At our last CCMSC meeting on Monday July 24th, our guest speaker was Dr. Kristin Boudreaux from Chiropractic Neurology Center in Indianapolis. Dr. Boudreaux took her undergraduate studies at Ohio State and moved to Houston for graduate school. She has a B.S. in Human Biology and her doctorate in Chiropractic medicine from Texas Chiropractic College.
Kristin gave an excellent overview of how a typical athlete can over-stress muscles and tendons through training. She illustrated what healthy muscle fiber looks like in one slide and what muscles that have excessive adhesion look like in another. The problem with over-stressing a muscle is that the fibers will become rigid when the scar tissue forms to repair the area causing the athlete loss of flexibility. Loss of flexibility causes the likelihood of injury to increase.
Kristin showed several methods that she employs to correct problems that athletes develop. She employs the Active Release Technique (ARI) which involves applying pressure to the afflicted area and releasing the pressure to get the muscle to relax and regain its flexibility. Kristin also demonstrated some stretches that can be incorporated into an athlete's routine to help avoid injury. Hip flexors, rotator cuffs and neck muscles are most susceptible to injury for triathletes because of the specific events we participate in. For example, on the bike I'm sure all of us have experienced tight neck and shoulder muscles after a long ride. This is primarily due to the fact that in the tucked aero position on the bike, one has to hold your head up to see down the road. This places a great deal of stress on some very small muscles located at the base of the skull. To compensate for the weakness of this small muscle group, we will incorporate the muscles of the neck and shoulders to hold our head up. By doing some very simple exercises with a ball, Kristin showed the group how to strengthen these neck muscles and alleviate the stress to the rest of the shoulders.
Swimming can bring on shoulder related problems that involve the rotator cuff muscles. Again, by doing some specific exercises and stretches, an athlete can help avoid injury and reduce stress on these muscles.
Of course running probably poses the most stress on the body overall and this can start at the foot and move right up to the back. While there is no fool proof way to eliminate all the risk of injury or muscle strain, you can definitely reduce some common problems by utilizing Kristin's techniques.
Dr. Boudreaux only works on athletes who have developed problems and this is her unique area of concentration. So I would highly suggest if you've been plagued with an injury or soreness that just doesn't want to go away, make an appointment and I'm confident you find her approach to be straightforward and effective. She promises that her intent is not to tie you into a long term treatment program, but rather to get the problem identified, fixed and back to racing.
