Your spine can affect your nerves and chiropractic can give amazing benefits to athletes, as Grant Pretorius explains
If there is a population in this world that needs the help of a physical therapist, it’s got to be athletes in the masters age groups.
The mainstream choice is usually physiotherapy, but these athletes have had a close relationship with chiropractic since 1991.
Chiropractic is different from the other numerous physical therapies – simply because its primary focus is on the nervous system and making sure it is working with as little interference as possible. Most commonly, this interference happens in the spine. This is because the spine has conflicting functional responsibilities – it has to be both stable and flexible (often simultaneously). The spine is also packed full of nerve tissue.
So when the spine gets stressed beyond its ability to cope, the vertebrae becomes tight (splinted by muscles). This decreases sensory input to the brain as the little movements of the vertebrae feed the brain with important position sense (proprioception). This affects the communication loop whereby the brain doesn’t receive correct information and thus cannot then create the correct and accurate output – basically, garbage in, garbage out!
A good example of this is when you walk along a plank on the floor – it’s easy. Raise that plank a metre off the floor and you become a little tight and balance is much more difficult. Raise the plank to 10 metres and fear causes every muscle in your foot and leg to lock and you have massively reduced proprioception, making balancing impossible.
Removing nerve interference is important because the nerves control every cell tissue and organ in the body. The most relevant thing to you as an athlete is muscle strength, firing patterns and control. Correction of this allows you to be more efficient. This translates to running faster with less stress.
Masters at work
During my time working with the GB athletes recently at the European Veterans Athletics Championships in Izmir, Turkey, I had an informal chat with Professor Steve Peters, the world-renowned sports psychiatrist and a holder of multiple world titles and world records over 100m, 200m and 400m. During our conversation he came up with his definition of a masters athlete: “You’re injured, you have a list of reasons why you couldn’t get fit for this season, and next year you will do better.”
When you are under the age of 35 injury seems dire, even catastrophic. When you are over 50 you realise that injury is normal and it’s all about containing the injury and performing anyway.
So what was my experience of doing chiropractic with these older athletes competing at a relatively high level? I and my colleagues Mereil Davis and Dr Iain Crombie, both doctors of chiropractic, have many examples of the masters athletes benefitting from our combination of chiropractic and soft-tissue work over the course of the championships in Izmir. For example, I have a short-case study of an athlete who, after early injury in the competition, enjoyed results way above his expectations.
Case study
For the last couple of years Donald Brown, an acclaimed British sculptor and inspirational speaker, had been struggling with injury. This was negatively effecting his improvement – in June of this year he had reached a plateau of 12.40 in the 100m. He changed his training, applying the “less-is-more” principle and started listening more closely to his body.
At the British Masters Championships in Birmingham, a couple of weeks before the European event, he ran 11.98. Before the heats of the 100m in Izmir (August 24), he came to me complaining of right-sided low back pain with a history of chronic right hamstring and right shoulder issues. I examined him and found that his right hip flexor (iliacus muscle) and his left gluteus medius muscles were not working well. I applied chiropractic adjustments to his T12 and L5 vertebrae and this improved the function in these muscles.
After this treatment session he ran a PB of 11.85, even though he was aware of tightness in his left hamstring. The next day he improved again to 11.67 in the 100m final, which was good enough to clinch the silver medal. This was achieved even though he was still aware of his hamstring. We were both elated!
Four days later during the 200m heats the same athlete felt a “pop” in his left hamstring. He feared that his championship was over. He came to me feeling rather dejected. I examined him and found that indeed his left hamstring and left gluteus maximus muscles (buttock) were not working well. He had a small, but painful tear in his medial left hamstring. Chiropractic adjustments to T10 and L2 helped improve the function of the above muscles, allowing for better efficiency of the posterior chain of his left leg. He felt immediate improvement. I then did an active release technique on his hamstring tear and this eased the strain in the muscle. We agreed to have another session the next day before the final of the 100m hurdles.
The following day he felt a lot better and was surprised at how much he had improved overnight. His weak left hamstring and left gluteus maximus had held their improvement, but his body had shifted its inefficiency to the left calf and both gluteus medius muscles (hip abductors and hip stabilisers). I often find that when you remove one layer of dysfunction, another comes to the surface – like peeling an onion – until everything has been resolved. Chiropractic adjustments to his T10 and T11 improved the function of the left calf and both gluteus medius muscles. He then ran the 100m hurdles and recorded yet another PB (14.54) to gain another silver medal.
Another day on and he had his last individual final, the 200m. He was feeling confident and had no pain coming from his hamstring. In fact, he was quite amazed. He ran without pain and notched up another PB (24.28) for his third silver. On the very next day he ran in the 4x400m and 4x100m relays and, although he hadn’t run a 400m competitively for years, there was no problem. The team won a bronze medal in both events.
As you can imagine, from abject dejection after the 200m heats when he thought his championship was over, this turned to unparalleled elation when winning a haul of five medals.
Veteran competition is inspirational and vitally important for our ageing British population. Just because you are over the age of 35 doesn’t mean that you need to relegate yourself to recreational athletics. There is great competition out there and there are medals to be won. Just make sure you get your body in tip-top shape with the help of chiropractic care.
This is not a one-off story and chiropractic can help athletes get back on track quickly and efficiently.
» Grant Pretorius is a chiropractor and provider of active release technique. He was part of the medical team supporting the British and Irish athletes at the recent European Veterans Championships. His practice is the Farnham Chiropractic Wellness Centre – farnhamchiropractic.co.uk
