What Is Sports Medicine Acupuncture®?

What is Sports Medicine Acupuncture® and why should you get it?

Sports Medicine Acupuncture is a robust approach to treating both chronic and acute pain that incorporates aspects of Traditional Chinese Medicine with modern research and physiology. We seek to find what works best from both systems and create a synergy that is greater than the sum of its parts.

How does it work?

Acupuncture alone is an effective modality for treating inflammation. By create a modest amount of stimulation to the tissue around the site of an injury we are able to send a signal to the body to increase healing and decrease inflammation in this tissue. At San Diego Sports Acupuncture we also utilize intramuscular motor point stimulation, which is also sometimes simply called motor point stimulation or "Dry Needling". Dry needling allows us to trip the circuit breaker, or motor point, on the muscle causing the communication between the muscle and the brain to "reset" and return to normal function. Muscles that are in spasm or inhibited and not responding will go back to neutral almost immediately and begin to function normally again. But it isn't always enough to decrease inflammation and reset the errant muscles, so we will typically add some form of myofascial release, PNF stretching, or exercise therapy to help retrain the body to function correctly and break the old habits and patterns that initially created your pain.

What does a Sports Medicine Acupuncture Treatment look like?

Every successful treatment starts with a proper assessment. Being equal parts Chinese Medicine and Sports Medicine our toolbox includes several different techniques and approaches to identify, specifically, what is not working correctly so that we can then fix it. You will commonly see orthopedic tests, range of motion measurements, squat assessments, and other very familiar looking tools of diagnosis utilized by Physical Therapists and Orthopedic Surgeons. Your provider may also do more of a traditional internal Chinese Medicine intake alongside your Western intake if they feel it's appropriate for your specific condition.

Here, Ryan is getting ready to perform a functional overhead squat assessment. This technique is great for identifying muscle imbalances that lead to improper movement patterns during dynamic movements. We can also use the postural grid behind her and other tools to precisely measure static postural imbalances.

Here I am performing Yeoman’s test. This is just one of many orthopedic tests we will use to help form a differential diagnosis. Ryan is a former high level rugby player who has retired from her sport and switched to Olympic weightlifting. She trains hard and she’s beginning to develop some low back pain. I’m using this test (among many others) to try to determine what exactly is causing that lower back pain so we can know what approach will work best for her specific condition.

Palpation is one of the cornerstones of a successful treatment. Sports Medicine Acupuncture® is a unique approach that involves the needling of muscle motor points. A motor point is where the muscle is innervated by the spinal cord and it’s where the muscle is most electrically charged. When the motor point is stimulated by an acupuncture needle the electricity is discharged and the muscle returns to a neutral position. Whether the muscle was overly activated or overly inhibited before it now functions correctly again. With practice, palpation allows us to feel the motor points that are hidden in each muscle.

This is a fairly normal looking low back treatment. Here you can see points being used to help adjust the tilt and symmetry of her hips, reduce the tightness and tension of her low back, and also to reduce inflammation. Ryan’s assessment led me to believe she was experiencing inflammation of her lumbar facet joints. The needle I’m currently inserting in the picture is to reduce inflammation in her L4 lumbar facet.

Soft tissue release is another very common tool used during a Sports Medicine Acupuncture® treatment. While working on Ryan I happened to notice her forearms were very tight, a common issue with weightlifters. In this particular style of soft tissue work I’m having Ryan move her wrist through flexion and extension as I gently, but firmly dredge the flexor muscles of her forearm. This technique is sometimes called “pin and stretch” and it’s just one of many soft tissue techniques we use.

Cupping is another common modality we use. I prefer to put down a layer of massage cream and then apply glass cups using the traditional “fire cupping” technique. Once the cups are in position I can slide them all across the tight tissue to break up fascial adhesions and allow the muscles to move freely.

Glass cups create the most suction, so that’s what we typically use on the back, but we also have gentler silicone cups that we’ll use when working in tighter spaces, like with biceps long head tenosynovitis ("biceps tendonitis").

After resetting the tight muscles with acupuncture we often perform stretching exercises to help restore the muscles to their full range of motion. We will typically do multiple stretches for each area of the body, including both the muscles we worked on and the muscles that move in the opposite direction to those.

The iliopsoas stretch is by far one of the most important stretches for chronic low back pain in modern society. The iliopsoas (commonly referred to as the psoas) becomes tight when we’re stuck in a sitting position for too long and it can lead to an achy low back. Here you can see I’m using my leg to stretch Ryan’s quad while I’m also performing the psoas stretch.

I hope this sample of what a Sports Medicine Acupuncture® treatment looks like has helped to demystify what it is we do. This is not an exhaustive list of every tool and technique we have to offer in a treatment, but it is a fairly normal looking treatment. Other common techniques we employ include kinesiotaping®, GuaSha ("scraping"), and Postural Assessment Corrective Exercises (PACE) among others. Every treatment is custom tailored to your specific needs on that particular day.

As always, please don't hesitate to reach out if you have questions! Educating the public on what we do and how it works is a very important part of what we do and we're always happy to help.