An evidence – based, Sports Chiropractor
Towards the back end of 2019 and into school and university holidays, I have seen an enormous spike in neck pain. And now into the Covid-19 pandemic and work from home boom, we have collectively increased the direct cause of neck pain, primarily from looking at your iPhone, tablet or laptop. “Tech Neck” is becoming a new postural distortion amongst teens and adults. Some basic exercises and restorative chiropractic treatments can improve your quality of life quickly. If you are working from home, remember “Tech Neck” has been amplified further by the Covid-19 pandemic and the work from home situation engulfing our lounge rooms! So self audit your work station.
I’ve also seen a number of adhesive capsulitis / frozen shoulder cases during 2020, that have had supportive care with a range of soft tissue and remedial massage techniques, as well as dry needling and basic shoulder joint rehabilitation.
Dance and Performing Arts Athletes
I do enjoy my performing arts and dancing athletic patient base and have had a few new comer’s to the practice recently with the rise on online tutorials and dance fit classes. Some of these cases have had benign hypermobility related disorders we typically see in pole dancers, gymnasts and dance. Th Beighton score is used to assess for hypermobility and we can treat the areas that tend to have pressure put on them, such as wrists, cervicothoracic junction (upper back) and thoracolumbar junction (midback).
This subset of patients can also have associated rotator cuff tendonitis as they typically utilise upper body significantly in training and performing, often finding their muscles develop faster than their tendon strength leading to injuries in these areas. With so many athletes currently out of routine and training at home, this has been a common presentation.
I’ve been using dry needling and gradual mobilisations techniques to regain function in the shoulder as there is some research to suggest that there is a neurological influence on pain and disability leading to decreased mobility and not just tissue injury.
Caution Ahead for Gym and CrossFit Athletes
As always, we see injuries occurring in compound movements such as deadlifts, squats and leg press variations. With gyms opening, some of the most common causes of injuries in people who exercise, from casual gym goers (who’s basic technique may be off) to power lifters and CrossFit athletes (who may need more advanced form analysis) will spike.
From a Chiropractors point of view we would pay attention to things such as leg length differences, anatomical lumbosacral and hip abnormalities that may begin to cause problems for athletes performing at higher levels and put value on people resuming training slowly. And please Warm-up. Low back pain, can be treated with technique modification in communication with coaches and things such as heel lifts or orthotic prescription by a podiatrist. As well as management of tissue damage and pain in the acute phase following an injury.
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Biography:
Susan Tyfield has been practicing as a Sydney Chiropractor for 3 years and before that had a private practice in South Africa. She has been a practicing Chiropractor in Australia and South Africa for over 15 years. She worked at a number of clinics across Sydney before finding her home at Waterloo Chiropractic Clinic. Sue has loved her time at Waterloo Chiropractic enjoying a like minded clinical approach with fellow Waterloo Chiropractors Daniel Gilmore and Ben Foley and enjoys meeting the diverse local community.
Susan’s treatment style is evidence-based and she utilises multiple modalities. She uses diversified (chiropractic adjustments) manual therapy as well as massage therapy, dry needling and taping. As a female chiropractor she also likes to perform gentler techniques such as Sacro-occipital Technique (SOT) as well as activator techniques. She enjoys analysing her patients movement patterns and gives neurological rehabilitation and home care advice.
Susan has a special interest in treating sports people and performing artist’s injuries and is the only chiropractor in central Sydney registered with The Australian Society for Performing Arts Healthcare. Her patients have described her as empathic and knowledgable and she also works well with more complicated cases and chronic pain patients suffering from low back pain, headaches and migraines spending time getting to know individuals and their specific needs and cases.
Privately she also enjoys training at a CrossFit gym and doing obstacle course racing and has knowledge in managing these athletes particular injuries such as low back pain, sciatica, rotator cuff and neck injuries from exercises such as cleans and deadlifts.
Her particular training style is calisthenics and gymnastics and for this reason she has a good understanding of the injuries these sub groups suffer from including pole dancing injuries, gymnastics injuries and dancers injuries.
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