I have been doing CrossFit for several years (since 2008). When I was a physician for US Army Special Operations I saw countless injuries and musculoskeletal pains. Many of these soldiers were doing CrossFit. I have been injured during CrossFit workouts and I have seen a ton of CrossFit injuries in my patients. Not because CrossFit is bad but simply because it challenges us. Of course there is always the problem of doing too much or with bad technique but that isn’t specific to CrossFit!
Injury goes hand-in-hand with sports and athletics and the more intense the sports or athletics the more common and intense the injury potential. The injuries vary from overuse & overtraining to torn muscles, ligaments, meniscus, herniated disks, labrums, etc.
Every CrossFit athlete’s goal (that we’ve seen anyway) is to increase their health, fitness, strength, endurance, power, etc as much as possible. Therefore, they push the limits on what their body can handle. This makes injury a more common entity.
The goal of every CrossFit box, trainers, etc is to keep these athletes in the gym and to increase the performance of their athletes. The goal of Revolution Health & Wellness Clinic is to keep our patients as healthy and fit as possible. Thus, we share the same goal of these athletes, trainers, owners, etc. We want to prevent injury as much as possible but when injury does occur we want to fix it as quickly as possible so that these athletes can resume optimal fitness and performance.
I was an Athletic Trainer in college and worked with athletes and their injuries. My training, at that time, was the standard dogma of “R.I.C.E.” or Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation as initial therapy for most injuries. In fact, we literally had T-shirts that simply said “Just Ice It.” This was generally followed by motrin, naprosyn, etc for the pain and swelling. Motrin is often called “Ranger Candy” in the Army due to its frequency of use for “all that ails you.”
R.I.C.E. therapy and NSAIDs (Anti-Inflammatory medications) serve to decrease the symptoms (pain & swelling) after an injury but they DO NOT help to heal the injured areas sooner. In fact, they can be very detrimental and actually slow or even stop the healing process. It is a faustian bargain!
Since our goal is to get these athletes back as quickly as possible, we want to find an intervention that heals the damaged tissues faster and produces better, stronger, and thicker ligaments and tendons. In short, we want the CrossFit approach of healing.
Prolotherapy is the CrossFit of healing!
Prolotherapy stimulates more rapid and complete healing. In fact, studies performed in the 1950’s showed that prolotherapy increases the diameter of the injected ligaments by up to 40%, increases the attachment area to the bone by 30%, and increases the strength of the ligament by 50%.
Better, thicker, stronger
If you have been reading our information on Prolotherapy then you know that most causes of musculoskeletal pain can find its roots in ligament and/or tendon relaxation or damage. Relaxed ligaments and tendons will not show up on an MRI and are a common cause of “unexplained pain” with normal radiologic studies. Additionally, an abnormal finding on MRI doesn’t mean that the abnormality is the cause of the pain or problem.
I have seen numerous soldiers and other patients with extremely painful conditions but nobody could identify why. They are generally referred to surgical procedures (without improvement by the way), physical therapy, pain management, etc. Who wants that?
The optimal treatment is to RESTORE NORMAL ANATOMY AND FUNCTION!
When ligament and tendon relaxation is the cause of pain then the only therapy is prolotherapy! Unfortunately, the art of physical exam for ligament and tendon damage as been lost with the advent of more expensive testing such as CT & MRI which cannot accurately evaluate these structures as the source of pain anyway!
We treat CrossFit athletes every day with minor and significant injuries. We have had the honor of treating several nationally competitive CrossFit athletes and had excellent results. We have been able to reduce pain, improve performance, and return them to full function sooner than any other therapy we’ve seen.
If you are a CrossFit athlete (or if you know one) then you should have a prolotherapy physician’s information stored in your phone. You should have their phone number in your rolodex. You should have their information posted in your gym.
We all have the same goal. Let us help you achieve it!
