Welcome to the Family Chiropractic & Massage blog! Here, we will discuss anything and everything that has to do with chiropractic care and wellness. We will share helpful information and hopefully answer any questions you have through our articles. We are a chiropractic clinic that began in 1997 and has since grown to locations in North Charleston, Summerville, and Moncks Corner, South Carolina. We are dedicated to providing tailored care and treatment with traditional and new techniques to help our patients reach their wellness goals. We treat a variety of conditions including neck pain, back pain, injuries, sciatica, scoliosis, and more. Besides chiropractic care, we also offer physiotherapeutic care, rehabilitative care, and massage therapy. Our licensed massage therapists offer all types of massage from deep tissue to compression massage and more. We are strong believers in natural healing! Check out our website to find out more information about the services and care we offer, and contact us today to schedule an appointment with our experienced doctors!
In our last post, we discussed different types of chiropractic techniques. At Family Chiropractic & Massage, our doctors are trained in techniques such as the Diversified Technique, Thompson, Palmer Package, Cox Flexion Distraction, Activator, Integrator instrument techniques, and more. Some techniques involve the use of devices or special tables. The type of technique used depends on the patient and their needs– No two patients are alike, so treatment is always different! If you are interested in learning more about these chiropractic techniques, we encourage you to check out our last post!
Today, we’ll be discussing strength training and its benefits. Sometimes known as resistance training, strength training consists of physical exercises to improve strength and endurance. This often involves the use of weights, but can involve other machines or accessories such as resistance bands. Strength training is a great way to exercise, but it should go hand in hand with chiropractic care for optimal results. If you are interested in learning more about strength training, its benefits, and how chiropractic care can complement this exercise, you’re in the right place! Let’s get right into it.
Strength training is an important part of an overall fitness routine. It helps reduce body fat, burn calories more efficiently, and build muscle mass. Lean muscle mass naturally decreases with age, known as sarcopenia. It is estimated that after age 30, you will begin to lose as much as 3 to 5% of muscle per decade. Although this is natural, there are ways you can combat it and preserve your muscle mass. One of those ways is through exercise, particularly strength training. There are a variety of ways you can incorporate strength training into your exercise routine. This includes doing exercises such as pushups, pullups, lunges, squats, and planks. Other options include the use of dumbbells or barbells, weight or resistance machines, resistance bands, or cable suspension training.
Gaining strength helps you perform daily tasks much easier. This may include tasks such as carrying groceries, lifting items, or even running and playing with your children. Besides increasing and preserving muscle mass, strength training can also help develop strong bones, manage weight, improve heart health, and promote greater flexibility and range of motion. Having an increased range of motion in your muscles, ligaments, and tendons can strengthen the around the joints and lower your risk of injury. It has also been shown that strength training can lift your mood, improve brain health, and overall improve your quality of life.
So how does chiropractic care come into play? Chiropractic care heavily focuses on the disorders of the musculoskeletal system, with emphasis on the spine in particular. All muscles connect to joints or the spine, so it only makes sense that you would want to take care of all of these areas. Strength training, particularly with the use of weights, is all about balance– You probably don’t want one side of your body to be exceptionally stronger than the other. A misaligned spine can lead to pain and muscular imbalances because the muscles on one side of the body will be working harder than those on the other side. This will impact your exercise routine and prevent you from getting your desired results.
Not only can misalignment cause you to be in pain when you exercise, but the muscles can sustain damage over time. Your nervous system works best when the spine is aligned correctly. The muscles function and perform based on signals sent from the central nervous system, which relies on the spine. If these signals are blocked due to misalignment of the spine, your muscles cannot perform at their best. By removing interferences, or subluxations, from the spine, chiropractic care promotes and supports a healthy nervous system and reduces pain. When a chiropractic adjustment aligns or resets the joints, it assists in improving range of motion and makes movement easier, which can be helpful for your strength training routine. Chiropractic care also promotes healthy joints. When your joints are aligned and healthy, you will see improvements in the performance of your muscles when you work out.
Additionally, strength training can put a lot of stress on the body. As you build muscle mass and set new goals for yourself, you will be pushing yourself to new limits. This will inevitably make your body tense and sore. Most people believe that sore muscles after a workout indicate that they have pushed their muscles to, or beyond, the limit. You have probably heard of the phrase, “No pain, no gain”. While it is normal to experience some soreness after a workout, especially if you haven’t worked out in a while, muscle soreness or pain can actually indicate trauma or injury. This is sometimes referred to as a microtrauma injury, which is a small tear in the connective tissue of the muscle, and these injuries can disguise themselves as soreness. If not given sufficient time to heal, these minor injuries can turn into major injuries down the road. Routine visits to a chiropractor can help your body cope with the stress of strength training by keeping your spine aligned. It can also help release tension within the muscles, which in turn can relieve stress and help you relax after an intense workout. Chiropractic care will help keep your body in its best state and reduce your risk of injury while exercising.
Chiropractors can assess your needs and help you create an appropriate strength training or exercise program. They may also recommend a nutrition plan to go along with your exercise routine. They can show you the correct techniques of strength training so that you can properly complete exercises and lift weights without injuring yourself. With that being said, it is best to see a chiropractor prior to an injury, in order to keep your spine aligned and reduce your risk of injury. Consider it like a checkup or routine dental visit– A chiropractor can identify and treat subluxations along the way to prevent major injury or impaired body function down the road. One of the things you should remember is that you don’t need to be hurting in order to receive chiropractic care. Take care of your spine the same way you take care of your teeth– Routine checkups and preventive care are always the best way to go!
Strength training is a great way to build and preserve muscle mass and promote overall wellness. Chiropractic care serves as a great way to ensure that your body is working at its best to help you achieve your desired results. Seeing a chiropractor simultaneously with strength training will help you meet your maximum potential. We hope you found this article informative, and we encourage you to reach out to us if you have any further questions or concerns. It would be a pleasure to assist you. Here at Family Chiropractic & Massage, we have doctors who have studied a variety of chiropractic techniques to render care to patients with different types of conditions. As people vary, so do the techniques chosen to help each patient get well. We use evidence-based treatment methods to help patients get better faster. If you are suffering from any type of back pain, contact us today to set up an appointment so we can assess your needs and create an effective treatment plan. One of our experienced doctors would love to help get you on the track to living a healthy, pain-free life! Thank you for reading, and we hope you’ll check back for more articles about chiropractic care and all it has to offer!
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