Athletes come in all shapes and sizes: young kids in youth sports, avid Crossfitters, neighborhood ballplayers, professional athletes, Olympians, high school sports teams, and college athletes. On any level of competition or participation, chiropractors can help athletes to maintain balance, strengthen movement, and restore function within the body, in addition to helping prevent injury or illness.
The human body is designed for movement. The chiropractor’s job is to detect and correct any areas in the spine that are not moving properly. By having a chiropractor on their team, athletes can perform at their best.
Book Your First Athlete Care Exam
Exam includes in-depth whole-body analysis with provider, posture pictures and insight nervous system scans (provided if necessary). Consultation & plan of action will help you understand your care options.
When an athlete comes to our office, the chiropractor will start with a consultation and complete set of examinations to determine the athlete’s current level of spinal health. The doctor will ask about traumas and injuries the athlete has experienced, as well as goals in life and athletic performance. The chiropractors at Family First have a set of five criteria they utilize to assess every new patient in the office. These include visualization, instrumentation, static palpation, motion palpation, and x-ray analysis. You can learn more about these assessments and the Gonstead Technique here. The doctor can then determine exactly what is going on in your spine and how it might impact your performance or leave you susceptible to injury.
When an athlete decides to become a patient in our office, they can expect a devoted health team to keep them on track with their care recommendations, which include chiropractic adjustments and at-home exercises. The doctors may also suggest consultations regarding the athlete’s specific sport or injury to stay on track to meet their performance goals. And, of course, we are always here to celebrate when athletes achieve their personal bests or perform well at games or competitions!
How Our Athlete Care Plan Works
1. Be Heard
And Understood
Quality time with a health professional, so you can be truly heard and understood, isn’t all that common. We understand that. This is why, on your first visit, you will meet with one of our doctors and share your health concerns and struggles so we can understand exactly why you are here and what you want to achieve. The doctor will determine what testing is necessary to find the source of your health concerns and answer the biggest question of all: Can Chiropractic Care Help?
2. Discover How We Can Help You
Every new patient should feel like they are making the right decision for their health. This is why our doctors explain what they are looking for in the testing, so our patients know exactly what is going on, instead of just being a bystander. We will share everything we discover from your testing and exams, including if we can help you. In the unfortunate event that we cannot help, our doctors will provide any additional resources they feel would be appropriate to assist you.
3. Achieve Your Health Goals Together
Whether you just want to be out of pain, or you want to get back to golfing without limitations, or you are desperate to get a restful night’s sleep, we will be with you every step of the way. We’ll achieve your goals
Types of Athletes We Care For in West Omaha, NE
Runners
Did you know that 70% of people who run will suffer an injury at some point while running? The most common types of injuries or ailments for runners include Plantar Fasciitis, Runner’s knee, Iliotibial (IT) Band Syndrome, injuries to the Achilles tendon, shin splints, stress fractures, ankle strains and sprains, and pulled muscles in the legs.
Most runners know several basic strategies for preventing injuries. Wearing well-fitting footwear is important. Warming up or stretching before running gets your muscles ready to be active. Taking rest days can help prevent injuries from overtraining. Varying your workout routine allows you to focus on different muscle groups.
But what should you do when you take the proper precautions and still get injured? Injuries should be taken seriously. If you continue to run while injured, you can damage your muscles, nerves, and joints further. This could lead to increased healing time, incomplete healing, and chronic pain.
Many runners are learning that chiropractic care is a great tool to ensure that their body is in the best shape to handle the stress running puts on the body. Spinal and extremity adjustments help improve the nervous system’s ability to function correctly and allow the health of your joints and muscles to improve. Chiropractic adjustments are a great way to improve flexibility and range of motion, ensure proper alignment of the low back, hips, knees, ankles, and feet, and allow the body to recover more quickly from injuries by ensuring proper nerve flow throughout the body.
Golfers
Golf is now one of the most well-liked sports in the United States. In 2019, over 34 million people in the US played golf. Of these, 2.5 million played the sport for the first time.
While golf is a low-impact sport, it can still cause injuries. Lower, middle, and upper back pain are the most common symptoms of golf-related injuries, although neck, wrist, shoulder, and elbow injuries are also common. Golf is a game of muscle memory, and its repetitive motions can lead to inflammation, strains, and other injuries of the muscles and discs of the spine, throwing you off your game.
Every golf swing places a lot of compression load on the spine. This force can be at least eight times a person’s body weight. That’s like having eight people on your back every time you swing that golf club! Over time, all that force placed on your spine can make it shift from its proper alignment. When spinal bones are misaligned, this overworks all the muscles, joints, and ligaments connected to the spine. This extra strain often leads to painful golf injuries.
Golfers break down into two categories: avid, professional and recreational golfers. These two groups often experience different types of injuries.
Professional golfers are on the golf course every day. They most often experience repetitive stress injuries because golf is a one-sided sport. For this group, muscular balance and movement assessments that identify asymmetries in the body are important to prevent overuse injuries.
Recreational golfers typically make it to the golf course a few times a month. Most recreational golfers’ bodies aren’t prepared to take on the capacity of a golf swing. They benefit most from chiropractic adjustments that increase flexibility and range of motion to ensure their body can accommodate golf swing patterns.
