Sport's performace

Chiropractic Can Improve Athletic Performance
By Dr. Melanie Beingessner

Printed in the Western Amateur Sports Newspaper, Fall 1999.

What do Donovon Bailey, Joe Montana, Dan O’Brien, Mark McGwire, Michael Jordan, Steve Smith and Mel Gibson have in common? They all have regular chiropractic adjustments to improve their health. Mel Gibson aside, today’s athletes are looking for an edge over their competitors and Chiropractic is just the profession to help. >>Read More

People who have never seen a chiropractor before might wonder why an athlete would want an adjustment to help them win. Most people know that chiropractors are great at helping people recover from injuries, but there is an aspect to chiropractic care that is much more than mechanical neck and low back pain. Chiropractic adjustments help to improve the overall function of the nervous system, which, in turn, improves the efficiency of the communication between the brain and the body. With a fraction of a second meaning the difference between gold and silver, many of today’s top athletes are adjusted regularly during training and before each event.

After the “controversy” of the 1996 Olympics over who was really the fastest man in the world, a race was held at the Sky Dome in Toronto between Donovon Bailey and Michael Smith to settle the score. Just before lining up at the starting blocks, Donovan Bailey was adjusted on television by his chiropractor. While Donovan Bailey won as Michael Smith “experienced a hamstring problem”, the point is that chiropractic was an important part of Donovan Bailey’s preparation for competition.

During the NBA playoffs last year [1998], John Stockton from the Utah Jazz was filmed in the dressing room having chiropractic adjustments to help him improve his performance and to contribute to his team’s success.

Calgary Flame’s Steve Smith is adjusted regularly before home games and on the road if a chiropractor is available. Steve has been under regular chiropractic care for over 20 years and he says that he notices that his performance on the ice is not as sharp if he cannot be adjusted before a game.

How do chiropractic adjustments help to improve athletic performance? The answer lies in the nervous system. In our bodies, the brain is the master control and everything that we do is regulated by nerve impulses that are sent from the brain out to the body through our nerves. The vertebrae protect the spine and allow our bodies to move, but they can become fixed (the chiropractic term is subluxated) and these subluxated vertebrae can put pressure on the nerves as they exit the spine. This added pressure on the nerves can restrict the impulses that are sent from the brain to the body, which in turn can reduce the body’s ability to function as it should. Chiropractic adjustments improve the movement of the vertebrae and help to take the pressure off the nerves as they exit from the spine. With the release in pressure on the nervous system, the brain is able to communicate with the body more efficiently and the body functions with more precision.

For the athlete who is looking for an edge to his or her physical performance, the improved communication between the brain and every part of the body, especially the heart, lungs and muscles can make the difference between winning and losing.

The above comparison — Sidney Crosby to the famed Italian sports car — was one of the more compelling soundbites from concussion expert Dr. Michael Collins during this morning’s press conference. The quote, in full:

“Sid is a Ferrari. His vestibular system is better than anyone else’s. That’s why he is the most elite hockey player in the world. That system is where Sid excels at. That system is why Sid is who he is.”

Okay, so what’s a vestibular system? It’s a sensory system that contributes to our sense of balance and spatial orientation. In non-labcoat terms, our ability to keep upright and move around. You can see why these attributes are rather important in the game of hockey — players stand on blades 1/8th of an inch thick and move around at ridiculously high speeds.

More from Dr. Collins…

“I can tell you that over the course of the summer we initially rehabilitated Sid to the point where he became more active, started to skate, was doing well. We got to that 80-90 percent level of exertion and as he increased his speed playing hockey, as he increased his turns and motion, the symptoms started coming back again. At that point, even with all the rehab we’d done, Dr. Carrick became involved. He’s an expert on rehabbing these types of injuries and these types of symptoms. Sid saw Dr. Carrick and recently Sid has made exceptional progress towards improving and becoming normal.”

So this, essentially, was the summer “setback” Crosby may or may not have experienced, depending on which source you believed. Whatever the case, chiropractic neurologist Dr. Ted Carrick was brought aboard to aid in the rehabilitation process. Now many of you hear “chiro” and think of some guy fixing your back by cracking it then telling you that, to keep it fixed, he has to keep cracking it twice a week…for the remainder of your life. Oh, and don’t even think about doing this procedure on yourself, because you didn’t graduate from Spinal College. That’ll be 300 dollars. Please leave your payment with Linda at the front desk.

Thankfully, it sounds like Dr. Carrick isn’t running that kind of racket. So breathe easy, Sidney Crosby hockey pool owners. Here’s what the good doctor had to say.

“Your brain allows you to think, to write, to read, to look at paintings or to perhaps paint them. But the one thing the brain does is it really allows you to know where you are in space and where space is in reference to you. In Sid’s case, that was not exactly correct. That is to say areas of space were not in an appropriate grid to where he would perceive them.”

Between this and the Ferrari quote, I think the doctors were really trying to emphasize the importance of Crosby’s cognitive abilities. If you think about all the things that make him such a gifted player — vision, elusiveness, ability to see plays before they develop — they’re tied directly to recognizing and identifying space (in this case, the available space on an 85×200-foot sheet of ice.) Without them, he’s not Sidney Crosby.

Carrick then went on to say that they’ve essentially re-programmed Crosby so that space now appears on an appropriate grid. The term “markedly stable” was also used a few times.

“The problem we have in Sid’s case is the length of time that he’s had the disconnect of what his function was led him into different patterns that we have to break. Things are working well now, but he has to condition himself with these new patterns. When we first saw Sid, different functions didn’t work well at all. Now they do work well, he’s just got to get used to them.”

And here’s the long-winded answer to the $64 million question about a potential return: It’s going to take time.

There’s no “four-to-six weeks” when it comes to recovering from a concussion, because 1) each individual is different and 2) severity is extremely hard to diagnose. Throw in the rehabilitation and reconditioning with new patterns…well, that’s probably why nobody at the presser pinpointed a timeline for return. The closest thing anybody got was Crosby saying he’d “likely” return this season.