It is the middle of the football season. Recurring injuries may not only be preventable but may be symptoms of a problem you may not fully understand. Pain in the ankle, knees, and hips that occur from running rather than hitting may be signs of a larger mechanical problem that involves how you move and how your body deals with the stresses of impact. Pain in the neck, shoulder, wrist or elbow may be caused by an area of the body other than where you hurt. Most common football injuries can be helped by seeing a chiropractor. Professional football franchises employ chiropractors as part of their medical staff because the players wanted them there. From the athlete's point of view, Chiropractors help speed healing times while improving flexibility and performance. Dr. Charschan offers some great advice and shares a story of one player who continued to get injured which almost cost his high school the championship. Dr. Charschan helped this athlete by solving the problem that caused the injury allowing him to lead his team to victory. The player had one of the most common football injuries; groin pain. Recurring injuries are rarely from overuse as commonly believed, as Dr, Charschan explains. Also, if you have experienced injuries from running, landing, catching or throwing, you may want to watch this video. Mechanical problems often are the reason behind many different injuries that do not result from being hit or tackled. Chiropractors are primary care for the musculoskeletal system. Our approach to care goes beyond the symptoms, looking for the reasons why injuries are occurring. Chiropractic sports physicians are a one-stop-shop for most musculoskeletal problems and are highly skilled in evaluating and treating football and other sports injuries. Check out Dr. Charschan's video below. Here is a transcript from the video. How to get back into the game faster and safely. Hey, I’m Dr. William Charschan. We have offices in both Scotch Plains and in North Brunswick, NJ. Right now, I am doing this in my North Brunswick office. It’s football season. That means that there are a lot of people playing football, a lot of kids playing high school football. They’re getting banged up. They are hurting their knees. They are hurting their ankles. They are hurting their feet. They are hurting their shins. They might be getting a groin injury, a back injury, a neck injury or even a shoulder injury from either getting banged up or just going ahead and trying to stay in shape for the sport. Let me tell you a little story. A number of years ago I used to do seminars for the athletic trainers in the area and one of the trainers came over to me during one of the sessions and he says you know I got this kid. He’s the main wide receiver And this was the trainer from New Brunswick High School at the time. And he says to me this kid was the best player they had on the team. They’ve got three games left and they are right now just about in the first place. But there is a problem; he keeps on getting injured. So, he calls me up the next day and says, “ would you come down to the training room”? The guy is sitting there with an ice pack on his groin. He doesn’t know why he keeps on straining his groin or something else, and I take a look at him and see how his pelvis is and I see he is all distorted. The trainer thinks he has a groin problem; I’m seeing a whole different picture. Now, I’m looking at him from the ground up; but what ended up happening with this particular person and just to show you this is a real person as I have a picture of him here. So, what ended up happening is I worked on him in the training room, and he is starting to feel better. The next few days the trainer brought him to my office, we worked on him. That weekend he caught the winning pass. The next weekend he caught the winning pass. The following weekend they were in the championships at Rutgers University. I get a phone call, it's freezing out there, and he says “what are you doing today”? I said I have no idea, what am I doing today? He says, would you like to come on the field and be with us during that championship game? So, what ends up happening is, I didn’t see a lot of activity during the game, but again, this particular player catches the winning pass. And the moral of this story is, how did I help him? Was I a hero? Was he a hero? What I did is I helped him live up to his own potential. And in his particular case, there was a lot more going on there than he realized, than his parents realized, that the trainer realized or that any other doctors that looked at him realized as well. And, within three visits, he was back playing and the trainer said to me Oh my god, I have never seen him run as fast as he did. So, did he really have a groin injury? I beg to differ. One of the things I have learned, and I do have an engineering background, is that we should take a full-body approach. I look at people from the ground up. That is how we solve a problem. It’s never about the treatment or about the therapy. It's about how you use your brain, your hands, you understand the problem and you understand the person in front of you. What ends up happening is the pain may not be the problem and if you keep on getting injured over and over and over again, there is probably something that is not being understood. And, what ends up happening is, you go back there after you’ve rested it and it gets injured again. Or, maybe it is another problem this time. Well, we’re here to help. The thing is that we as chiropractors think holistically. That means that we look at whole people. We do not just look at a knee, we don’t look at an arm, we don’t do therapy. The treatment is based on how do we get the mechanism of movement back so you don’t get hurt again and you can do the things you want to do without pain. So, our holistic approach may include things like Myofascial Release we’re we basically are by hand loosening up the tight fascia which is the connective tissue that controls motion. If we get injured, that fascia will tighten up and affect the way we move. This is why, a lot of times, even though we rest it over and over and over again, calling it overuse isn’t really the truth because other people are doing what you are doing so why isn’t it overuse for them but it is overuse for you? So, our holistic approach; we are going to go ahead and look at you, I’m going to take a thorough history. I'm going to ask you about questions about problems you don’t even think you have but we may find that it just not bothering you right now. But, that might be an important clue. Once we do that, we do a thorough exam, we evaluate how you stand, how you move. Then we use things such as myofascial release to loosen up the fascia, we use things like manipulation which restores movement. We might even manipulate the extremities to restore movement which gets movement even more appropriate. We might even give you an insert for your shoe and give you exercises. So, we are primary care for musculoskeletal. My job here is to get you back in the game as quickly as possible. We’re here to help. Chiropractors; we should be your first choice. Feel better in as little as one visit. Give us a call today or request an appointment on our web site.