Get to know Ben Foley (Chiropractor)
1.What do you most ENJOY about your profession as a Chiropractor ?
Interaction with people on both a professional level as their Chiropractor and having conversation if they are open to a chat.
It’s an honour helping my patients optimise their health and build their belief in their bodies. Usually people present with low back pain, neck pain or other associated symptoms and I enjoy the problem solving and patient education side of clinical practice. Understanding someone’s immediate needs, whether that is simply getting out of pain, lifting more, sleeping better or working in more comfort, I find it easy to turn up to work to assist with that.
2.Why did you become a Chiropractor ?
I have family involved in the profession and I was
exposed to it early enough to dedicate 5 years of study to it! I am truly fascinated
by the human body and its healing capacity. I liked Chiropractic’s proactive and
preventative philosophies and after almost 10 years of clinical practice, there
is no doubt that prevention is better than the cure. Understanding someone’s injury
mechanisms and other factors that lead to an injury and applying logical and
evidence-based treatments is the way to move forward in my view. I also love
working with people as whole people, not just injuries or single parts of
anatomy.
3.Ben, you have recently completed months of training at Orange Theory Waterloo and completed a half marathon, what is your health and fitness goal at the moment ?
My current fitness goals are training for my first triathlon and completing my first proper Marathon, so plenty of running, swimming, cycling and weights ! With Covid 19 upon us, I have used some extra time to build my running distances up. I regularly finish my Saturday shift in the clinic and go for a 20-30 km run in Sydney and take in its beautiful surrounds.
4.What proactive health care philosophy do you put into practice and why ?
– train consistently vs training hard for a few weeks, that is the winner everyday.
– do the basics well; boring warming ups and sub-maximal sets to nail the technical aspects of the movements you are training reduce your injury risk
– listen to your body, it’s ok to have a short break or skip a session. Rest allows conditioning adaption to occur
– if you are injured or modifying or stiff/achey/tight through a movement…. grab a chiro appointment. One session with me is better than a block of treatment.
5. What type of case are you seeing a lot of this time of year?
Neck pain from iPhone, tablet or laptop use and the work from home inefficiencies from Covid 19. Using these technologies are here to stay but when their use is coupled with poor muscular endurance in postural stabilisers and/or poorly structured gym programs that focus on body sculpting the anterior chain, we often generate neck pain from a modern day “tech neck”. A new posture distortion has been born thanks to modern life. I can help you deal with it.
6.What case do you see over and over again ?
Low Back Pain. Sedentary lifestyles, sitting at work and ploughing through work work and more work coupled with other factors like a lack of condition, family history, body weight and history or low back pain. You can see why it’s common and often repeats on people.
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