Sports Chiropractic & Performance
Move better. Build strength. Prevent Injury. Perform with confidence.
You don’t have to be injured to work on how your body performs.
Sports Chiropractic at Ridiculously Well isn’t about treating injuries after they occur. Dr Colin Clarey’s particular interest is helping active people understand how their bodies move, identify potential weak links, and build the strength, mobility, coordination and physical capacity required to perform in their chosen sport.
Whether you’re an elite athlete, weekend competitor or simply someone who likes pushing yourself physically, the goal is similar:
Build a body that is prepared for what you’re asking it to do.
Performance is more than strength and fitness
We often think of athletic performance in terms of cardiovascular fitness, muscle strength and training volume.
But good physical performance also requires the nervous and musculoskeletal systems to work together efficiently.
Your brain needs accurate information about where your body is, how it’s moving and what forces it’s encountering. Your nervous system then has to coordinate the appropriate muscular response—quickly, accurately and repeatedly.
That interaction contributes to:
- balance and stability
- proprioception and body awareness
- coordination and movement control
- reaction and adaptability
- joint mobility
- muscular strength and endurance
- trunk and core control
- efficient transfer of force through the body
- confidence in movement.
Colin’s sports-performance work looks at these qualities together rather than focusing solely on the painful or injured part.
The Body–Brain Connection
Movement is ultimately a conversation between the body and brain.
Information from joints, muscles, tendons, the vestibular system, vision and other sensory systems continually tells the brain what’s happening. The brain uses that information to coordinate movement and adapt to changing demands.
This is particularly important in sport, where the body constantly has to respond to speed, load, fatigue, uneven surfaces, changes of direction and unexpected movement.
Balance, proprioception and movement-control exercises can challenge and develop these abilities.
Rather than thinking only in terms of strong muscles, Colin is interested in developing strength that can be accessed, controlled and coordinated when you actually need it.
Finding the weak links
A performance assessment isn’t about searching for imaginary imperfections.
No athlete is perfectly symmetrical, and not every difference in movement needs correcting.
Instead, we’re looking for findings that appear meaningful in the context of your sport, previous injuries, current symptoms and performance goals.
Depending on the athlete, Colin may assess areas such as:
- spinal and peripheral joint mobility
- strength and muscular endurance
- trunk and core control
- balance and proprioception
- single-leg stability and control
- movement quality and coordination
- flexibility and usable range of movement
- lower-limb mechanics
- previous injuries and areas of recurring difficulty
- sport-specific physical demands
- current training load and recovery.
The question is…
“What could we improve to make you and your body better prepared for what you want it to do?”
Building a more resilient athlete
No practitioner can promise to prevent every sporting injury.
Sport involves load, fatigue, contact, speed and sometimes plain bad luck.
What we can do is identify potentially modifiable factors and work on them.
If an athlete lacks strength, we can strengthen.
If balance or proprioception is poor, we can challenge it.
If useful movement is restricted, we can work on mobility.
If trunk control or endurance isn’t sufficient for the demands of the sport, we can train it.
If an old injury has left a genuine deficit, we can address it.
And if the problem requires skills outside Colin’s scope, our multidisciplinary team means we can involve one of our physiotherapists, osteopaths, massage therapists or other practitioners when appropriate.
Injury prevention isn’t about making an athlete bulletproof. It’s about improving the things we can influence.
Core strength that transfers to sport
Core training is much more than doing abdominal exercises.
In sport, the trunk and pelvis provide a foundation through which forces are generated, transferred and controlled.
Running, cycling, swimming, lifting, throwing and changing direction all require different combinations of strength, endurance, stability and coordination.
Colin therefore approaches core work according to the athlete and the demands of their activity rather than prescribing the same generic exercises to everyone.
The objective is not simply to have a “strong core.”
It’s to develop useful strength and control that transfers into movement and performance.
Proprioception, balance & movement control
Proprioception is our ability to sense the position and movement of our body without constantly having to look at it.
It’s fundamental to balance, coordination and the way we respond to changing environments.
After injury—and sometimes simply because of the demands and repetition of sport—there can be value in specifically challenging balance, joint-position awareness, reaction and movement control.
Exercises can be progressively made more demanding by altering support, movement, speed, visual input, resistance or task complexity.
The objective is to challenge the body–brain conversation, not simply make an exercise harder for the sake of it.
Hands-on care has a role—but it isn’t the whole answer
Colin remains very much a hands-on chiropractor.
Where appropriate, treatment may include:
- chiropractic manipulation
- joint mobilization
- flexion-distraction
- soft-tissue techniques
- dry needling.
Hands-on treatment may be useful when pain, stiffness or restricted movement is interfering with comfortable movement and training.
But improved athletic performance rarely comes from lying on a treatment table.
The treatment room can create an opportunity. What you subsequently teach your body to do with that opportunity matters more.
That’s why movement, strengthening, proprioception, coordination and progressive physical loading form an important part of Colin’s performance approach.
Sports Performance Screening
For athletes wanting a more detailed look at their physical strengths and potential limitations, Colin offers longer Sports Performance & Musculoskeletal Assessments.
These provide time to consider the demands of your particular sport, your injury history and what you’re trying to improve.
Rather than producing a generic checklist of “dysfunctions,” the aim is to identify a small number of meaningful priorities.
You can then leave with a clearer understanding of:
what’s working well, what may deserve attention, and what you can actually do about it.
Experience in elite sport
Colin has been in clinical practice for more than 33 years and holds the postgraduate International Chiropractic Sports Science Diploma.
His sporting experience includes working from 2008–2016 with an international professional triathlon squad under Australian coach Darren Smith, providing chiropractic care within the athlete support team. This included attending the squad’s high-altitude training camp in the Pyrenees in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympic Games.
He has worked with professional and elite triathletes as well as runners, cyclists, adventure racers and recreational athletes.
And importantly, Colin understands sport from the other side of the treatment table.
As a long-time runner, cyclist, triathlete and adventure racer, he understands the desire not merely to be free from pain, but to have a body capable of doing what you ask of it.
You don’t have to be an elite athlete
Performance is personal.
For one person it might mean racing an Ironman.
For another, running their first 10 km, riding trails at the weekend, returning to the gym, remaining competitive as they age—or simply feeling stronger and more coordinated than they did last year.
You don’t need to be elite to benefit from thinking like an athlete.
Assess. Understand. Strengthen. Coordinate. Adapt.
The aim is not physical perfection.
It’s to help develop a body that is stronger, better coordinated, more capable and better prepared for the demands you choose to place upon it.
[BOOK A SPORTS PERFORMANCE CONSULTATION]