Sports Performance

The human body is highly adaptable.  It will do whatever it can to get you from point A to B.  The better someone can adapt, the greater potential they have to be a fantastic athlete.  When incorrect form or training adds up, the body continues to adapt until it has maximized its adaptive potential.  This is when non-impact or non-traumatic injuries occur.  It is the type of pain where a patient states: “I just woke up with it,” or “I do not recall doing anything, the pain was just there one day.”  Restoring normal joint and body mechanics is one way to improve that adaptive potential and sports performance.  This is completed through the techniques described below.

Active Release Technique (A.R.T.)

Active Release is the gold standard for soft tissue care.  It is a patented massage based technique that is extremely effective at treating a myriad of conditions, from chronic overuse injuries to nerve entrapments.  It does this by decreasing pain and spasm to restore balance and proper biomechanical motion to a joint.  There are three main ways an injury occurs: acute conditions, summation of small tears over time or altered blood flow and oxygen.  These create tough scar tissue in the injured area and decreases movement. In turn, this can change full body mechanics.  The scar tissue makes the muscle shorter and tighter and can often compress nerves in the area.

Cupping

“Where there’s stagnation, there will be pain. Remove the stagnation, and you remove the pain.”

The old Chinese medical maxim holds that pain results from the congestion, stagnation, and blockage of Qi, or vital energy, vital fluids, lymph, phlegm, and blood. If pain is the essence of disease, then suffering is a result of obstructed or irregular flow in the body. Chinese cupping is therefore a method of breaking up the blockage to restore the body’s natural flow of energy.

Cupping Combined With Acupuncture

Generally, cupping is combined with acupuncture in one treatment, but it can also be used alone. The suction and negative pressure provided by cupping can loosen muscles, encourage blood flow, and sedate the nervous system (which makes it an excellent treatment for high blood pressure). Cupping is used to relieve back and neck pains, stiff muscles, anxiety, fatigue, migraines, rheumatism, and even cellulite. For weight loss and cellulite treatments, oil is first applied to the skin, and then the cups are moved up and down the surrounding area.

Like acupuncture, cupping follows the lines of the meridians. There are five meridian lines on the back, and these are where the cups are usually placed. Using these points, cupping can help to align and relax qi, as well as target more specific maladies. By targeting the meridian channels, cupping strives to ‘open’ these channels – the paths through which life energy flows freely throughout the body, through all tissues and organs, thus providing a smoother and more free-flowing qi (life force). Cupping is one of the best deep-tissue therapies available. It is thought to affect tissues up to four inches deep from the external skin. Toxins can be released, blockages can be cleared, and veins and arteries can be refreshed within these four inches of affected materials. Even hands, wrists, legs, and ankles can be ‘cupped,’ thus applying the healing to specific organs that correlate with these points.

Other Benefits Of Chinese Cupping

This treatment is also valuable for the lungs, and can clear congestion from a common cold or help to control a person’s asthma. In fact, respiratory conditions are one of the most common maladies that cupping is used to relieve.

Cupping’s detoxifying effect on skin and circulatory system is also significant, with a visible improvement in skin color after three to five treatments. Cupping removes toxins and improves blood flow through the veins and arteries. Especially useful for athletes is cupping’s potential to relieve muscle spasms.

Cupping also affects the digestive system. A few benefits include an improved metabolism, relief from constipation, a healthy appetite, and stronger digestion.

A 2015 report published in the Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine noted cupping as an effective alternative method of treating acne, pain, facial paralysis, cervical spondylosis, and herpes zoster.

As health practitioners and researchers continue to study the benefits of cupping, this traditional alternative care technique will gain further acceptance and wider practice across holistic healthcare centers in the U.S. as an effective treatment for a wide variety of ailments.

Contemporary Medical Acupuncture 

Acupuncture is science and evidence based.  A Contemporary Medical Acupuncture provider goes through a careful examination and decides on a selection of acupuncture points, which focus on restoring an individual to optimal function.  The objective of contemporary medical acupuncture and its physiological effects are as follows:
1. Analgesics (Pain -Relief) – It helps to raise the pain threshold to treat individuals with pain disorders such as back pain, arthritis, etc.
2. Sedation – Caused by a decrease in delta and theta waves. This helps treat individuals with insomnia, pain, anxiety, addictions and behavioral problems.
3. Homeostatic/Regulatory Effect – Regulates and balances our parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, which are involved in rest and digestion and our body’s fight or flight responses.
4. Immune-Enhancing Effects – Increases the body’s antibodies.
5. Psychological Effects – Calming effects from the mid-brain’s reticular formation. Increases the release of dopamine for a positive, “feel good” effect.
6. Motor Recovery – Aids in the recovery of a patient through a bio-feedback mechanism at the spinal cord and also within the brain.
By achieving these objectives, acupuncture can enhance the effects of chiropractic treatment and increase the healing rate of an individual, so they can quickly return to optimal function.  Learn more at the CMA website​

Proprioceptive Deep Tendon Reflex (P-DTR)

P-DTR is a unique neurological therapy based on neurology, biomechanics, neurophysiology, anatomy and profound research.  It works directly with the Central Nervous System and is constantly researched and expanded.  It explains how all other existing manual therapy methods achieve the results that they do.  This is a neuro therapy, which helps the Central Nervous System to adapt to, and deal with everything in a person’s environment, which fosters optimal health.  The P-DTR concept clearly shows and explains exactly how we create dysfunction, how to identify and assess dysfunction, and how to permanently treat dysfunctions.  P-DTR demonstrates how to find the priority problem and how to fully treat it so that it never comes back.  Not only can it relieve painful symptoms, but it can also significantly improve human performance in all areas of life. Learn more at the P-DTR website

SFMA: Selective Functional Movement Assessment

Synergy Performance Taping

Kinesiology tape looks similar to athletic tape, but has stretch to it.  This stretch is used to decrease or increase tension in proprioceptors in the skin.  Proprioceptors give the body information about where one is in space at any given time.  Synergy Performance Taping combines a functional assessment to identify abnormal muscle firing patterns and applies the Kinesiology Taping system to improve these faulty patterns.  It is also great for common musculoskeletal injuries, decreasing pain, preventing further injury, and abnormal fascial tension.​

Graston Technique 

Graston Technique is a patented form of instrument-assisted soft tissue mobilization that utilizes a stainless steel tool to break down scar tissue and fascial congestion.  The technique allows for both the practitioner and patient to detect areas of dysfunction.  This technique often will break capillaries in the area treated, increasing blood flow and oxygen to promote the body’s own healing processes. 

Myofascial Release Technique

This is a soft tissue technique utilizing a combination of massage styles to improve blood and lymphatic flow as well as improve fascial and muscular movement.  Trigger points can develop in areas of stress or high tension with myofascial congestion.  Myofascial Release helps to relieve these areas of congestion to allow the body to use its own natural healing processes.