This is why golfers should seek chiropractic care. Regular chiropractic care treats and prevents injuries, and ensuring proper spinal alignment is an excellent way to improve your golf game. Having the functional capacity and proper range of motion to support your swing is essential to treating and preventing future injuries.
CrossFit
One of the fastest growing sports in America is CrossFit, a combination of workouts and competitions that set high physical fitness standards to identify some of the fittest people on earth. CrossFit workouts focus on strength and conditioning by combining aerobics, calisthenics, and weightlifting exercises. The CrossFit Games are an annual competition held every summer since 2007. Athletes from around the world gather to compete in intense and unpredictable workout challenges that ultimately result in a title holder who has displayed amazing feats of physical fitness.
The intensity of CrossFit workouts and competitions raises the risks of sports injuries to a high level, but CrossFit’s popularity continues to grow because it shows fast results for fitness gains across all levels of measurement for both men and women. CrossFit athletes experience improved cardiovascular capacity, core strength, strengthened postural muscles, and overall better movement functionality.
Recently, chiropractic care has become increasingly utilized by those who engage in CrossFit training to minimize injury. People engaged in CrossFit training develop tightness in their muscles and joints more rapidly than in other sports, making them high-risk candidates for injury. CrossFit athletes who receive chiropractic care before and after competing have a greater chance to continue competing at a high level of potential.
Chiropractic movement analysis can pinpoint issues generally hidden beneath the skin’s surface. By identifying and correcting the individual movement dysfunctions of a patient, a chiropractor can advise athletes on what CrossFit exercises to modify or avoid. Furthermore, exercises can be tailored to help correct movement dysfunction for better performance in the future.
Because chiropractic begins with a deep knowledge of the musculoskeletal system, chiropractic care is a hands-on alternative that can keep CrossFit athletes at the top of their game.
Cyclists
Biking can benefit your overall health, whether you are a competitive mountain biker or cyclist, an everyday commuter, or someone who simply enjoys rides with the family. However, leisure, amateur, and serious cyclists and mountain bikers must be careful because biking at any level presents a risk of injury, whether from a fall, overused muscles and joints, or improper posture or balance. And whether you’re riding a bicycle for fun, health, or sport, physical stresses from biking can take a toll on muscles, ligaments, tendons, and nerves over time.
Riding a bike is a full-body activity, so cyclists often experience injuries to various body parts. Some of the most common are:
- Tightness in the neck and lower back
- Piriformis syndrome
- AC joint sprains
- Clavicle fractures
- Elbow dislocation
- Lateral epicondylitis (tennis elbow, which also applies to cyclists)
- Ulnar neuropathy
- Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
- Numbness and tingling in the feet
- Heel and arch pain
- Cyclist’s Knee (Patellofemoral syndrome)
- IT band friction
- Patella, quadriceps, and Achilles tendonitis
- Hip flexor strain
- General muscle soreness
Many of these injuries are caused by overuse, falls, improper techniques, faulty or no protective gear, or an improperly fitted bicycle.
Chiropractic care can address all the most common cycling injuries. Cyclists have also reported improved respiration, range of motion, heart rate variability, muscle strength, and overall athletic ability with chiropractic care. Studies have also shown that chiropractic for cyclists can improve neurocognitive functions such as reaction time and information processing, which are good for anyone on a bicycle.
Football Players
There is no doubt that football is rough. The sport sees a myriad of injuries, from minor to severe, including head and neck, ankle, knee, and spinal injuries. Chiropractic care is quickly becoming a popular, viable method of treating football injuries, managing injury-related pain, and investing in injury prevention. Currently, all 32 NFL teams utilize chiropractic care for their players and staff. College teams are also finding that chiropractic care can help their players. They are increasingly hiring chiropractors to routinely care for players, helping them recover from injury and physical health.
There are several significant benefits that football players can gain from chiropractic care.
Chiropractic adjustments provide improved mobility for football players. Ensuring proper spinal alignment can increase flexibility and minimize or eliminate pain in movement. Football players often use chiropractic adjustments as an injury prevention measure.
The brutality of football leads to frequent injuries. However, soreness and stiffness are even more common. Many players use chiropractic care to ease the general pain that results from overexertion and rough play, which comes with the territory when one is an athlete. Chiropractic care keeps the body working as it should at optimal athletic performance.
Chiropractic care has long been recognized as an effective pain management tool, and now football players are also discovering the benefits of chiropractic therapy. Chiropractic adjustments can relieve headaches, particularly from head and neck injuries sustained during football games. It also relieves shoulder pain and pain from ankle and knee injuries such as sprains.
A direct correlation exists between athletes who regularly use chiropractic care and a decline in sports-related injuries. Football players who routinely receive chiropractic adjustments experience better flexibility and mobility, which has been linked to injury prevention. Additionally, chiropractic care helps to increase strength, and by making the body stronger, it is more resistant to injury.
Chiropractic care has also been linked with increased muscular strength. This can help football players avoid injury by combining the increase in strength with increased mobility and works to promote endurance and stamina.
