What’s With All the Exercise? Why Not Just Adjust?

“My last chiropractor only adjusted me — why don’t you do that?”

“Why do you want me to move so much during appointments?”

“Why does it matter if I don’t do the exercises at home?”

We hear all the time that we’re different, and patients frequently ask us questions like the ones above. We talk about movement a lot, and that’s because movement matters. We don’t talk about exercise because we want to torture patients with “homework” after appointments; we emphasize it because we know pain sucks, and we want patients to take control of their movement, feel strong, and do what they love, without fear of pain or injury.

Chiropractors are best known for adjustments (AKA joint manipulation), and this treatment can be an incredibly effective tool for relieving pain and increasing mobility. However, adding motion into a restricted and painful joint through an adjustment doesn’t address the reason the joint became stuck in the first place. Most of us want a clear answer as to why our pain is still here AND a lasting solution to keep it away. That’s where exercise and rehab come in. 

Joints become restricted because the body is the master of compensation. Some areas, like the hip, ankle, and shoulder, were designed to have more free movement, and other areas, like the spine and foot, were designed to be more stable. If a stable area of the body is moving more than it’s supposed to (i.e. a hypermobile lumbar spine), then areas that were meant to be more mobile will tighten up as a protective mechanism (i.e. tight hips). Similarly, if a mobile joint doesn’t move enough, surrounding stable joints will start to move more as an attempt to regain the lost range of motion. The body can only tolerate a limited amount of motion before injury occurs; a few common examples are a torn ACL from too much motion in the knee or whiplash injury from too much motion in the spine. When we only add motion into restricted joints (through adjustments) but don’t stabilize the joints that move too much (through rehab and exercise), we can usually expect the restrictions and pain to return because the underlying cause hasn’t been addressed. 

If you’ve been to a chiropractor before, you probably noticed that you had less pain after getting adjusted. If your experiences are similar to mine, then your pain may have continued to come back over and over again, and you couldn’t understand why. The cycle for me looked like this: back pain, get adjusted, feel better, pain returns, get adjusted… and so on. As the mother of a newborn during chiropractic school, I had low back pain. Sometimes the pain was so severe that I was unable to lift my infant daughter from the changing table and could hardly move at all. I felt like I failed as a mother. As many of you know from your own experiences, low back pain can be debilitating, and being unable to pick up your child, perform your job, play your sport, or sleep can be a devastating psychological burden.

It wasn’t until I began strengthening and retraining my movement patterns that I noticed true progress. It wasn’t immediate, but I began to notice my flare ups decrease in severity and frequency until they no longer occurred. Rehab was the missing piece that helped me gain the stability I lacked after pregnancy, and I noticed the same trend as I incorporated more exercise with my patients. I now get adjusted only occasionally because I have the tools (i.e. movement and exercise knowledge) to keep myself moving and feeling well. Our goal at Midwest Movement is to provide those same tools to our patients and break the cycle of provider dependence.

If you have any questions about our treatment approach, rehab, strengthening, chiropractic, movement, or would like to schedule an evaluation, contact our office or click the link below.