People love to hear about and make predictions, don’t they? Who will win the World Cup, the point spread of their favorite NFL team, even whether the zombie apocalypse will happen this year or in 2020?
OK, so some people think the zombie apocalypse is already here, but that’s another story.
Today, we want to talk about 3 predictions we have for the future “marriage”, if you will, between bodybuilding and chiropractors.
Let’s Talk Facts
By now, you know that injuries from weightlifting can come from various sources, including lifting beyond your capacity, poor technique, training too hard without enough time for rest, even being distracted, causing you to lose your concentration and grip.
Many bodybuilders suffer from what is known as microtrauma. As the name implies, these are tiny tears that can occur to the sheath surrounding the muscle, and the muscle itself, including the adjacent connective tissue. This micro-tearing of the muscle will lead to additional stress to the tendon.
While you probably won’t feel it or notice any changes, microtrauma leads to microscopic bleeding, which will lead to inflammation and possibly even fibrous adhesions.
Have you ever heard long time weightlifters complain of the same pain in the same spot day after day, month after month, when they do certain exercises? This is most likely due to fibrous adhesions caused by microtrauma.
Why are we discussing microtrauma and adhesions? Because performance is everything and our upcoming predictions will explain how athletes will avoid these problems, and more, with chiropractic care.
What Does Chiropractic Care Have to Do with Me?
You might be one of those people who think chiropractors are experts at cracking your back or popping your neck, but that’s as far as it goes. This is old thinking that comes from a lack of knowledge.
Bodybuilders and other professional athletes have been using chiropractors since… probably as long as both professions have been around!
Many bodybuilders already know the secret to improved performance and less injury, including Lou Ferrigno, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Evander Holyfield, to name a few. Every muscle in the body works because of the nerves. When the nerves are disrupted or blocked, signals get lost or misunderstood.
Chiropractors work to remove these disruptions by making sure that the spine and joints are aligned so your muscles get the signals they need to grow bigger and stronger.
What Champion Bodybuilders Know that You Don’t
Winning champions know about the spinal shift that occurs in bodybuilding. This is when the muscles on one side of the body are more stressed, weaker, and need to work harder to achieve the same results as the other side.
Imagine your weight bench, for example. You rest your back on the bench to perform certain exercises. Now, what if the bench ended up being 6 inches wider on one side (and assuming you couldn’t place yourself dead center).
This would certainly affect the balance of your workouts, correct? It would only be a matter of time before you ended up injuring yourself.
This is just one area where a chiropractor can help. By keeping your spine and joints in alignment, you can avoid this spinal shift and work your muscles evenly.
Being able to work all your muscles to their maximum potential and avoid microtrauma (or more serious injuries) before it happens is what makes champions!
The Top 3 Predictions for the Marriage of Bodybuilders and Chiropractic
Predictions can be fun, but we are dead serious with this list. We believe chiropractic care and bodybuilding will be the wave of the future in this arena.
So, while we don’t want to put a date on our predictions, we believe it will happen soon. For now, let’s leave the time frame as “in the near future.”
Prediction #1
Chiropractors Will be at Every Olympic Game and for Every Team
No one is surprised when they see medical doctors, physical therapists, and even psychologists as part of an Olympic team, but chiropractors? Some people act like the team brought along a 3-legged dog; interesting but why?
Chiropractors began treating athletes at the 1976 Olympic Games and were official appointed starting with the 1980 Winter Olympics. In 1987, the Federation Internationale de Chiropratique du Sport (FICS) was created in 1987.
This group has screened and organized chiropractors who treat athletes at both national and international events, including the Olympics.
Chiropractic has long been used by professional athletes, including Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Olympic decathlon gold medal winner Dan O’Brien. Joe Weider, considered by some to be the father of bodybuilding, used chiropractic care and pushed to have chiropractors at Olympic events.
It only makes sense to us that the use of official chiropractors will soon become commonplace on the Olympic field. To reach their optimum, athletes need to keep stress levels low, but symmetry to a maximum. Chiropractic can do that and more.
