Chiropractic and Athletes

Why athletes of all ages and sports seek Chiropractic care- Dr Hulsebus addresses the various athletes he has encountered.   #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

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- Hi, I'm Dr. Brant Hulsebus and welcome to another edition of "Ask the Chiropractor"."Ask the Chiropractor" is our podcast that we do here from when somebody has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I always say if you have a question about chiropractic, the only person that can answer the question is a chiropractor. A lot of people ask their family physician a question about chiropractic, but your family physician has no education on what chiropractors are or what they do other than what they've been told of them. So if you have a question about your teeth, you ask a dentist. If you have a question about your feet, you ask a podiatrist. If you have a question about chiropractic, ask a chiropractor. And that's what this podcast is all about. So I'm here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a chiropractor. I've been practicing for 21 years. Our family practice has been open for 74 years as I was originally founded by my grandfather and then my father. Now me, I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic the original school of chiropractic where it all started. And I also serve as the team chiropractor for the Rockford IceHogs the AHL affiliate of the NHL Chicago Blackhawks. And that's the point of today's talk, today's question. I have been a team chiropractor there for 19 years. I've been taking care of athletes and majority of what we do with the athletes is preventative care, maintenance care. So a lot of people ask me about chiropractic care for athletes, should athletes be under chiropractic care? How does athletes in chiropractic care work? And how often should the athlete be seen and when do you normally see them before or after the events? So let's address some of these topics and let me give you a quick little background about why I think I'm pretty good to answer this question. Besides being a graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic and besides being 19 years a team chiropractor for the Rockford IceHogs. I've also been the chiropractor previously for a CBA basketball team. Before they had the NBA Developmental League there was the CBA for the Rockford Lightning. I worked with the basketball players and we saw several players go up to the NBA. I've also been the team chiropractor for many collegiate wooden bat leagues in this area for baseball players. So I've taken care of several baseball players over the years. I've also been the team chiropractor for an indoor soccer team the NISL, rock River Rampage soccer teams. So I've taken care of a lot of soccer players over the years. We also work with a local college here at Rock Valley College. We work with their athletics department too and know when you talk about a college athletics department you're pretty much covering just about every sport there is. So I've worked a lot of different athletes at different ages and different various stages in your careers. When you work with the semi-pro athletes you work with a lot of young athletes just getting started. And you also work with a lot of athletes on the tail end of their career. Like in hockey, several of them had played in the big leagues for several years and they were still trying to hang out for a couple more years, or maybe they were brought in to be the veteran presence on a young team to help mentor and shape the next hockey players coming up. Same with the basketball and young players too. I also take care of several of the division one college athletes and I've also worked with eight different Olympians. Now I always like to say I worked with eight different Olympians but they were all hockey players all in one sport. But nevertheless, it still counts. So I get to see lots of different athletes for different reasons and as a chiropractor. we are very much in sports today, very much in sports. Even more so than when I first started. I'm a proud member of the Pro Hockey Player Chiropractic Society. Where all of the chiropractors for any pro level team be it the majors, AAA, AA, or single A we're all members of it. And we all get together once a year and compare notes and talk about what we've see in hockey players and how we as team chiropractors can do a better job taking care of hockey players. And because of that, I have, being that I'm a little bit outside of Chicago, I have several hockey players and the minors that come down and have me take care of them as well as they're playing in the Chicago land area because of my hockey background. We also have a whole committee devoted in our National Association of Sports part of the International Chiropractic Association. I am the Illinois Delegate of the ICA as we call it, the International Chiropractic Association. And we have a giant sports council. And up until recently we had an arrangement with the Arnold classic. When I say Arnold, I'm talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a big expo or a big show once a year, the classic in Columbus Ohio where all the top body builders and strong men and everything goes to it. And as chiropractors we've always been the longest sponsor of it. And so Arnold always gets to meet with us and I get to meet Arnold several times have