Whether you’ve captained your school’s football team or reluctantly taught your son how to play catch, injuries are a necessary evil to every sport. These injuries range from back injuries due to overuse, knee and shoulder injuries while on-field, concussions, and heat injuries which lead to muscle cramps. Football has a curious way of causing human train wrecks, which can be repaired with urgent and extensive treatment that goes beyond temporary repair. This comes in the form of Chiropractic treatment.
How Chiropractic Care Can Help
Warm-Up
Chiropractors in Sandy (Utah) have discovered the need and indispensability of chiropractic care in the case of football injuries and health of players. Anderson Chiropractic takes chiropractic practices to the level of health. The best advice given by Dr. David Altman is that ligaments need to be strengthened before being repaired. The best thing is to warm up before engaging in any sporting activity, and not just a static stretch. Doing the following can increase speed and reflexivity, while keeping the body healthy:
- A 10-15 yard walk, keeping the knees high
- Jumping while stretching legs in either direction
- Short obstacle jump
- Dynamic yoga – the intensity of exercise is higher than regular yoga
All of these and some advice from the people with the best spinal health – weightlifters – will help keep the footballer stress free.
Attend to Micro and Macro Traumas
The collisions and pile ups lead to micro and macro traumas in a footballer’s body. This leads to current and future injuries. Chiropractors work beyond heat and warmth; they catch the exact root of the problem, after having assessed the condition in which the injury was caused. Chiropractors increase the tension in muscles and ligaments to test its agility. This alternating pressure releases tension in joints and lets them relax. But all this does not happen in the blink of an eye. Chiropractic pressure is built with time, so that the effects are long lasting.
More than just Patch up
Even after the problem is addressed, a player must follow up with the chiropractor, because he/she is more than a doctor now. The chiropractor is attending to the health of the muscles and spine. Instead of just patching up the player for his next performance, the chiropractor believes in preventing the recurrence of the injury. With chiropractic treatment, a player will have better power, agility, balance and reaction time.
Chiropractors and Football
In Sandy and all across America, local football teams are hiring resident chiropractors. A football chiropractor, on an average, renders 30 to 50 treatments in a week during season that lasts 16 weeks. Even the NFL has employed chiropractors for the health of their players across their 32 teams. “Chiropractic care was key to keeping me in the game,” says Jerry Rice, who helped the San Francisco 49ers win three Super Bowl Championships between 1985 and 2000.
So, the next time you play football, remember to wear a helmet, do your warm ups, and when all else fails you, get in touch with a chiropractor.