Chiropractic Approach to the Groin Strain

Sports that call for ballistic movements like hurdling or sprinting often cause athletes that regularly engage in such activities to strain their groins. These are sports like basketball, football, soccer, hockey, and a plethora of others. Athletes compete in these sports and often overextend themselves with explosive or dynamic movements that cause them to strain their adductor muscles, and besides these movements, they also have to worry quite commonly about repetitive stress injuries to the groin. Repetitive stress injuries, of course, are simply a result of the repetitive movements in which some athletes engage. Depending on the way athletes come by these injuries, though, they may be sudden onset injuries, also referred to as acute injuries, are often sustained in an instant and then gradually remedied with the proper care. Other times, athletes sustain chronic injuries, which are the ailments that continually hurt the groin in a recurring manner, and this often reflects actions athletes take that stress the groin often and repeatedly.

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The all-too-common groin strain is essentially a tear or strain of adductor muscles, whether several or just one given that several muscles are collectively referred to as the adductors. The muscles in question are the adductor brevis, the adductor longus, the adductor magnus, the pectineus, and the gracilis. These are muscles located on the inner thigh, and they cooperate to move the thigh toward the midline and in the direction of the opposite thigh. These are the muscles athletes frequently injure on account of ballistic movements, and the consequences range quite broadly. The injury could be one of mild pain in the case of a slight strain, but it can just as easily yield varying degrees of physical disability. In some cases, people afflicted with adductor muscle strain tend to experience pain of debilitating severity.

The ideal physician to see for these kinds of pains are chiropractors regardless of whether or not you’ve deduced that you’ve strained your groin. There are two primary methods by which a chiropractor will diagnose you with a groin strain, and one such method is that of simply looking over your medical history. The other means by which a chiropractor will make his or her diagnosis, though, is via physical examination, and generally, a physician is likely to rely on a combination of the two. As such, the chiropractor’s going to ask you about the causes of the injury and any and all incidents that you might be able to link to the strain. They are also likely to perform certain orthopedic tests on you as well, and in rare cases, they may genuinely deem it necessary to schedule an MRI scan in order to discern the severity of the injury. Ultimately, what they want is to be able to classify your injury as being grade one, which applies to micro-tears inside the muscle(s) that tighten the inner thigh and cause pain; grade two, which suggests that a partial tear has attenuated muscle resistance strength; or grade three, which is a complete tear of  muscle fibers resulting in thorough weakness and significant agony.

There are loads of techniques from which chiropractors will carefully choose when determining how to treat your specific injury. They may elect to use myofascial release, or they might prefer kinesiotaping. There are various exercises that may be prescribed, and the chiropractors, in certain instances, may rely on the much more state-of-the-art Active Release Technique (ART) to employ a soft tissue treatment intended to expedite the healing process. Obviously, this is especially pertinent in the cases of many athletes. Any chiropractor worth his or her salt, though, will follow up their method of choice with instructing the patient to protect the injury, rest it for as much time per day as possible, ice it frequently each day, and keep the injured area elevated whenever possible. The compression of the anatomical region may also be suggested; in which case, it would not be out of the question for your chiropractor to prescribe some sort of brace as well.