my picture with him at... If you're watching this, I'm showing a couple pictures of me and Arnold right now over the years. And I get to meet him. I've also got to meet other people like boxers and bodybuilders. I got to meet Lou Ferrigno several times. Buster Douglas, the first guy to beat Mike Tyson. I've met him, stuff like that. So I've been around a lot of athletes in my time. And also when you take care of the sports teams you also take care of the locker room staff. So I've gotten to meet several coaches and general managers and other famous people throughout the years. So it's really been fun for me to work with the athletes. So we were very involved in sports as a pro football chiropractic association. There's a pro baseball chiropractic society and we all, the groups get together, have seminars together. So we're very embedded with athletics today. And my dad's day was a big deal cause one of the 49ers I want to say maybe Jerry Rice, I'm not a hundred percent sure on that. But he actually got a chiropractic no what it was Joe Montana. Joe Montana got a chiropractic adjustment during the game, I'm pretty sure. And it was live on television. It was such a big deal in the eighties to see a chiropractor in action. But like Thurman Thomas who was the all time leading rusher, I hate saying that as a Walter Payton fan. But Emmett Smith, the all time NFL leading rusher had his own personal chiropractor that would travel with him, go everywhere he'd go to tune them up and you... I mean that by tune them up, not necessarily fix them because majority of athletes get care before the game. A lot of people think it's kind of funny that I'm at the ice hockey game. I really must be busy after the hockey game's over. But in reality, athletes usually see chiropractic care before not after events. We have all kinds of research papers that show that athletes will get chiropractic care prior to the game have less injuries and have better performance scores. So a lot of chiropractic in athletics has to do with before care, not so much after. A lot of people are like, "Oh yeah I can see after you're checking to the boards you must have to have your back adjusted." And that does happen and we do do that. But I do majority of my work before the games'cause all these athletes are looking for that edge. Every pro athlete, every athlete at every level wants that edge over their competition. And if we could get their spines in line get 'em adjusted and make them move and be more fluid and move around better and skate a little faster have a little quicker reaction time jump a little higher, just perform a little higher level that could make all the difference in tonight's competition. And that's the majority of why we see athletes. We don't see them the day of. We see the weekend before. So a lot of my younger patients that are in high school level and middle school level if they have a great big tournament coming up on Friday and Saturday, I'll see them in here on Wednesday and we'll get them all tuned up and loosen up and they go out, perform better. I don't necessarily see them afterwards but I do see them a lot before. Take care of a lot of golfers too, right? And when we tell the golfers and saving my pickleball players I see a lot of pickleball players nowadays. What a great sport pickleball is. When I see a lot of them come in the office and I always tell them, you can come see me once before or six times after your choice. But why go into an event hurting and not feeling good? When you go into an event feeling great and to perform great and afterwards still feel great and stay ahead of it. So we're really big into seeing people before the sporting event, not necessarily afterwards. Getting everything tuned up, getting your fluid motion, making your range of motions good, no limitations. Go out there and give it your best. Isn't that what they always say? Give it your best. Well if your back's out of alignment and your range of motion is restricted it's gonna be really hard to give it your best. That's why people see chiropractic care before events not always after the events. And we do do after the event stuff. I mean we do a lot of stuff after the events. Matter of fact, a lot of people don't know this, but one of the top doctors are some of the, that one, excuse me many of the top doctors dealing with concussions especially with violent sports or maybe with some of our veterans are chiropractors. And I've gotten a study with three of those chiropractors and learned some really cool stuff. The first one I got to work with was Scott Rosa. Scott Rosa is a chiropractor who kind of got his little moment of fame for helping the 85 Bears quarterback, Jim McMahon. Jim McMahon had got a vicious hit after the play was over. There was a really dirty player for the Green Bay Packers named Charles Martin and the Green Bay Packers did some really dirty and cheap after the game. After the play was over, he had a little hit listing. He was gonna go after certain players and try to take them out. And because the Bears back then were the best team of all time, he decided he was gonna hurt Jim McMahon. So he scooped up Jim McMahon and hit him head first into the turf. And Jim McMahon was never quite the same afterwards after this dirty Green Bay Packer player did this to him. So what they did is Jim McMahon went and they were talking about the 85 bears, like 25 years later, where are they now? And