A significant number of football players experience groin pain due to injury. Athletic pubalgia, or sports hernia, can cause significant pain. Chiropractic care has been shown to relieve the discomfort within eight weeks when combined with rehabilitative exercises.
Chiropractic care plays a significant role in injury prevention, whole-body care, and pain relief for athletes in one of the roughest sports in the world.
Baseball Players
The baseball season is a constant cycle of games and practices. The MLB regular season lasts 162 games. If you are fortunate enough to make it to the playoffs, you can add up to 22 more games to that number. Chiropractic care can help a baseball player’s performance, whether you play for the Yankees or a rec league team. Players at all levels have been able to avoid injuries, increase their range of motion, and enhance their performance through chiropractic care.
Since 90% of the central nervous system travels along the spinal cord through the spinal bones, chiropractic adjustments help improve nervous system function. When a spinal bone is out of alignment and not moving properly, commonly known as a Vertebral Subluxation, this impact on the nervous system will negatively impact a ballplayer’s performance. Many baseball players find that their body mechanics are improved by adjustments, leading to better pitching, batting, and throwing. Regular chiropractic adjustments bring proper spinal function and better balance to players, which reduces injuries, keeping players on the field. Players receiving regular chiropractic adjustments recover more quickly when they get injured.
A baseball player’s reflexes and hand-eye coordination are directly related to the ability of the central nervous system to function optimally. Vertebral Subluxation reduces nervous system function, thereby reducing a baseball player’s reflexes and hand-eye coordination. Regular adjustments restore the misaligned spinal segments, allowing the nervous system to function optimally and giving the player better hand-eye coordination and reflexes
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Types of Conditions We Help Athletes With
Chiropractic care is an excellent tool for athletes of all sports and calibers to enhance performance and prevent injury. In addition to helping with overall health, chiropractic care addresses common health concerns or injuries experienced by a wide variety of athletes.
Some of the most common concerns we see in our office are:
Plantar Fasciitis
This condition occurs when the ligament that connects your toes to your heel becomes inflamed, swollen, and weak. Plantar Fasciitis pain can become chronic if not treated.
Golfer’s Elbow
Golfer’s Elbow is considered an overuse injury. It can be experienced by anyone prone to overusing the elbow due to repetitive motion that activates the muscles, ligaments, and tendons surrounding the elbow. The most common symptoms are a pain in the elbow and forearm.
Concussion
A concussion is a brain injury occurring when the skull impacts the brain tissue. Inflammation in the brain from a concussion can persist after the initial injury and cause long-term effects. Some of the most common concussion symptoms include headaches, tiredness, insomnia, neck pain, fatigue, and brain fog.
Strains and Sprains
A strain is an acute or chronic injury of soft tissue (muscle or tendon), and a sprain is an injury of a ligament. Both types of injury result in pain, swelling, and limited movement of the affected area. Strains most often occur due to trauma, overexertion, or repetitive movements. Sprains are usually the result of falling or twisting the wrong way and forcing a joint into an awkward position. Both types of injuries may seem minor compared to breaking a bone but still require rehabilitation to avoid worsening pain or more serious injury.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is chiropractic good for an athlete?
Chiropractic care benefits athletes because it helps optimize the nervous system, which can improve athletic performance. Chiropractic care is essential for helping to prevent injury and allows for faster recovery.
When should an athlete see a chiropractor?
Chiropractic adjustments help to increase strength, mobility, and flexibility in athletes. Not only does chiropractic care improve an athlete’s musculoskeletal system, but it also optimizes their nervous system. Athletes can utilize chiropractic care during both the regular season and the offseason to ensure optimal performance and recovery.
Can kids in sports see a chiropractor?
With regular chiropractic care, young athletes may notice increased flexibility and reduced muscle stiffness. This helps a child’s body meet the demands of youth sports and decreases the risk of injuries from pulled muscles.
Do professional athletes use chiropractors?
All major professional sports teams employ chiropractors and utilize regular chiropractic care for increased performance, decreased healing time, and proper nervous system function, ensuring that their team is performing at its peak.
How often do athletes see a chiropractor?
Athletes at all levels see chiropractors regularly during the offseason and even more frequently when in competition.
How do chiropractors help with concussions?
The brain is the most critical organ in the body, and the brain stem extends down to the first and second vertebrae in your neck. If these bones become misaligned during the concussion, they can affect the function of the brain. Misalignments in the spine can cause an imbalance in the autonomic nervous system, decreasing vagal tone (rest and digest mode), which is vital during the healing process, especially when dealing with a concussion. Restoring proper alignment facilitates improved nerve, blood, and CSF flow which is essential in the healing and recovery process.
Should I see a chiropractor if I do CrossFit?
Patients engaged in CrossFit training tend to develop tightness in their muscles and joints more rapidly than in other sports, making them high-risk candidates for injury. Chiropractic care can help the musculoskeletal system release stress faster and recover more quickly to perform again at a high level.
Book Your First Athlete Care Exam
Exam includes in-depth whole-body analysis with provider, posture pictures and insight nervous system scans (provided if necessary). Consultation & plan of action will help you understand your care options.