Osteopathic care of the athlete. Why, when, for whom?

Osteopathic care of the athlete. Why, when, for whom?
After presenting osteopathy, its fields of application and the means used to get there, let's us today to a more specific topic: the management of the sport by the osteopath.

Sport and Fitness

In a sport, the human body is the tool used to achieve performance. We often speak of the speaker osteopath in the top sport. This also applies to all practitioners, and whatever their abilities.
Our first article (see "Osteopathy: Presentation") spoke of functional disorders and capacity our body has to adapt to its environment and the constraints it imposes. Adaptation is a recurring but rather important term to understand the management of the sport by the osteopath.

Sport and Fitness

Analysis osteopath the onset of pain
When you practice a sport , you do it in a specific environment (on bitumen in water, on paths, suspended, etc ...) with specific material (a racket, a weight bench, a bicycle, etc ...) with a targeted goal is to realize a coordinated action, accurate and efficient. What are constraints that you impose on your body and it will have to be able to respond. A quite telling example is the adaptation muscle adaptation. When you do a physical activity that you do not usually practice the next day you have body aches, while the solicitation is not necessarily unique.

Sport and Fitness

 The movements made out of your habits and therefore requires adaptation. Very quickly, you will not have problem to make this gesture and no pain will be present because your muscles will be better coordinated, and you will have gained strength. This is an adaptation of the body such that could meet the constraints imposed on it, which is normal.

Sport and Fitness

If an athlete has mobility restrictions (which it has not necessarily been paying attention) that offset some of the constraints, what will happen? Mobility restrictions of various tissues (joints, muscles, ligaments ...) will result in a deterioration in the rea lization of the gesture and the onset of pain on members concerned by the implementation of gesture or remote thereof. The complaint will be chronic muscle spasm, joint pain, stiffness. Who says bad move, also known as personal injury and indirectly decrease in performance for the top athlete. This is also true for the average athlete practice just for fun or as part of a fitness program.

Sport and Fitness

By studying the mechanisms of onset of pain and execution of the gesture for which pain appear, the osteopathic treatment will regain optimum mobility, prevent the onset of pain and therefore a cut or even a premature stop in your program or sport season.

When is the sport need to consult an osteopath?
Balance sheets can be made late in the season including the removal of mobility restrictions that can create pain, or any other time of the year as required. Complaints again vary from one sport to another, but the most common are:

Sport and Fitness

Treat pain from old injuries (fractures, sprains)
Look after a fall or significant trauma for contact sport , but without bone injury, muscle or ligament
Side point frequently or constantly returning to the effort
Back pain, neck pain, back pain
Headache effort
Difficulty recovering
These complaints can come from the patient himself but also be raised by his coach who noticed a difficulty of his athlete perform certain actions that are not yet physically harder to achieve than others.

Sport and Fitness

 It should also be noted that the reverse is true. In some cases osteopathic treatment is not sufficient and we direct patients to other professionals such as sport coaches, podiatrists, doctors, or other as required. Is made here to the notion of comprehensive care of the individual, which is one of the founding principles of osteopathy. In general, if you experience pain gene or feel free to call on an osteopath or talk to your coach. It will surely be in his address book to a person who direct you.