unfortunately, as you know, some of these people, the concussion stuff do something that's kind of sad that they shoot themselves they kill themselves with a concussions problems they have and they usually shoot themselves in the chest, not the head. And they usually donate their brains to science to help the next generation. And to me that's weird to think that somebody is that bad off. They do that, but they're smart enough to want to help the next generation by not damaging their body in certain ways. And unfortunately, one of the 85 bears did that the late Dave Duerson. It's sad but Jim McMahon was talking about having a lot of the same symptoms and problems and they put his MRI up on the screen as Scott Rosa looked at him and goes, holy cow, I can help that guy. Scott Rosa got ahold of him and did some upper neck adjustments to his upper neck and spinal fluid flow got it generated again. And Jim McMahon came back to being Jim McMahon. And I got to work with Dr. Rosa with several of our hockey players and being able to talk to him about how he might be able to benefit them and they could benefit from seeing him. And we've made some connections with some of our players and got got them under care. And I'm happy to say these players are doing phenomenal. The other one's Ted Kerrick, Ted Kerrick at this moment of fame because he was on the cover of "Sports Illustrated" with a guy named Sidney Crosby. Those of you don't know who Sidney Crosby is. If Wayne Gretzky is the Michael Jordan of hockey Wayne Gretzky, excuse me, Sidney Crosby is the LeBron James. You know, he's good but not that good. Like Jordan was good, right? So Sidney Crosby missed 18 months of hockey because of head injuries. And he went down to the Kerrick Institute where he does a lot of brain trauma stuff. And Dr. Kerrick has a really unique approach where he watches your eye motions and other things and he's able to get you in a certain state with the posture on which you're doing with the hockey stick and he gives you a chiropractic adjustment and then all of a sudden the players start to clear up and they get back under their feet. And we've had several NFL football players and hockey players go with Dr. Kerrick and some of the hockey players I take care of went and got this study and got to be Dr. Kerrick's patient. So Dr. Kerrick has reached out to me and him and I have sat down and talked several times about how I continue the care he started in today's player Ben Other back in Rockford. So I got to study with him and learned a lot of cool stuff about concussions there too. And the last one's, a new friend of mine and said has a friend of mine, Dr. Longyear he's the one doing stuff with he has a motion MRI machine where you can actually see the adjustment. So he puts you in this motion MRI machine he adjusts your upper neck and we literally wash the spinal fluid, regenerating flush itself out in the veins, dump the blood out, and the headaches and the pounding and all that clears up on these people. Now, Dr. Longyear, he does more stuff with our veterans coming back because they had the same kind of violent injuries too like a hockey player, a football player would have. And his stuff and his work is phenomenal. And him and I got to know each other pretty good a couple seminars ago. So really cool seeing some of the stuff with concussions. So if you have a young athlete that you're concerned about getting concussions, it's really good to go see the chiropractor at the beginning of the season and getting a bunch of neck x-rays taken as a baseline. So now we have a baseline. So should the athlete get injured the biggest question we have whenever that we have a head trauma is when's it safe to go back? So if we have these x-rays ahead of time we can re x-ray them and once everything looks the same then we can have them go back. And here in Rockford, I've actually partnered up with a guy who does a lot of concussion testing and the two of us work really well together. So the chiropractic athletes go hand in hand. Absolutely it does with performance which is the athlete's main concern and a lot of stuff, the concussion stuff which is usually mom's biggest concern, right? Moms are the ones that stop us. Dad's usually say, don't play football so you could get hurt. It's usually mom stopping them. So we can help moms feel more comfortable about the decision of letting the athletes play. So there you go, chiropractic and athletics hand in hand. We help athletes all the time. So if you have an athlete that you think that you're worried about their safety, their wellbeing, have a chiropractor establish a baseline before this season starts. Two, if you're an athlete and you feel like you're limited to your speed and you wanna go faster and do better, go see a chiropractor. Most of us actually have friends who are athletic trainers and we work with them. We work with sports conditioning coaches and stuff like that. So if you come see us a lot of times we can start you on the great path to get faster, better, quicker. Here in Rockford, we have those connections. We use them all the time. So again, any questions for the chiropractor next time? And you want to be on"Ask the Chiropractor"? Go ahead and leave a message below. Go to our website, rockforddc.com. R O C K F O R D D C .com. Leave me a message there and maybe next time you'll be the question of the week in "Ask the Chiropractor". Thanks everybody.