What gives? Is this the life of a CrossFitter?

You wake up in the middle of the night and your shoulder is screaming as you lie on it. In the morning, you can barely bend over to put your Stance socks on after that heavy squat session yesterday. Box jumps and double-unders are impossible because of your heel pain. You’ve rolled, smashed, broke out the bands, taped, and enlisted a “super-friend”. Nothing works.

What gives? Is this the life of a CrossFitter?

Pain Is Not a Side-Effect of Training

It shouldn’t be. Athletes are known to think musculoskeletal pain is a normal side-effect of training hard. MobilityWOD and the new kid on the block, ROMWOD, have helped many functional fitness athletes move better and prevent injuries. But if you’re injured, these programmes were not designed to substitute the advice of a health professional. Knowing when to seek advice and who to go to is critical.

Are you uncomfortable? Or are you hurt?

Pain is there for a reason, and you need to listen to it and go for help when you’re hurting. Read through the list below for common examples of when help is needed.

• Sudden Onset of Pain – You turn over a heavy clean and feel a pop in your wrist. You know immediately something is wrong. On your next attempt, you can’t even clean an empty bar.
• Pain Travelling into Your Arm or Leg: You show up to the box late, and deadlifts are on the whiteboard that day. You skip the warm-up and rip the bar off of the floor. Suddenly, a pain shoots down your right leg.
• Worsening Pain: Weeks ago you noticed tightness in your posterior shoulder whilst finishing a snatch EMOM. Lately, the pain has gotten worse and is affecting other movements. You’ve had to scale your WODs and weights as a result.
• Pain That Does Not Go Away: Over the past couple of months, you’ve noticed elbow pain doing pull-ups and muscle-ups. It doesn’t stop you, but it annoys the hell out of you. You’ve taped it up and taken some ibuprofen, but it won’t go away.

After you’ve established what type of pain you’re in, it’s time to seek help from the appropriate practitioner. The choices for which musculoskeletal (MSK) specialist to see can be confusing. If you want me to tell you who is better between a physiotherapist, osteopath, or chiropractor – I’m not going to. There are varying levels of education, experience, and skills between practitioners. The trick is to take the best from all them and put together a winning team for your rehabilitation.

Osteopaths, Chiropractors, and Physiotherapists

Physiotherapists, chiropractors, and osteopaths are regulated by government-mandated bodies and are trained to diagnose and get you back in action as quickly as possible. If you have an active injury or pain that is not improved by mobility work, massage, or sport therapy, you can receive diagnostic work and focused treatment from these guys. When your injury is sudden or gets progressively worse, finding the source of your problem is important.

Physiotherapists in particular are skilled in identifying the mobility issue causing your pain as well as handling acute and chronic injuries. They will evaluate your condition and come up with the best plan of attack to get you under that bar again as quickly as possible. Their strengths lie in soft-tissue treatment methods, joint mobilisation, and, most importantly, rehabilitative exercise.

I’ve seen everything from fractures, to sprains, dislocations, and contusions in CrossFit competition.

Chiropractors and osteopaths are similar in their philosophies and treatment methods. If you are suffering with lower back or neck pain, they are your go-to musculoskeletal professionals and are particularly skilled in spinal manipulation. Annie Thorisdottir had both an osteopath and chiropractor as part of her treatment team following her well-documented low back injury a few years ago. Many sport chiros and osteos also utilise rehabilitative exercise, soft-tissue therapy, kinesiology taping, and dry needling.

Sport Therapists and Sports Massage Therapists

Sport therapists and sport massage therapists are accomplished at recovery, maintenance, and preventative work. Qualified and experienced sport therapists are also skilled in utilising functional movement screens in order to diagnose mobility limitations and develop the appropriate soft-tissue intervention and mobility programmes. Little niggles and minor injuries can be managed effectively by these therapists. They tend to have high proficiency in deep tissue massage and other soft-tissue techniques to aid recovery.

General Practitioners and Emergency Doctors

In rare cases, musculoskeletal pain can disguise more serious medical conditions. If pain is worse at night, accompanied by fever, night sweats, nausea, or fatigue, it is critical to bring up the pain to your GP. Granted, he or she may send you away recommending you avoid the gym for a bit and take some anti-inflammatories, but it’s important to get in the queue in the event imaging or a consultant referral is needed. Reputable chiros, osteos, and physios should liaise with your GP about your treatment and make these referrals as necessary.

“Your ideal MSK practitioner will be familiar with functional fitness protocols and will work with you to get you back to the gym as quickly and safely as possible.”

If you hear a “snap” or “pop” with a sudden on-set of pain or wounds that won’t close, go to your local emergency room. It’s vital to rule out fractures, put joints back, get wounds closed, and get head injuries evaluated properly. I have seen everything from fractures, to sprains, dislocations, and contusions in CrossFit boxes and competitions.

Don’t Forget Your Coach

Your coach is the glue that holds your team together. Give your physio, chiro, osteo, sport therapist, or massage therapist permission to talk speak directly with your coach, so they can work together. Your coach will ensure you continue to move with proper mechanics consistently and add in the appropriate load and intensity as recommended by your team of practitioners.