Early signs of injury can be dismissed during the heat of competition. Soft tissue injuries are every bit as painful and debilitating as a broken bone or sprained joint.
Olympic level athletes are recognizing the importance of soft tissue injuries and how chiropractic care can not only keep them in top physical condition but can also prevent injuries that will keep them out of the game.
So, don’t be surprised when, at future Olympic events, a gold medal winner announces that they owe their success to their parents, their trainer, their doctor and their chiropractor. We promise not to say, “told you so.”
Prediction #2
More Studies Will Confirm that Chiropractic Care Improves Performance
While plenty of professional athletes and bodybuilders know that chiropractic care has improved their performance, the truth is that this is hard to show in scientific studies.
Like marijuana, most of the studies to date have been performed by members of the chiropractic community.
While these studies are valid, this can cause many people to immediately dismiss the results as biased. Some people have said that the studies are akin to asking a member of PETA if it was OK to eat a hamburger.
Opinions and personal feelings have little to do with scientific studies, however. Despite millions of testimonies and over 100 years of practice, many people still see chiropractic care either as ‘complete woo’ or only helping those with back and neck pain.
We predict that this will all change in the very near future. With the multitude of professional athletes and bodybuilders stating in public venues how chiropractic care is a normal part of their overall routine, combined with more knowledge and acceptance from the public, like weed, we will see more studies done that will prove beyond a doubt that chiropractic care leads to improved performance and muscle growth.
Even a review of the current literature and studies to date (in this review dated 2010) by the Canadian Chiropractic Association states that there simply weren’t enough studies or literature to help them reach a conclusion.
Notice here that they don’t say there is no evidence, but that there is a general lack of material to work with. This prediction is based more on what will become a need rather than a desire.
Of course, everyone wants proof to back up that what they believe, but in this case, we believe that demands from the public, athletes, and bodybuilders and the chiropractic community, will lead to scientific studies being conducted by other entities than chiropractors themselves.
Prediction #3
Every Single Champion Will Have a Chiropractor
This prediction is based on the previous two.
If more studies were performed which proved beyond a doubt that chiropractic care could improve performance and prevent injuries, this would cause more Olympic athletes to add chiropractors to their professional care team. It makes sense that other athletes around the world would then train under the guidance of their chiropractor.
Speaking of other parts of the world, there are a few countries where this is already being done. A pair of female bodybuilders from Guam talk about how their chiropractor, Dr. Joseph Dimalanta, helped them train using a variety of methods, including determining their body composition, metabolic rate, specific blood values, then designing training methods and nutritional requirements.
This pair competed in different events in the National Physique Committee Elite Physique Championship in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 2016. Lisa took 1st place in two divisions while her friend placed second in another division.
With so many champions in numerous sports stating that they felt chiropractic care was vital to their success, our prediction that, very soon, every winning sports champion will have their chiropractor backing them up? (sorry about that bad pun).
Chiropractors do so much more than just “crack backs”. Chiropractic care has evolved and developed new techniques, with one Anchorage chiropractor offering ultrasound, diathermy, infrared, traction, and DDR systems, as well as X-rays, all performed in-house!
Regular chiropractic care is one of the best-kept secrets among bodybuilding professionals. Why? Because they know that regular care can improve their performance, prevent injuries, and help injuries heal more quickly. Every bodybuilder knows that there is no gain when you cannot train.
Author Bio:
Dr. Brent Wells, D.C. is the founder of Better Health Chiropractic & Physical Rehab and has been a chiropractor for over 20 years. His practice is offering chiropractic care, physical rehab therapy, and chiropractic massage therapy in Alaska and has treated thousands of patients from different health problems. Dr. Wells is also the author of over 700 online health articles that have been featured on sites such as Dr. Axe and Lifehack. He is a proud member of the American Chiropractic Association and the American Academy of Spine Physicians. And he continues his education to remain active and updated in all studies related to neurology, physical rehab, biomechanics, spine conditions, brain injury trauma, and more.
