Extreme Chiropractic Fitness

By Dr. Jason Ross

Anyone who has seen a late night infomercial soon realizes that what’s on sale often isn’t so much a product as a promise. A promise to do something better, faster, easier. The same holds true with most diet and exercise programs, which may promise anything from six-minute abs to taking inches off a day to shaving seconds from our sprint time.

Most exercise plans promote instant results for little effort. And most miss the boat.

A thoughtful look at the origins of any athletic accomplishment unerringly reveals two ingredients–hard work and consistent training. Hard work is up to the athlete. Consistent training may require some help.

No matter how much talent we have, the bottom-line of any training program is our ability to stay injury free. Even a minor injury will set back a training clock and can derail the best laid plans. At least it’s likely to keep an athlete short of optimal performance. At worst it can keep us from performing at all.

Every athlete and weekend warrior needs to pay attention to four common concerns: alignment, areas of mobility and stability, tight muscles, and posture.

The first key to staying healthy is maintaining alignment. This means that all body joints are positioned as they should be. This allows optimal nerve conduction to the muscles they supply. Think of nerves as the living circuitry for our bodies. When everything is working properly the muscles that are supplied are strong. Lifting weights to strengthen a muscle is useless if other factors are inhibiting its normal functioning. A chiropractor is able to detect what is out of whack and make necessary adjustments to bring about correct alignment.

For example, a pelvis out of alignment will cause some muscles to become inactive or less powerful while prompting other muscles to become overworked. An overworked muscle often fails and manifests as muscle strain. Many hamstring and quadricep strains are the direct result of pelvic misalignment.

It also helps to understand that our body is built on a system of alternating areas of mobility and stability. Working from the ground up, we should have ankle mobility, knee stability, hip mobility, low back stability, mid-back mobility, and neck stability. When one area is dysfunctional, it affects other parts of the chain.

For example, a lack of required motion in an ankle joint often leads to knee pain. Lack of motion in the hips usually creates instability in the low back or knee and causes dysfunction.

The principal of tight muscles has to do with something called "Sheringtons Law," which holds that when one muscle is overactive and tight, it's antagonist or opposite muscle will be weak. So when a runner has tight hip flexors, predominately involving psoas muscles, its antagonist or opposite butt muscles will be relatively weak, or "turned off."

The last key to pay attention to is posture. Bad posture often results from an unbalanced training routine. For example, as we lift our chest and back, it feels like they are in opposition as agonist and antagonist. But even though they appear to be "opposites" in the mirror, both the pectoral girdle and the latissimus dorsi are actually internal rotatores of the humerus. When these muscles are overdeveloped, they produce the rounded shoulder look seen in gyms across the country. This in turn creates shoulder problems and can lead to what is called anterior head carriage.

Anterior head carriage describes a condition in which we carry our head in front of our shoulders, a major misalignment issue. This overloads muscles of the back of the neck, causing strain. Results include everyday headaches and mid-back problems. Another effect of this postural ailment is shortening of our running stride. In the case of a marathon runner, think how much ground and time is lost over 26.2 miles when strides are cut short by this misalignment. Even the weekend runner is affected by a shorter, insufficient stride. Why work harder to run slower?

Chiropractic adjustment is a great way to find and prevent misalignment and poor muscular patterns. Here the saying, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" certainly applies, whether we’re an Olympic athlete, weekend warrior, professional triathlete or first time marathoner.

The ability to consistently train injury free will be the difference in reaching our goals and enjoying the process, or falling short and blaming this month’s bad luck on an injury. Instead, we’ll find fresh excitement in realizing that with a few physical adjustments, a whole new arena of performance and health can be ours.

Dr. Jason Ross is a doctor of chiropractic with a practice at Chiropractic Unlimited, 5060 Cascade Ave. in Grand Rapids, MI. He may be reached at 616-940-4647. A former member of the U.S. National bobsled team, Dr. Ross continues to train and treat members of both the men’s and women’s bobsled teams.

Source: Originally published in Natural Awakenings West Michigan January 2007 Fitness issue.