiropractic Research and Investigation showed that as much as 32% of athletes receiving chiropractic care experienced these results and an even higher percentage showed a decrease in the number of injuries sustained during sports participation.
When Should an Athlete See a Chiropractor?
Just as people get a flu shot at the beginning of the year to try to prevent getting sick, athletes of all ranks shouldn't wait to see a chiropractor until after an injury has occurred. While chiropractic has been proven to be an excellent source for injury rehabilitation and healing, it is an even better resource for preventing the damage from happening. Chiropractors view the body as a whole, taking into account all aspects of health. Our team at Elite Total Rehab has the resources to provide adjustive procedures, physical therapy, and soft tissue massage to address the nervous, skeletal, muscular, and ligamentous systems. Through this approach, the body is allowed to function at its optimal level, keeping you off the bench and sidelined with injuries throughout the season. If you are an athlete in the Northwest Chicago IL area, contact Elite Total Rehab today to schedule your individualized consultation.
As Jerry Rice said, "Chiropractic care helped me stay healthy and succeed in the league for as long as I did."
Sports Injury Care at Elite Total Rehab
All athletes need to be evaluated thoroughly to rule out injuries that may be career-ending if not addressed and treated properly. Injuries are a part of the game and sometimes can not be avoided. Injury prevention is as important as practicing and developing your skills. Proper warm-ups are necessary to circulate blood flow to the tissue that is going to be trained. Whether you are an avid golfer or a trained cage fighter, warming up reduces the possibility of injuries.
Sports-specific training is also an important aspect for athletes who are on a competitive level and want to separate themselves from the rest of the playing field. All athletes are not created equal with respect to body type. Swimmers and wrestlers look differently and train differently using different muscle fibers for their respective sports.
Different types of muscle fibers are found throughout the body, broken into slow-twitch (ST or type I), fast-twitch (FT or type II), or a mixture of fast-twitch fibers (FT-A and FT-B) in which they share qualities of both slow and fast-twitch fibers. Contraction time dictates these muscle fiber categories. Slow-twitch fibers have a slower contraction time and higher endurance making them more usable for aerobic activities in which longer and less explosive movements are required such as a marathon runner. Fast-twitch fibers are used for shorter, more explosive movements which you might find in a powerlifter.
Both athletes train differently to utilize the effectiveness of their muscle fiber and achieve greater results in their sport. The amount and type of muscle fiber is present at birth. Slow-twitch muscle fibers and fast-twitch muscle fibers may not be changed; we are born with what we have. The way you train your muscle fibers will ultimately change “which” ones will develop and dominate the makeup of your muscles. Developing fast-twitch muscles to use for explosive, short movements such as powerlifting, wrestling, judo, and sprinting will benefit from high intensity, high resistance training.
Slow-twitch training can benefit marathon, runners, long-distance swimming, athletes who prefer more endurance with their contractions, able to perform longer with less fatigue. These athletes should practice with the same amount of intensity but with less weight for a longer duration.
Call our team at Elite Total Rehab today to see how chiropractic care can help your sports injury in Northwest Chicago IL. Get your life back today!
Monday
9:00am - 6:00pm
Tuesday
9:00am - 6:00pm
Wednesday
9:00am - 6:00pm
Thursday
9:00am - 6:00pm
Friday
9:00am - 6:00pm
Saturday
By Appointment
Sunday
Closed
Elite Total Rehab
7008 W Higgins Ave
Chicago, IL 60656