By Jasper Sidhu, DC

Sports injury management and treatment is not just for the athlete.

Nowadays, more and more people are engaging in sports, from the young to the elderly. With participation come injury and who better to treat those injuries than you?

To get your practice into the sports market, you need to first determine what kind of athlete you want to work on. Will you want to work with professional and elite athletes? If so, what will be your scope? Are you looking to work specifically in treating sports injuries, or also looking to get involved with the sports performance part of the continuum? The answers to these questions will lead you to your niche.

But, don’t try to be everything to everyone. If you are looking to work with athletes on the sports performance side, align yourself with strength and conditioning coaches, or obtain additional certification to be able to enter this field.

By aligning yourself with athletic trainers, strength coaches, nutritionists, sports psychologists, and others, you are able to provide your own unique specialty to their athletes and refer your athletes out — which can greatly increase the amount of referrals generated.

 As a chiropractor, you are in a prime position to be able to evaluate function and design customized protocols and programs to get athletes back to competition.

Phases of treating sports injuries

The four phases of treating sports injuries include screening, treatment, rehabilitation, and functional training.

• Screening. With an athlete, you want to identify weakness and limitation in the entire chain, not just at the site of injury. More often than not, athletes that return to activity after treatment may have some residual imbalances or movement patterns that can make the situation worse.

One way to integrate a screening process is by using the functional movement screen, which establishes a baseline for treatment. Not only is the movement screen essential in rehabilitation, it can also be used to develop effective exercise programs for the healthy athletic population.

• Treatment. Athletes understand the importance of chiropractic adjustments in keeping them functional. Adding other tools into your arsenal of treatments will greatly enhance the results you are getting.

Two such tools, Active Release Technique and the Graston Technique, primarily work on addressing adhesions and scar tissues that tend to develop from overuse and injury. Getting an athlete back to competition or activity as fast as possible with the least amount of residual issues and muscular imbalances is your purpose. Some practitioners use both, while others prefer one over the other. It’s a matter of preference and you should look into both and assess which one fits your particular style.

Whole body vibration exercise therapy is another tool integrating into chiropractic offices. This tool allows you to achieve flexibility and strength gains at a fraction of the time as with conventional training. In a busy chiropractic office with minimal space, this tool allows you to provide effective stretching and strengthening, and deep tissue massage quickly. With several platforms on the market, you should assess which one is right for you and your practice.