How your spine is functioning will have an impact on how you perform far more than any other factor. Without a healthy spine and nervous system, performing simple tasks such as bending over or squatting down can become difficult and can undermine your immune system while preventing adaptation and growth of the musculoskeletal system from occurring. Spinal health can determine how well you perform your exercises and how well your workouts may go. The constant tightening, flexing and releasing of large groups of muscles such as the pectorals or hamstrings require proper and constant communication between the nerves. This is only possible if the way these signals are sent, through the central nervous system, are free of subluxations and other troubles.
Just like massage therapy and chiropractic go hand in hand, so does working out and chiropractic care. Many people who suffer from problems such as sciatica or lower back pain also deal with weight and physical activity issues. Being overweight leads to unnecessary pressure on the spine and keeps your muscles in a constant state of tension, which then pulls the spine in different, opposing directions. A sedentary lifestyle can weaken your bones and lead to muscular atrophy while adding a lot of stress when your body is finally called upon to perform. The body adapts to the information it is given and fed every day, so it is important to work out and be physically active often, so your body can perform and adapt like it is supposed to. Regaining health is more difficult than maintaining it. What chiropractic care does is help release nervous system interference. If your posture is off, muscles are then being overworked, causing the spinal joints, the vertebrae, to come out of position. When that does happen, inflammation can occur which will cause a decrease in nervous function. Chiropractic care can decrease the amount of physical stress placed upon the body so that your immune system is able to worry about other things, such as injury, illness and disease, and not worry about the physical stress placed upon it.
There are many different types of exercises that can benefit the spine and central nervous systems. Compound exercises such as squats and deadlifts are extremely effective as they activate many muscle groups in the body at the same time and require proper form and function to be able to execute properly without causing injury. The plank exercise requires you holding your core and spine in a straight line for a given amount of time which helps strengthen the abdominal muscles and therefore its ability to help stabilize the spine. Receiving chiropractic care, such as getting an adjustment before working out, can increase flexibility, mobility and range of motion, which are important in exercises and activities that require multiple movements. It can improve strength and endurance and helps keep the joints lubricated to lower the chances of disc or joint degeneration.
In comparison to an athlete and the average person, the athlete is far more active and more than likely would require more maintenance on their spine due to the stresses that they place upon themselves through their activities. The main thing with an athlete and non-athlete is to find out what specific activities they are doing, and to develop the body based off that. If you are an endurance athlete, you must train your muscles to be able to handle endurance. If you are more of a sprinter, you must be built for quick bursts of energy. Olympic weightlifters for example, compete in the snatch and clean and jerk competitions which are some of the most complex and dangerous movements in lifting while NFL players crash into each other week in and week out. New England Patriot quarterback Tom Brady contributes his longevity to the chiropractic care he has received throughout his career.
With regards to the average person, most people have jobs that have repetitive motions, or repetitive posture. Every day we do things that are causing postural stress and we must offset that stress by doing stretches and exercising, as well as keeping a flexible and mobile spine by incorporating adjustments. Doing these things daily will help you by taking some of the stress off, aid in maintaining proper posture, and you will notice that some of those aches and pains, sprains and strains will start to diminish because you are in proper posture.
Another big issue is overloading. When you overwork a muscle, it has two effects: it makes that muscle exhausted and tighten because it's doing too much work, but it will also inhibit the muscle that is opposing that action. What will happen is that the muscle will start to weaken, so we must find out which muscles are being used repeatedly and offset that by starting to stretch out the overworked muscle, and the opposing muscle we must start to strengthen. For example, if you are doing something that always works the bicep, you will inhibit the triceps, so you will have an overworked bicep and weak triceps. So, we'd have to start stretching out the bicep muscle, because if it is overworked, it is going to get tighter, and we must train the triceps muscle to be able to balance that out again, so that there is not an imbalance between one muscle and another.
If you are out of posture, you put so much stress on the skeletal muscular system that aches, and pains become the norm. If you don't do anything to combat this, other muscles will have to take up the slack for the muscles that are overworking, and then the pain starts to spread. If this imbalance keeps on going and unless you start to strengthen muscles that offset that, you will always be going in the same direction. At a certain point you can make changes by doing certain physical activities and chiropractic adjustments to straighten you out, however if you wait too long and your bones start to change, there is little you can do about it.