Has soft tissue injury from physical performance exertion been an issue in your past and does Chiropractic care help!

Many people coming in to our practice ask what can we do to further help performance and recover better. But what if there was an effect on reducing your risk of lower limb injury.

A study in to semi-professional Australian rules football players and Chiropractic care has shown some extremely positive results for players.  The study which lasted an entire season and involved 59 players (from 2 VFL clubs), found that the group that included chiropractic treatment of manual therapy, mechanically assisted techniques and soft tissue work had only a 4% chance of hamstring and lower limb injuries, missing just 4 games for the season with these injuries. In this study an injury was defined based on games missed. In comparison, the non-chiropractic group had a 17% chance of hamstring injury and 28% chance of lower limb muscle strain, missing 14 matches through hamstring injury and 21 matches through lower limb strain respectively (2).

Also there were significant reductions in low back pain, highly important as this features as one of the most debilitating issues globally (4) and affects the ability to sustain prolonged or repetitive positions or movements in physical activity (1,3). Non-contact knee injuries and overall improvement in the physical components of their health also were reported as improved (2).
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So if you are a participant especially of contact sports based games or are just your every day physical performer, if you or someone you know sounds like they fit this mould and want to find out if chiropractic may help assess and manage to help reduce your risk of lower limb injury, have a chat with one of our chiropractors to see how they can assist.

REFERENCES

1. Ham YW, Kim DM, Baek JY, et al. Kinematic analyses of trunk stability in one leg standing for individuals with re- current low back pain. J Electromyogr Kinesiol 2010;20: 1134–1140. 
 
2. Hoskins, W. and Pollard, H., 2010. The effect of a sports chiropractic manual therapy intervention on the prevention of back pain, hamstring and lower limb injuries in semi-elite Australian Rules footballers: a randomized controlled trial. BMC musculoskeletal disorders, 11(1), pp.1-11.
 
3. Lee DC, Ham YW, Sung PS. Effect of visual input on normalized standing stability in subjects with recurrent low back pain. Gait Posture 2012;36:580–585. 
 
4. Vos T, Barber RM, Bell B, Bertozzi-Villa A, Biryukov S, Bolliger I, Charlson F. Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 301 acute and chronic diseases and injuries in 188 countries, 1990–2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013. Lancet. 2015;9995:743-800.