6 Ways Chiropractors Can Help Prevent and Treat Sports Injuries

Injuries can quickly throw off your sports season. You might end up spending more time on the sidelines than expected, and inevitably, getting back into it all can pose an equally tough scenario.

Here are six things you can do to reduce your risk of sports-related injury:

Injury Prevention Tip #1: Keep Your Body Strong

Many injuries can be avoided by maintaining strong muscles and bones. This is fairly intuitive, as one can easily imagine a stronger tissue being more resistant to tearing and breaking than a weaker tissue would be.

One of the best ways to make your body strong is to perform regular strengthening exercise.

It doesn’t take much to improve strength. For instance, research indicates that as few as 2-3 total body resistance training workouts per week is plenty for optimal muscle and bone health.

Beyond resistance training, you should also aim to eat a good diet that is rich in micronutrients and macronutrients. These food substances help to build up tissues on a cellular level. Be sure to eat plenty of high-protein, high-vitamin, and high-mineral foods every day.

Injury Prevention Tip #2: Stay hydrated

Believe it or not, drinking enough water can help prevent injuries. Staying hydrated helps improve mobility, recovery, and thermoregulation. It also improves mental clarity, which boosts performance and minimizes the chances of injury.

Injury Prevention Tip #3: Keep Your Body Flexible

Beyond maintaining a strong body, you should also seek to keep yourself as flexible as possible.

To illustrate this point, think about a tree.

Trees are incredibly strong, stable structures that can support incredible amounts of weight. At the same time, trees can also bend and flex during heavy wind storms.

By being both strong and flexible, trees are resilient against many different forces that occur in nature.

Much like resistance training, it doesn’t take much stretching in order to become flexible. By performing stretches for the major muscle groups about 3 times a week for roughly 30 minutes each session, you’ll watch your flexibility increase markedly in no time at all.

Injury Prevention Tip #4:Wear the proper gear:

Players, especially children, should wear the proper protective equipment, such as pads (neck, shoulder, elbow, chest, knee, shin), helmets, mouthpieces, face guards, protective cups, and eyewear. And it’s important that this equipment is properly fitted.

Injury Prevention Tip #5: Participate in Many Different Activities

An interesting phenomenon that has been observed in youth sports is that those kids who participate in many different sports seem to experience fewer injuries than those who specialize in only one sport.

It’s not exactly clear why this is the case. However, it seems likely that kids who develop their muscles in many planes of movement are better able to develop said muscles so that they are more resistant to injury.

We can also apply this theory to adults. Many adults who participate in different activities are less susceptible to muscle tears and other, similar injuries.

Therefore, the people who ski in the winter, swim in the summer, and complete other activities during different parts of the year are doing great things for their bodies!

Injury Prevention Tip #6: Visit Your Chiropractor Regularly

Even though chiropractic treatments focus primarily on the spine, these amazing adjustments lead to improved total body health and wellness.

Chiropractic manipulations realign the spine, enabling the central nervous system to communicate better with other parts of the body. This improved communication allows for healing, increased strength, and better body mechanics. In turn, this enables patients to resist injuries and heal in less time when they suffer from an unavoidable injury.