Chiropractic to Prepare for Golf

Ask the Chiropractor- should I start chiropractic care to prepare for the upcoming golf season?  Dr Hulsebus explains that chiropractic is a great starting point to prepare for the upcoming golf season.  #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

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- Hi, I'm Dr. Brant Hulsebus, chiropractor. I started this podcast because a lot of people have questions about chiropractic or chiropractic care. They don't really know who to ask or when they do ask somebody, it might be somebody who's quote unquote "unqualified" to answer a question about chiropractic. Not about health, but chiropractic specifically. See, a lot of people will check with their family physician before coming to a chiropractor, ask their family physician if it's a good idea. And often what you find out is your family physician has no idea what we do. All too often, I have a new patient come in and they tell me they wish they would've started a long time ago but they were given the advice by somebody else in the medical field who they trust that they should probably hold off on going to the chiropractor. And this is sad because if you don't know the answer to something, you should have said, "Oh no" and check with somebody. So we started this podcast,"Ask the Chiropractor". So if you have a question about chiropractic care, people email us, send us a message. Then I come on the podcast here and I try to answer their questions. So I am a chiropractor. I'm a third generation chiropractor, and I'm a third generation Palmer College of Chiropractic graduate, and I'm also the team chiropractor for the AHL Rockford IceHogs, the UHL, excuse me, the AHL affiliate of the Chicago Blackhawks. So I've been working with hockey players now for 18 years. So questions came up about golf. Should golfers go to chiropractors? If I'm a serious golfer, should I consider going to a chiropractic? Well, one, the PGA Tour has chiropractors all over it. There's PGA golfers going to chiropractors all the time. As we've seen, a lot of PGA players, their backs go out over time and that usually ends their career. So a lot of my golfers that come see me, they're not PGA golfers, they're not professional golfers. They might be professional hockey players, but they're not professional golfers. And their goal is to be able to golf all season. And more importantly, golf all season without lots of aches and pains and be able to still do everything else they want to do while they're golfing. See, golfing is a lot of bending and twisting as we know and more so like putting the ball on the ground to hit the ball, to tee it up or to get the ball out of the hole at the end of the round. So it's a lot of bending, it's a lot of picking things up and most of us aren't very good at that. Most of us have forgotten how to squat down properly, especially when we're on the golf course. We might not squat a lot, we might just bend over and grab things. Not only that but swinging the golf club also is a tremendous amount of stress to the back, forwards and backwards. And since golf is played outside, usually in the heat, there's also a dehydration factor that starts to speed up some of the aches and pain as we go. So as a chiropractor who works with golfers, the first thing we talk about is we take some x-rays of your spine and we want to see how your spine lines up. We want to see if there's a lot of torque or misalignments in your upper lower back pulling on your hips or is this your L4, L5 area causing the problems or is your pelvis itself so rotated with your tailbone or sacrum involved that's pulling on everything else? And we can usually figure that out with you after taking some x-rays, doing a chiropractic exam. And then after a few chiropractic adjustments, we start to see the back and literally what's going on and we start to make these corrections. Now see, it's important to start with the chiropractor first because when you have these spinal misalignments, we call them subluxations, these misalignments, they create stress and the stress hits the nerve that's going out. And so if you have a lower back that's misaligned and that nerve innervates your hip muscles, if you do all the hip exercises you want to, all the hip stretches you want to, if that nerve's not doing its job going to your hips, you're just not going to heal. So start with the chiropractor first so we can make those alignments and we can make those chiropractic adjustment corrections so the nerves have less stress and you increased your success everywhere else you go afterwards because where do you go afterwards or where do you go with the chiropractor? Well, here in my office, we have a couple different things we do. One, we work with some physical therapists in town where we have you go see them if you're really advanced and you really have some muscle atrophy or some really bad imbalance and we work with a physical therapist after we start chiropractic care. Once we get the nerves firing the right way, now the muscles can heal, now the body can repair itself so we like to adjust you first then send you to the therapist. Another option might be is maybe physical therapy is more advanced than what you need. Maybe you just need to work with a strength and conditioning coach and we have different strength and conditioning coaches we use all the time here in Rockford area. Our friends right down the road at Movement Fitness, we use them all the time and they're really, really good at helping athletes figure out where they're uncoordinated or overstrung here or too loose here after we make those chiropractic corrections. And we'll sit down with them and we'll show them the x-rays and we'll show them what we found and we'll show them what's going on. We use a team approach. There's lots and lots of communication between us and either the physical therapists or the coaches over at Movement Fitness where we can really dive into what's going on with the patients, or I should say the golfer. So our goal is to start your care now because right now here in Rockford, Illinois, the snow's starting to melt. It's beginning of March, we're starting get some good days and some bad days. We're starting to see all that green come and all that white stuff go away. We're getting less and less snow in the forecast and more and more rain. And so we're starting to get that itch. We're starting to get that itch to go out there. So this is a great time to think about how am I gonna get my body ready and stay ahead this year? A lot of us get hurt when we try to play all golf season long hurt and we never actually catch up. We're always playing injured, we're always playing sore. Then at the end of the golf season, we try to do something about it. But I'm telling you the best thing to do is do something about it today, get involved today before the season starts. Make those corrections, make your back feel better, and make your back function better. Help the chiropractor get rid of those subluxations. Work with somebody else on some exercises and strength conditioning stuff to rebuild that muscle that we've lost or stretch out where we need to stretch out, loosen up where we need to loosen up. And as a team approach, we can really improve your back and your function. And in turn, hopefully your game gets better too, right? And however, if nothing else, hopefully the fatigue doesn't kick in as quick as it used to. So working with a chiropractor is a great idea in order to keep golfing all season long. So if you're a golfer and you've had some lower back issues, remember to come see a chiropractor, talk to a chiropractor about whether or not your back could use some chiropractic care. Only a chiropractor truly knows the answer to that question. So should golfers go see a chiropractor? Absolutely, what's the best time to see a chiropractor? Well, before the season starts instead of waiting till you have an ache of a pain. A lot of people, I tell most of my golfers, you can see me once before the golf season or six times during the golf season, once before a round or six times after. If you go in healthy, you come out healthy. If you go in sick, you come out worse. So go into that golf round healthy, get your spine corrected, get your exercise program figured out. Get your stretching routine figured out. Work with your chiropractor, work with your strength conditioning coaches, and work with your physical therapist as a team approach to give you the best odds of having success and that's what it's all about. Maybe not about the score, but just being able to go out and still enjoy the nature, be able to enjoy outside, and be able to enjoy swinging that golf club and trying to stay as healthy as you can. Well, I'm gonna wrap this up, it's a quick, easy one. So if you have a question about chiropractic care or how chiropractic care might help you, go ahead and leave a message after this is over. You can find us on the internet at rockforddc.com, R-O-C-K-F-O-R-D-D-C.com and you can leave us a message right there and maybe next time you tune in, you'll be the question of the week. Other than that, stay healthy, stay strong, and looking forward to talking to you real soon. Oh on the side note, check out, I've done some other videos,"Now why is this still a thing?" My first one talks about non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Why do we still use those? We know they cause chronic pain. I talk a little bit about what I had read in the research and afterwards I shared the research papers with you so you can make up your own mind. Watch out for those. I'm gonna be dropping those at random times. Maybe not the audio versions, but definitely the videos. You can find us on our website, again. You can find us on YouTube. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, all those fun places. All right everybody, I'll talk to you real soon. Thanks for listening.