Running is one of the most popular sports here in Cape Town and can offer many health benefits.
Whether you enjoy road running or trail running, whether you are a sprinter or a Two Oceans or Comrades Marathon runner. Chances are that you will get injured at some point in your running journey. Runners are prone to injury. And let’s face it, injuries suck!
- Runner’s knee
- Lower back pain
- Foot pain
- Twisted ankle
- Muscular pain
- Chest pain
- Faintness
- Fatigue
- Hamstring pain
- Pelvic pain
- Plantar fasciitis
Not all pain is equal
Although some people believe that pain is just a part of doing their sport, not all pain is equal. Pain is your body’s way of letting you know ‘something isn’t right’.
Ice packs, heat packs, over the counter pain killers and even injections into the site of the pain may help to relieve the pain and symptoms temporarily but they are just gagging your body; masking over the symptoms and not getting to the root of the problem. Pain is also often the last guest to show up at the party so the problem may have been manifesting over time and now your body is unable to compensate for the issue any longer and asking you for help!
Top athletes, including the fastest man in the world Usain Bolt, utilise Chiropractic care, not only to help them enhance their performance but also to help prevent injury and as part of a healthy lifestyle.
What is the solution?
A solution lies in looking at what is happening in the whole body and not just at the site of pain. A very useful way to do this is to assess posture and analyse how your body is holding itself upright, not how you are holding your body up. This gives you a window into your spine and nervous system so a person trained in postural analysis can determine where the source might be.
Armed with that information you can now find a professional who can help by working with your body to correct those things that the body can’t and to change your lifestyle to help your body improve the things that it can. Lifestyle changes might begin with changes in how you sit, sleep and stand and move onto corrective exercises, as you are ready.
How can Chiropractic care help runners?
Research completed by the Australian Spinal Research Foundation and Dr Heidi Haavik from New Zealand Chiropractic College, revealed that those who were researched achieved a greater level of proprioception (sense of awareness of their body in space), greater muscle activation leading to greater strength, endurance, power and force. After a Chiropractic adjustment to the dysfunctional spinal segments, researchers noticed an increase of their force produced by their lower limb muscles by 16%. Both the control and test group had to repeat the contractions over and over, and it was noticed that those in the control group became weaker as the testing went on. Those in the test group who had received specific Chiropractic adjustments did not have fatiguing muscles; in fact, their muscles produced more strength while completing the repeated strong muscle contractions.
At Peak Chiropractic Centre, our Chiropractors are trained to thoroughly assess your body with postural analysis, functional testing, x-ray analysis (if necessary) and help to create a plan to relieve your pain, correct the underlying problem and get you back to your best. We are also able to work with your body to correct things that your body cannot and to advise you in what you can do to help your body heal more effectively.
Resources:
http://therealitycheck.com/animations/strength-and-fatique/
“Changes in H-reflex and V-waves following spinal manipulation”, Experimental Brain Research, vol. 233, 4, pp. 1165–73
