Before you start a new exercise program, have you ever wondered whether your body is in a proper condition to accept the new stresses? This doesn’t mean the lack of pain! While your body may be out of alignment, there might only be minute signs before the pain and injury comes in altogether. Let’s change that with Chiropractic care!
Chiropractic is much more than just back pain relief and pain management. While it is common practice to seek Chiropractic when we get injured, the greatest benefit of Chiropractic lies in performance enhancement and preventative care. Regular chiropractic care encourages spinal health and restores proper joint function, resulting in improved function and mobility for the body for your daily living. Moreover, Chiropractic care helps to optimise the nervous system and boost your immune system, allowing your body to greater accept and adapt the stresses put to your body so your training outcome gets maximised.
Benefits of Strength Training
Strength Training, also known as weight training / resistance training, is a physical activity designed to improve the muscular strength and fitness of specific muscles or muscle groups against external resistance such as body weight or free weights. Strength training programmes can be used with easily available and low-cost equipment, making it easy to implement in real-life settings especially in the older generation! Our lean muscle mass naturally diminishes with age and is replaced with body fat if nothing is done to preserve the muscles. Strength training helps us to develop strong bones, manage your weight, build muscle strength and, of course, enhance our quality of life over time.
Strength training does not necessarily happen in youngsters only! It has also been proven to be safe and effective to counteract loss of muscle mass, strength and physical function in older adults. Effective strength training programmes could also help to reduce the need for homecare, thereby promoting independent livin. All in all, strength training can actually benefit all individuals at different age ranges!
Chiropractic and Strength Training
Chiropractic care is frequently sought worldwide by people in order to enhance their level of performance in their exercise and training, also to increase their quality of life. Chiropractic works on the basis of the nervous system, and that working with the nervous system puts the body in optimal shape. As your spine and joints function well, it provides a strong structural support for your body and safeguards your nerves and internal organs; all while allowing the balance of flexibility and stability required for your strength training exercises.
Furthermore, Chiropractic adjustments can make it easier for the brain to engage and move muscles. Studies have shown that Chiropractic adjustments are able to reduce the central inhibition from the brain to the muscles, allowing better communication and more effective activation of the nerves responsible for muscle contractions. Comparing this to lifting weights, a nerve signal from the brain allows your muscle to flex and lift the load. When these nerve signals and muscle contractions are able to be activated more easily and more often, the muscles are able to grow quicker!
Other than enabling us to produce more force with our muscles, Chiropractic adjustments help us to enhance muscle efficiency as well. If our joints and bones are not in proper alignment, it may disrupt and cause a movement to be more difficult to achieve. Chiropractic adjustments help to set the bones in an optimal position that allows your body to achieve a movement with the greatest efficiency. With a body that is in proper alignment and function, you can maximise the results of your training as your body is more equipped to handle greater loads with the least amount of stress. This means, you can get much more out of your strength training with lesser risk of straining and injuring your body!
Chiropractic and Prevention of Injuries
A Chiropractor can facilitate one’s performance by detecting spinal problems earlier and provide prompt treatment of injury, ensuring optimal spinal and joint function. During each pretreatment examination, pathomechanics of the spinal and extremity joints such as elbows, wrists and ankles, as well as deficiencies in movement patterns and muscle function, can be identified and corrected to restore normal neurology and biomechanics. As a result, pain and severity of injuries can be avoided or reduced while enhancing performance.
With every functional deficit or reduction in joint mobility comes additional stress and load over the dysfunctional structures, as well as its surrounding normally-functioning structures. In a situation where one pelvic joint may be misaligned and not moving optimally, the lack of motion from that joint not only stresses its direct bones, muscle and ligaments, but also causes the opposite pelvic joint to compensate with greater movement to achieve the same degree of global movement. This increase in movement in the surrounding compensating joints and structures may result in greater risk of wear and tear, and/or sprain strain injuries.
Another example of postural and functional deficits resulting from spinal abnormalities is the bilateral asymmetry of bone alignment and muscle tone. Similarly, with asymmetry comes a greater risk of injuries and reduced physical performance due to the unilateral stress applied to the body’s structures. A study was done to measure the degree of symmetry before and after Chiropractic adjustments, and found an improved static symmetry right after the adjustment was applied. By improving posture, function and mobility, we can reduce your risk of injuries while you can focus on your strength training.
Conclusion
Ultimately, strength training is an activity that is immensely beneficial to all people of various ages. Muscular strength is needed for our daily activities, and a greater quality of life can be achieved with greater muscular strength. However, the journey to improving muscular strength may be disrupted with risks of injuries when your body and joints are not in proper alignment and function. By having Chiropractic treatments, we not only get to prevent injuries, but also increase effectiveness and efficiency of our strength training programmes as well. Let’s achieve less pain and more gains with regular Chiropractic care!
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