Increasing Dance Performance With Chiropractic
How does Chiropractic help Calgary Athletes?
The role that a Chiropractor can play in a Dancer’s career can be an integral key to increasing performance, whether the dancer be a professional or someone just looking to have fun. If the brain controls everything in the body and it gets those messages to all the parts in our bodies through the nervous system, it can be reasonably assumed that the better working the nervous system the better the messages can be transmitted. Chiropractors work on improving or maintaining a nervous system free of any interference and we do this in most part by adjusting misalignments of the spine.
Dance, like so many other sports, relies heavily on balance as a key factor in increasing performance. One can only imagine the fine detail that it would take to coordinate many of the spins, steps, jumps, and taps, and all of these activities are controlled by the nervous system. Improper nervous system function could then be like having a sports car with a very large motor and to be expected to maneuver the car through a very curvy track with less than optimal steering control. Performance of that car would be greatly decreased.
Waters and Boone (The relationship of spinal misalignment elements to muscle imbalance in dance performance. Chiropractic.1988) investigated the relationship between elements of spinal misalignment determined by chiropractic analysis and both static and dynamic balance during dance performance. In the six week study, Waters and Boone enrolled 14 experienced female dancers who performed a ten minute dance routine twice a week. Prior to, and following each dance performance, the subjects were analyzed for “leg length balance,” “pelvic torsion,” and the presence of a “cervical syndrome.” Waters and Boone concluded that the results of their study “suggest that three elements of spinal misalignment: leg length imbalance, cervical syndrome, and pelvic torsion, play an important role in the specific and overall muscle balance in dancers.” The authors theorized that their results suggest the “importance of eliminating the elements of spinal misalignment” prior to an athletic or physical performance.
It is by no means suggested that without chiropractic care you could not be an elite dancer. Nothing takes the place of hard work, great coaching, a burning desire, and natural talent, but there are a lot of things that people can incorporate into their team to increase performance. It makes perfect sense that someone that is trying to increase performance could do so by maintaining a healthy diet. One could not expect an Olympic athlete to get the most out of their bodies by eating at a fast food restaurant three meals a day. This food analogy would be the same by adding a chiropractor to a team of people who are all trying to put the dancer in the best possible position to achieve optimal performance.
In the Waters and Boone experiment there was no mention of pain being related to the areas of dysfunction. Pain can be a deceptive symptom to measure nervous system dysfunction. Although, when someone is in pain it most often will correlate with dysfunction in the nerves feeding that area, only an extremely small portion of nerves in our bodies transmit information into our conscious awareness. This means that it is very likely that we can have nerve dysfunction without very obvious symptoms.
How will you know if you do have nerve dysfunction?
This is exactly what Calgary Chiropractors are trained to do. Detect and correct areas of nerve dysfunction. There are many different ways to do this and at Fish Creek Chiropractic, your Calgary Chiropractor, we custom fit your care plan and adjustments to meet your goals from pain relief to wellness and optimum health.
Call us today to book an appointment 403 271 7224.
Dr. Aaron Cain has spent his life researching everything there is to know about health and maximum human performance. While earning his Doctorate of Chiropractic he also earned a Masters Degree in Sports Chiropractic, and the Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist certification offered by the National Strength and Conditioning Association.
As the CEO of Fish Creek Chiropractic, a family chiropractic office, Dr. Cain has created a program that has helped thousands in the Calgary community to optimize their brain-body connection, eat better, move more and create a healthier state of mind. He maintains a busy family chiropractic practice, and finds time to implement the principles and practices of Life By Design in his own life.