I work with a lot of athletes, especially in my Cary, NC, office which is inside Athletic Lab, a facility that is a training center for serious athletes. These men and women are training for Olympic trials and for other world-class competitions, so their training schedule is just incredible.
The past week I had two athletes who were suffering from severe hamstring pain and pain at the very base of the spine. Since there were two of them I imagine it had to do with the exercises they are all doing as a group. In any case, for both men it ended up being the entire iliopsoas/quadriceps situation that I’ve spoken about several times in the past. However, there was a twist in that one of them had sharp pain in his sacro-illiac (SI) joint, and the other had a lumbar vertebrae that I could feel was out of alignment.
I don’t often speak about chiropractors, but for both of these athletes, I suggested they see a chiropractor as soon as possible after I released their muscles. When the bones are moved out of alignment they need to be adjusted, and it’s very important that this is done by a trained and licensed chiropractor — DON’T ask a friend to do the old trick of standing behind you and cracking your back! This can have an extremely serious outcome, one I don’t even want to go into right now.
In any case, it is definitely beneficial to first release the tension in the muscles so the chiropractor can do the adjustment and the tight muscles don’t just pull the bones back out again. Between muscular therapy (not just a regular massage) and a good chiropractor, the odds are you will be able to eliminate most aches and pains quickly and permanently (or at least permanently until you go back to extreme exercise again).
Wishing you well,
Julie