Chiropractic And Sports Performance

Numerous elite athletes, including Joe Montana, Tom Brady, Wayne Gretsky, Michael Jordan, Lance Armstrong, and Tiger Woods, have credited chiropractic care with helping them on their path to excellence. These athletes have experienced firsthand the benefits of getting adjusted.

An elegant research study by Smith et al in JMPT in 2006(1) demonstrates how a chiropractic adjustment gives an athlete a competitive edge. In this randomized controlled study, participants were asked to perform a task before and after an adjustment. Participants who received an adjustment had a significant increase in reaction time, while control participants who did not receive an adjustment had only nominal change in reaction time. Click here to view the abstract. Please feel free to visit Path of Life if you wish to read the full article.

Additional studies on the effect of chiropractic adjustment on athletic performance are underway at Life University’s Sports Science Institute (LUSSI).

Chiropractic care has also been shown to increase proprioception, which is the communication between the brain and muscles. Click here, here, and here for abstracts. Additionally, a recent paper by Hubscher et al, entitled Neuromuscular Training for Sports Injury Prevention: A Systematic Review, shows evidence that proprioceptive/neuromuscular training reduces the incidence of certain types of sports injuries among adolescent and young athletes. Click here for the abstract for this paper.

These articles clearly show that chiropractic care helps keep an athlete at the top of his/her game by helping to correct the issues that result from wear-and-tear (or accidents), and by helping to maximize the brain-body connection for optimal performance.

If you’d like to see how chiropractic care can help you improve your game, contact us about our Performance Edge Exam. This exam is a unique way of evaluating an athlete’s musculoskeletal functional capacity that can identify imbalances or weakness that can affect strength, flexibility and performance.