How Runners Can Benefit From Chiropractic Care

Running provides fantastic health benefits. It boosts your metabolism, supports weight loss, builds muscle, strengthens your bones, and exercises your heart and lungs. It also feels great—hello endorphins! 

If you’re serious about running, you will consider your diet, ensure you have great shoes, invest in a smartwatch, and work on ways to improve your stamina and speed. 

But there’s more you can do. Did you know that Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the world, regularly visits his chiropractor? Chiropractic care provides a holistic, gentle, and unique approach to optimizing your performance by encouraging healing, strengthening, and restoring balance in your body—even when you don’t have an injury.

5 Benefits of Chiropractic Care for Runners

There are five specific ways that chiropractic care helps you as a runner.

1. Reduce Strain

Without realizing it, your posture might be slightly off. This increases the friction and strain on your joints as you train. One weakness in your posture has a domino effect on your whole body. Your chiropractor assesses your posture, checks the position of your vertebrae and each joint, and ensures they are all optimally aligned. 

They use manual manipulation to correct each joint—you might hear some popping noises, but that’s normal! This treatment protects your spine and joints (and their supportive tissue) from wear and tear in the future.

2. Overcome Past Injuries

As a serious runner, you have likely experienced an injury in the past. It could be something minor like a sprained ankle, or something more serious. Many athletes subconsciously compensate for this when they engage in activity again. But this causes an imbalance where certain joints take more strain than they should. 

Your chiropractor will help you identify these imbalances, release any tension through manual therapy, and restore strength to the affected area so you can balance the force and load across your body when you run—as well as treat any residual aches and pains.

3. Prevent Future Injuries

Chiropractic care not only helps you heal from past injuries, but it also identifies weaknesses that may lead to future injuries. It’s almost like running insurance. Your chiropractor will examine your body, talk to you about any aches and pains you experience when you’re fatigued—or at other times, and craft a treatment plan that addresses weak points. 

You’ll learn how to stretch and strengthen your body using specific exercises. Stronger muscles equals better joint support. Common areas where weakness leads to pain or injury include your core and hip muscles.

4. Enhance Performance

As you run, your body experiences forces in various places in your body. How you respond to the work dictates the strength, force, and power of your running. 

Spinal manipulation ensures your nervous system (how your body and brain communicate) is functionally ideally. This improves your awareness of your body in space—which improves the response time of your muscles. When your joints are optimally aligned, your body is free of tension and pain—and you run faster! These changes don’t happen on their own, they require a trained professional.

5. Lifestyle Tips

Your chiropractor understands your body. Expect to discuss sleeping habits (including your mattress and pillow), your diet, and your posture while you work and relax. Sometimes small changes can make a big difference in your running—now and in the future.

You might also discuss training options that are different from your typical routine. Varying your training provides a more effective and holistic approach to improving your performance while reducing strain on your joints, especially if you’re recovering from an injury.

You don’t have to be in pain to visit a chiropractor.  In fact, seeing one now can save you a lot of pain, hassle, and downtime in the future. Safeguard your passion, contact Evolve Chiropractic, your local chiropractor in Woodstock, GA, and grow stronger and run better and faster than ever before!