Whether you are a weekend runner, lift a few times a week, ride, play a league sport or just chase children around, the pattern is much the same: something starts complaining, and you would like to keep going.
The first conversation is about your training, not your pain
The most useful information is usually what changed. Volume, intensity, surface, equipment, a return after time off, a new movement. Overuse complaints are typically a mismatch between load applied and capacity available, and the mismatch nearly always has a cause you can point to.
Then the examination
Movement, strength, and the specific positions that reproduce the complaint. Part of the point is deciding what this is not — anything suggesting a fracture, a significant structural injury, or a presentation needing imaging goes to a physician rather than being treated here.
What treatment may involve
Where manual care is appropriate, it may help with comfort and movement, making it easier to keep training in a modified form. Alongside that: specific advice about what to reduce, what to keep, and how to rebuild.
What it will not do
Recovery follows its own timeline. Care is aimed at comfort and movement while you rebuild activity gradually.
Being straight about that is more useful than the alternative, because it points you at the things that actually change the outcome.
Returning to your sport
Rarely complete rest, rarely unchanged training. Usually: reduce the provocative variable, keep what does not aggravate, rebuild gradually, and judge progress by how things feel the following day.
More detail on the sports and overuse injuries page.
If your back is the thing limiting your shift, that is worth sorting.
Sources & further reading
- American Chiropractic Association — What Research Shows — ACA’s summary of the research on chiropractic care, with links to the underlying studies and guidelines