NATURAL PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT

I’ve been privileged to have two lives as an elite athlete – once as a young bloke, trying to find a way to be good enough to wear the green and gold, and getting as far the  Navy Blue with the Big V: “The older I get the better I was!” And, now as a Masters Athlete competing against the other old blokes that are still fit enough to run far and fast enough to jump into a sand pit without permanent damage. I’ve also been blessed to train with the best – Olympic, Commonwealth and National Medallists, and they are some of the best people on the planet to hang out with– there’s nothing more inspiring than someone chasing their big dreams, and achieving them. And as a Chiropractor, I’ve also had great opportunity to assist some pretty good athletes to get and keep themselves straining on the training track and performing in the competition arena. So what I am going to share with you are what I believe to be some of the real secrets to maximising human performance – and what I have to say might surprise you.

I know that there are three rules to winning – preparation, preparation and preparation. And I have journeyed the road of over training to the point of chronic fatigue and paradoxical personal bests. So I’m not going to tell you the secrets to being able to train more – I’d like to share with you the secrets to training smarter!

1) Body Condition Optimisation

Formula One Racing Car Drivers train pretty hard – even though they sit on their bums to compete, and perform what looks like a teenager’s Playstation game: They are actually really fit guys. But they sit in a piece of machinery that is incredibly fine-tuned and supercharged which propels them around with unbelievable speed and handling. Every elite athlete “sits” in what should be a fine-tuned and supercharged piece of machinery – their body with all its biological electronics and fuel injection systems.

The racing car driver doesn’t stay up all night before a race tweaking his car’s machinery – he needs all the sleep he can manage: He has expert technicians to do that job for him. And an elite athlete needs his own technicians to – this is different to a coach. Probably the best qualified technician who has the skill sets to maintain the human machinery is the Chiropractor. They can assess and treat the athlete’s body from biomechanical, energetic and nutritional points of view to ensure that all the moving parts are ready to perform at their peak.

I’m not talking about the back-cracking that many people think of when you mention the word “chiropractic”. I’m talking about the modern results focussed Chiropractor that you should visit on a regular wellness basis to fine tune and optimise your nervous system.

2) Energy Recovery Strategies

The most common thing I have to say to elite athletes after I have assessed their history, condition and body function is “I don’t need to teach you anything about how to train, but I do need to show you how to recover!” The key to being able to train hard is to be able to recover afterwards so you can do it again sometime very soon.

Here are the secrets to recovery:

a) Stretching – the more flexible you are the more you can stretch yourself to new limits. And I’m not just talking about being able to touch your toes. I know a lot of “experts” talk too much about “core strength”, but here’s a new concept for you – “core flexibility”. I’ve seen some pretty high-level athletes who are having recurring injury problems and when I assess their spinal flexibility it is poor – even though they might be able to bite their toe nails.

b) H2O – Here’s a simple rule of thumb – what goes in should be coming out. I’ll be blunt – If you are drinking in more than you are weeing out, then you are barely replenishing what’s missing. Here’s another rule of thumb – the clearer your wee the better – enough said?

c) Nutritional precursors – you don’t need a mechanic to build your amazing machinery – God has built the engineer and mechanic inside you – your job is to supply the raw ingredients that this inbuilt technician converts into nerves, muscles, tendons, bones, ligaments and all the other stuff inside – AMAZING! And I’m not talking about coloured fluids with sugar and sodium made by the Coca Cola Corporation and endorsed by the sporting bodies that need the money. I’m talking about amino acids, carbohydrates and oils in the most natural formats possible.

d) Low-impact aerobic activity – the warm-up, the warm-down, the rest day swim, walk, jog or yoga session. Not something that’s going to make you go “Citius, Altius, Fortius” but it’s going to help all your internal circulatory machinery clean out all the lactic acid, free radicals and other waste products that will otherwise accumulate in the nooks and crannies of your body.

3) High-Tech Posture and Flexibility Assessment

When you see the best of the best breaking world records it looks so easy – and they look so beautiful – perfect lines – perfect posture – perfect movement. Good posture is the most efficient alignment of the body structures, and great core flexibility allows free and limitless motion. Thankfully both posture and flexibility can be objectively assessed utilising modern high-tech digital computerised systems.

When I was first in practice posture and flexibility analysis was low-tech and while the practitioner could clearly see the postural distortions and joint restrictions no-one else could. With the latest technology the athlete can see exactly how and where their own body alignment and movement is letting them down: This is a great motivator, and a wonderful educator.

4) Injury Risk Factor Correction

With the above technology and others available to the modern Chiropractor it is possible to predict the engineering and electronic weaknesses in the athlete’s body systems. And it is so much easier to correct these underlying issues without the pain and limitation of an acute injury. It’s called risk management and anyone from the engineering profession will tell you that this approach will reduce costs and down time, and increase productivity. In an athlete’s world this translates to more training, and more PBs, and more medals.

5) Reduce Injury Healing Time

Every athlete lives with the threat, and at times the reality of injury. After all each athlete is attempting to find the limits of their human performance, so times will occur when the blurry edges are overstepped. Here are the key elements to fast recovery:

a) Crisis care: Smart management at the very outset of a new injury or even the recurrence of a previous injury can make huge differences in the timeline of the recovery process. Correct use of ice, immobilisation, compression, elevation and antiinflammatory tools that won’t inhibit the overall healing process need to be religiously adhered to.

b) Early return to movement: Getting the body parts moving as soon as possible without hampering the healing process or aggravating the injury further is a fine art, and needs to take into account the healing process over and above the need to be back on the competition trail. And if done correctly will maintain muscle tone, power and flexibility as well as “cardio” so that once “real” training recommences the return to pre-injury condition is rapid.

c) Treatment: There can be opposing philosophies with one being about pain management, masking of the symptoms and inflammation inhibition so that competition or training can be continued; versus an approach that focuses on maximising the inherent healing mechanisms built into the human body so that real healing can occur. The latter has been the chiropractic approach for 115 years and has often stood at odds with what is thought to be “mainstream” practice.

6) Modern Gentle Chiropractic Techniques

Many people have become used to seeing “manipulation” occurring on the sidelines of the sporting arena: Legs and Gluts being deeply massaged, and spines being pressed on and twisted for the satisfying crunching noises, are treatments being provided by a number of different professions nowadays. On the one hand a Chiropractor watches these procedures that were pioneered by his or her profession despite verbal criticism and derision, and thinks “we told you it works”. And on the other hand modern chiropractic methods have evolved beyond these aging techniques to the point where healing and recovery can be maximised utilising incredibly gentle and refined technologies and procedures.

This Chiropractic evolution aligns well with the modern athlete since the shared goal is to stay one step ahead of the competition: Sounds like a great reason to join the chiropractic squad!

You can consult Dr Nick Hodgson, 2005 Victorian Chiropractor of the Year, at our Super Healthy Chiropractic Office at Shop 1A, 186 High Street in Belmont, Geelong by calling 0419 104 076.