On this episode of the Effortless Swimming Podcast, I’ve got Co Davidson, who’s a swimmer with me at PowerPoints, but he’s also a chiropractor, so I’ve been seeing Co for the last couple of weeks about a sore back, but going in to get that treated, I’ve had a lot more come out of it than just that. So I’ve felt better in the pool, I’ve had more power, and I’ve just sort of felt a whole lot better just generally from getting treated twice a week. So welcome Co. Thanks for having me. It’s good to be here. And so I just want to go through a couple of things that you go through with, yeah, when you take people into the chiropractic clinic and… So yeah, basically with a new patient assessment, it’s a comprehensive history and examination of a person’s obviously their chief complaint as to why they come in the office in your case. It was a sore lower back. Obviously the whole premise behind chiropractic is that it’s about making sure your nervous

system works properly. Okay, so if you’ve got pain signals that are generating as a result of some sort of issue going on in your spine, then that’s actually a nervous system problem. Okay, so we’re actually getting a pain signal that’s been generated by some sort of injury, whether it be a minor injury or quite major acute injury. What we then do is assess what that’s been caused by, get to the root of the problem and formulate a care plan that’s going to be best for the patient that comes in. So everyone that comes in goes through a comprehensive initial consult that lasts about 45 minutes to an hour. And if necessary, we’ll take some x-rays as well, those x-rays allow us to see what’s going on underneath the service and really provide a really comprehensive analysis of how that person is. That’s one thing that you did differently to when I came in because I’ve been a chiro practice before and it’s just, you know, get treated 15 minutes and then that’s

it. The difference when I came in was because get the x-rays, you get the tests done and then you can see, you know, where your body’s not aligned and if you go about treating that. Exactly, and everyone’s a little bit different and will have different presentations, but the premise of having a spine is having a nice spine that’s really, really level. So if you look at yourself from front to back, you should see that your hip’s a level. Looking at yourself in the mirror, you should see that your shoulder’s a level. And if you look at yourself in the mirror, you should see that our eyes and our ears pretty much sit nice and level as well. So that’s the whole idea from front to back in terms of alignment with the spine to make sure your nervous system’s working really well. If we look at you from the side, we should see a couple of nice curves going through the spine as well. So this is a spine that we’ve had nice smooth thoracic typhosis and a nice cervical

lordosis as well. And what we see changing in a lot of swimmers is that we actually see an excretion or an exaggeration of the lumbar lordosis and that’s usually as a result of some deep conditioning going on through the core and some really tight erector spine or lower back muscles. We can also see a lot of problems with head position in swimmers in terms of anterior head carries or the actual spine will actually move forward. Now all these changes in terms of how the spine sits can directly affect how your nervous system functions. So as you can see, all these little yellow nerve rips that come out from the side send information from your brain to your body and then the body also sends information back to the brain along those nerve rips. If you have any part of your spine that’s not working properly, then it can actually affect the way that your brain and your body receive and send information. So in terms of what we do with brain, we do a stack of analysis each time

it comes in as to how his body’s functioning, whether it be through leg length analysis or palpation or a range of motion assessment. But we’ll also use some kinesiology assessments in terms of looking at how the brain’s muscles function and then correlating that to the direct area of the spine that is responsible for that muscle to function. We will then assess that area of the spine if it’s proven to be not where it should be or not working as well as it should be, we’ll do a little correction or an adjustment that we call in chiropractic. And as we do that adjustment, it allows that area of the spine to free up and for those nerves to communicate properly. So then you’re getting the right information going back to the brain, the right information for the brain coming back down to the body. Then you get muscles functioning better, you get better strength, better power, better insurance and all these sort of things.

So it’s pretty cool. So when I came in for the x-ray, pretty much all those things you’re talking about were happening with my body. So if you look at the hips, one was sitting higher than the other. The neck was too straight. Exactly. Too straight. So it was sort of getting a lot of tightness through the traps because of that. Yeah, so a lot of issues with swimming is, you know, and I’m confusing myself from a bit of a lazy breather when it comes to breathing, and I unfortunately only breathe to the left when it gets a bit tough. And that can create issues as well. So we develop sort of, you know, favorite sort of side in terms of our breathing and that can create issues into the neck and then obviously in terms of how you generate power into your stroke as well. So if you’re only turning to one side when you’re breathing, it can actually lead to you pulling deeper with your catch on one side versus the other side and creating balances

actually then down into your thoracic cage and actually the rotations or what we call the deviations from front to back where we get a little bit of a sphaliotic curve going through the spine. So that can actually then have issues in terms of the way that that affects the nervous system as well. And one of my favorite things that I get when I get treatment twice a week is you go through a couple of tests with the body. So you’ll test the strength of, or you know more about it, but you’ll test the strength of the legs and the shoulders. Then you’ll make the adjustment to fix that. And then you’ll do the test again straight afterwards. Exactly. And from that one adjustment, the power has increased so much. And that’s basically the kinesiology testing that we’re doing with this. So in terms of what Brent’s talking about as a test, where we check the fluid strength and how that correlates to the lower back function,

so into your lumbas and how your pelvis is moving, the corrections that we then do, we then recheck and retest. And basically the strength comes back instantaneously. There’s possibly another option for another podcast that we can do down the track in terms of a video that we can do. We could actually potentially film a nice little photo you’d like. Yeah, definitely. Because that would be good to see. Because to see, to get those results so quickly from one adjustment, it just goes to show that it’s really important to make sure that everything’s in alignment. And you can feel it too. Like when I get an adjustment in the morning and I swim late that day, then I feel a whole lot more powerful. Generally my times are quicker. And just everything starts to click. It’s like one of those sessions where you feel good as opposed to one of those sessions where you might get off your times and not really feeling it. And personally, I’ve found quite a big difference myself

as I was a junior in a sort of an open level swimmer as a youngster. And I can find that after an adjustment I can swim up to a full second quicker over a 50 in my freestyle if I’d been adjusted within the 12 hours of competing in that event. So the impact that your nervous system has is all important. Your nervous system controls every system in your body. And if you’ve got issues in terms of how that nervous system is able to communicate and how it’s able to deliver that information to your muscles, then you’re not going to be able to deliver that performance that potentially you’re hoping to achieve on that day. And you’re saying that Usain Bolt travels with a car practice? Usain Bolt’s actually got his own car that travels around with him. I’ve got a colleague that’s actually worked on quite high levels with Australian swimmers and the Australian swim team. A lot of the elite level athletes all around the world

are using car practice to get the best out of their performances. Yeah, I see why. Yeah, fantastic. That’s awesome. And if people want to get in touch with you, where can they find? So basically, we’re at Peekpotential here in Mentone. So just down here at baseline, the phone number’s 95841308. The website will also hot link it to the video is www.peekpotential.com.au. Good stuff. All right. Thanks, Brent. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me. Cheers. Welcome.