Individual Treatment Means Better Function

Whilst foam rollers, lacrosse balls, and kinesiology tape can be beneficial for general recovery, additional help is needed when you’re in pain. Get help from the appropriate professional, talk to your coach, and scale your workouts appropriately. Your ideal MSK practitioner will be familiar with functional fitness protocols and will work with you to get you back to the gym as quickly and safely as possible.

MobilityWOD and ROMWOD can aid in general recovery, but professionals can direct you to the exact mobility exercises and programme for your specific problem, enhancing your function and performance in the long run. Your injury is just an obstacle, not the end of the world. Follow these guidelines, find the right practitioner, and you’ll be smashing your WODs and lifts again in no time.

More Like This:

• The Missing Link of the CrossFit Athlete: Treatment
• 4 Things You Thought You Knew About Kinesiology Taping
• The 2 Missing Pieces of Pain-Free Performance
• New on Breaking Muscle

Photo 1 courtesy of Rx’d Photography.

Photo 2 courtesy of Robert Crowley.

The post In Pain? How to Assemble a Winning Team for Your Rehab appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

As a chiropractor in Los Angeles, California, specializing in biomechanics of the body, balancing the musculoskeletal system, and integrating functional neurology training, the number of patients I’ve seen from the CrossFit world has more than tripled.

At first, I thought “What the heck is this CrossFit thing? And why are all these Crossfitters hurt?” As my relationship with CrossFit developed, I began to understand what was happening.

Like many athletes, CrossFitters have developed outstanding training programs for themselves. They are willing to train weaknesses and devote time to skill work. They are exceptional workhorses, taking on large training volumes. In addition, the most incredible aspect of a typical CrossFitters’ routine is their relentless attention to nutrition. In a world that does not encourage eating clean, I must tip my cap to these diligent folks. In my opinion, however, these remarkable routines are missing an integral part. The part I’m talking about, of course, is treatment or care of a CrossFitter’s body.

In general, the CrossFit population seems to be willing to eat like a saint, train like an animal, and make lots of sacrifices in the name of performance. When it comes to treatment and maintenance, however, it seems to take the extremes of a catastrophic injury to get these folks to see a chiropractor, physical therapist, etc.

CrossFit is the sport of fitness. It is built and programmed around variance, functional movements, and intensity. CrossFit trains the body to function optimally as a unit and efficiency is king. This means the nervous system must be performing flawlessly so the muscles respond properly. Your body is a complex integrated system of beauty that instinctively repairs or adapts itself. When one area of your body becomes injured or shuts down, everything in your body compensates for that injury. Not to mention, these breakdowns make the body less efficient.

Our brain is the master control unit for our whole bodies. The brain sends out signals to the rest of our body via the central and peripheral nervous system. Our vertebrae protect our spinal cord and the nerves exiting the spinal cord. With everyday life, training, trauma, and other activities, our vertebrae can become subluxated and/or restricted. This in turn puts stress on the immediate surrounding nerves and indirectly affects the innervation of muscles and organs down a particular nerve pattern. This added pressure could cost your body efficiency and reaction time. Fractions of a second are huge in an athlete’s world and could mean the difference between a gold or silver medal, a sub three minute Fran, or a blocked shot in the NBA finals.

My point is this: great athletes take care of their bodies. If you want longevity in your sport and to perform at your optimal level, you have got to take care of your body. This means you need chiropractic care, soft tissue care, and sleep on top of training and nutrition. Jerry Rice, for example, credits chiropractic care for keeping him in the game with the 49ers from 1985-2000. Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls recently credited chiropractic to getting him back on the court due to a back injury. Tiger Woods, Aaron Rogers, Lance Armstrong, and Michael Jordan all utilize chiropractic care before and after a performance.

Athletes are the greatest compensators. For example, when an athlete’s pecs muscle becomes too tight, this will rotate the whole shoulder complex internally and shut down the activation of the scapula along the rib cage. In turn, the rotator cuff muscles, which are designed for specificity, will increase their work output along with the traps and other associated neck muscles. An athlete will keep performing until something breaks down or he/she feels pain.

Yes, exercise is taking care of your body, but you also need to address the muscles, nerves, and joints that are used during movements. You need to take care of the machine that keeps you moving. When your body is not balanced and/or muscles are not firing correctly, this predisposes you to not only a poor performance but injury as well.

Think about your car. You get the oil changed and tires rotated regularly. Why would you not take similar care of your body also? Chiropractic care ensures that your body is balanced, vertebrae are aligned, and muscles are firing correctly, so that you can function optimally on and off the field.

For my athletes that are injury free, I recommend chiropractic once a week, a massage every two weeks, staying on top of their hydration, and sleep often for recovery. Massage helps to normalize the intramuscular gradient by decreasing inflammation and swelling. Muscle work can also help to maintain range of motion. Hydration is key both before and after a workout. Sleep is the optimal environment for growth hormones to do their jobs.

Complete the circle: train hard, eat clean, and get treatment on your body. Keep yourself in the game as long as possible. Visit mobilitywod daily, get adequate amounts of sleep, and by all means, get yourself to a chiropractor.

The post The Missing Link of the CrossFit Athlete: Treatment appeared first on Breaking Muscle.