Published on Monday, 17 November 2025 at 10:22:06 AM
Unfortunately, the first time we meet many gym enthusiasts in the clinic, is when they are injured and seeking help! This blog aims to provide some great information to have you better understand the role that Chiropractic care can have in moving well, avoiding injury and smashing your goals.
So you can lift heavy....That does not mean that you are stable!
Hitting the gym is Australia’s second most popular sporting activity and can have many excellent health benefits. Consistent exercise can improve energy, mood, and bone density, while reducing body fat, building strength, improving cardiovascular health, and enhancing balance. If that’s not enough, research also shows that gym training is linked to improved insulin sensitivity, allowing your body to use blood glucose effectively, and can enhance cognitive (brain) function, improve hormonal imbalances and improve sleep quality.
At Geraldton Health Center, we help both athletes and gym enthusiasts unlock their true potential to build their strength and performance on the foundation of optimal function. You see, every movement you make either at the gym or at home, is controlled by your nervous system. It instructs your muscles to fire, how hard to contract, and when to relax. Stiffness in the joint and detuning of the neuromuscular control system results in poor muscular activation and leads to reduced performance and an increased risk of injury through overload.
Training isn’t just about isolated muscles; it is also about movement patterns. Complex exercises like squats, deadlifts, and shoulder press require precise coordination between multiple muscle groups in the spine as well as the limbs. Pairs of muscles called agonist and antagonist muscles must contract and relax at exactly the right time, and stabilisers must be activated precisely so that efficient, optimised and safe movement is achieved. By enhancing spinal and joint function through manipulation or mobilisation, we can upregulate this intermuscular coordination, leading to efficient movement patterns, improved muscle development and reduced instability (weakness) with complex movement patterns.
The spine is the foundation for all human movement!
The spine is the anchor point for all movements. Your upper and lower limbs are attached to and powered by your core, with the spine as the central pillar. In any purposeful movement, your body’s first priority is to brace the spine to create a stable base. If spinal stability is compromised due to joint dysfunction or poor neural control, the foundation for your lift becomes unstable. When spinal bracing is poor, the activation of your secondary limb muscles becomes deficient and often can trigger compensatory movement, which, when under repetitive load, can lead to injury.
Of course, the benefits of treatment go beyond your time at the gym. Chiropractic care can restore motion to stiff joints, allowing for improved mobility, improved function of the nervous system, and improved recovery. By moving your body the way it was designed, you can significantly reduce microtrauma (often present before pain develops,) which builds slowly over time, eventually causing injuries such as spinal pain, tendonopathy, muscle strains and even joint degeneration.
“There is a common belief that gym progress can only be obtained with lifting more weights and taking more supplements, however this ignores the most important equipment in the gym…your body.” Your body is the most important equipment at the gym and investing in your foundational health is one of the most important decisions you can make!
Chiropractic care isn’t just about treating pain and injury when the joint system is at breaking point; it’s about optimising performance and reducing the risk of injury in the first place for anyone who demands more from their body.
So, in summary…
- Every lift, curl, squat and press is controlled by your nervous system, and poor neuromuscular feedback from the spine can interfere with these connections, reducing muscle output and increasing the likelihood of injury.
- Chiropractic treatment can enhance muscle and joint coordination throughout the body by improving proprioception (joint position sense,) leading to precise control between muscle groups during complex lifts. This reduces stress on the tissues and the likelihood of overload and injury.
Are you ready to unlock your next level? Our team here at Geraldton Health Centre is here to help you build a stronger, more resilient, and high-performing body.
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