Here at Boulder Sports Chiropractic, we see a lot of skiing and snowboarding injuries in our office. These consist of complaints of the knee, hip, low back, and neck pain.
A specific knee injury that we see is patellar tendonitis with dysfunctional patellar tracking issues. This can be caused by being quad-dominant. We're excessively using the quads and loading the patellar tendon more than we should. If we don't have the strength to maintain that quad-dominant position, we start to feel pain and inflammation developing.
With patellar tracking issues, we sometimes see the knee and kneecap start to dive inwards. This creates a lot of pain around the knee.
We want to address this by looking at the joints above and below (the hips and ankles). How well can your glutes and other hip muscles stabilize that knee? How well is your ankle moving and how strong is the foot? These joints are trying to keep that knee in great alignment.
Low back pain is another big complaint. Whether it's from falls, sitting in a car for long periods of time, or simply having a long day on the mountain.
Low back pain often stems from muscle compensation in that whole core area. We start to use certain low back muscles way too much, and we're not relying enough on deep intrinsic core muscles and some of our lateral core muscles. We should be using our hips, loading the glutes, making sure they're nice and strong, and making sure we're flexible in the joints above our low back. Thoracic mobility is really important.
Muscles are becoming stretched and overutilized, and they're not strong enough to keep up with that demand. We have to make sure that we are doing everything we can to stay super strong in the entire core region.
This is not just where we feel the pain in the back, but in the sides and deep core.
Injury Prevention Tips Before Heading to the Mountain!
If you get aches and pains from skiing and snowboarding, our prevention tips can help!
Lumbar Support
If you’ll be in the car for a long time to get to the mountain, we recommend making sure your vehicle has great lumbar support. Some vehicles claim quality support, but that's not always the case depending on which injuries you might be dealing with. If you’re susceptible to any type of disc bulge or herniation, you want to ensure that you’re increasing the support for your low back. At Boulder Sports Chiropractic, we recommend the original Mackenzie Lumbar Roll. With lumbar rolls, we want to place the cushion in the small of your back, above the belt line. This will provide proper alignment.
Rollers
To roll out, we often recommend tennis balls and lacrosse balls. Place these on your low back along your muscles. We are trying to add acupressure into the muscles that might be overactive or too tight. Keep the ball pressed into each problem muscle for a few minutes.
CBD Ointment
CBD is really great for helping to reduce any type of inflammation. It’s a topical lotion that you rub on the muscles, that helps get that muscle ache and pain down so that you can have fun throughout your ski day.
Supplements
If you’re dealing with tightness in the muscles, we always recommend our magnesium glycinate pure encapsulations. This helps keep muscles as calm and loose as possible. It’s great for preventing any type of muscle spasms after a long day.
These are all products that we use ourselves and we sell them here at the office. If you have any questions about them, if you want a one-on-one demo, or have any specific questions, feel free to ask us.
Hip Airplanes
Our best bang for your buck exercises for knee alignment, foot stability, and hip and core stability is the hip airplane. It's like a single-leg RDL with a bit of a twist.
Start in a one-leg stance. Start to hinge at your hips. If you need to use something to help you balance, hold onto the wall in front of you. Try to keep a quality arch in your foot. Open up and keep your knee over your midfoot. foot. Don’t let your knee dive in or overpronate. Start to open up your hips towards the ceiling. Next, slowly let that left hip drop down to the ground.
We always recommend coming in and getting evaluated by someone on our team.
Ways We Treat Snow Sport Injuries in Our Office
If you have lower back, knee, or hip pain after skiing or snowboarding, we have multiple options in our office to help you.
This technique involves a table that hinges in the middle. While your torso stays in place, your legs hinge down, and the spine decompresses. We can do muscle work with this technique.
These muscles get tight with lower back injuries, due to spasms around the injury.
Adjustments
Next, we want to restore the normal alignment and motion of the lower back and pelvis. We position the joint at its end range of motion and apply a gentle force, which gets your joints moving! This helps to decrease pain and restore alignment so that you feel balanced.
With ART, we take a nice contact and focus on deeply stretching specific muscles that pertain to why your back is irritated. Muscles that are commonly irritated and spasmed when your lower back is fired up are the target here. This typically just feels like a nice deep stretch to the patient. We typically work our way from the back of the hip, through the front of the hip, and down towards the knee.
Dry Needling
If you have knee pain while skiing, we like to address the quad. Sometimes the quad can over-compensate if our glutes and core aren’t doing their job. Tightness of the quad can add compression to the knee. With needling, we can loosen that muscle up. With strength training, we can address and correct poor muscle patterns.