Some back and neck pain needs a doctor today, not a chiropractor. Some back and neck pain is not a case for a chiropractor and needs a doctor the same day. Go to an emergency room, not to us, if you have numbness in the groin or inner thighs, if you have lost control of your bladder or bowels, if a leg is becoming weak rather than just painful, if the pain followed a serious fall or a car crash, if you have a fever with back pain, if you have unexplained weight loss alongside it, if you have a history of cancer, or if a headache came on suddenly and is the worst you have ever had. We would rather you rang your doctor and never rang us at all.
Sports injuries are the one group who arrive with a deadline already in their head. There is a race in nine weeks, a season starting in March, a league match on Sunday. That deadline is genuinely useful clinical information, because it changes what a sensible plan looks like, and it is also the thing most likely to make somebody do something stupid. Dr. Raghunathan sees most of the athletes here and her first job is usually working out whether the date is realistic and saying so if it is not.
The second thing that separates sports work from ordinary back pain is that resting is rarely the answer. Tendons, in particular, respond badly to being left alone and well to being loaded progressively — the instinct to stop entirely until it stops hurting produces a tendon that is weaker, a body that is deconditioned and a return that is slower. Most of what we do is work out what you can load right now without provoking it, and then build from there in a way you can measure.
The third is that a great deal of sports injury is a training problem wearing an anatomical costume. A calf that tore in week nine of a marathon block, a shoulder that went up after somebody added three sessions a week in January, a knee that started aching when the mileage doubled — the tissue failed, but what caused it was the loading. We look at what you did in the six weeks before it happened, because otherwise you will do it again.
How a sports assessment differs
Longer, more movement, and a conversation about your training week rather than only about the sore part.
The six weeks before
What changed. Volume, intensity, surface, footwear, a new coach, a new programme, a week off followed by a return at full load, a race that was harder than planned. Injuries very rarely arrive out of nowhere, and the pattern in the weeks beforehand is usually the most informative part of the history.
What you can do right now
We establish a floor rather than a prohibition: what movements, ranges and loads are available today without provoking symptoms. That floor becomes the starting point of the programme, and it is nearly always higher than the athlete assumed. Being given permission to do something is often the most useful outcome of the first visit.
Movement under load
Watching somebody squat, hinge, hop, land and run tells us things no static examination does. A knee that looks fine on a table can collapse inward on a single-leg landing, and a shoulder that has full range lying down can lose control overhead with two kilograms in the hand. This is why the rehabilitation floor exists.
The deadline, honestly
You will be told what we think is achievable and what is not. Sometimes the answer is that nine weeks is possible if you do exactly what is written down; sometimes it is that six weeks is a fantasy and pushing it will cost you the whole season. We would rather have that conversation at visit one than at visit eight.
What treatment looks like
Roughly ten minutes of hands, then the work. The proportions surprise people who expected a massage.
Hands-on, briefly
Joint work where a joint is stiff, soft-tissue work where the muscle is guarding, and taping where it genuinely helps. This part reduces pain and buys range, and it is the part that makes the rest possible. It is not the part that fixes the injury, and any clinic treating an athlete with hands alone for six weeks is not doing the job.
Loading, from day one
Something is loadable on the first visit in almost every case, even if it is isometric holds or the other limb. Progressive loading is what restores tendon and muscle capacity, and the schedule is written down with sets, reps and a rule for when to progress rather than left as a vague instruction to do some exercises.
Keep the engine running
An injured runner can usually still bike, swim, row or lift, and keeping fitness through the injured period shortens the return dramatically. One of the more valuable things we do is work out what training you can keep doing rather than telling you to stop, because six weeks of nothing has its own cost.
Return criteria, not dates
You go back when you can do the things on the list — a certain number of single-leg hops without symptoms, a certain load, symmetry between sides, a tolerated session at the intended intensity. Criteria beat calendars, because a date arrives whether or not the tissue is ready.
When it is not a chiropractic problem
Some injuries need imaging or a surgeon first, and knowing which is part of the job.
A joint that gave way
A knee that buckled with a pop and swelled within an hour, a shoulder that came out of its socket, or an ankle that will not take any weight at all needs assessing for structural damage before anybody starts rehabilitating it. That may mean imaging, and it may mean an orthopaedic opinion. We refer, and we do it quickly.
A bone that might be broken
Point tenderness over bone after a fall, inability to weight-bear, or a bone stress injury suspected in a runner with a rapid mileage increase — particularly a runner with low energy availability or menstrual irregularity — needs imaging rather than treatment. Running through a bone stress injury turns a six-week problem into a six-month one.
A muscle that tore badly
A visible dent, immediate loss of function and rapid bruising suggests a substantial tear rather than a strain. Most are managed conservatively, but the grading matters for the timeline and occasionally for the decision, so it is worth knowing what you actually have before planning around it.
Something that is not the sport
Chest pain on exertion, unexplained breathlessness, fainting, unexplained weight loss, night pain, or pain that does not behave mechanically at all. Athletes get non-athletic illnesses and are unusually good at explaining them away as training. We will send you to your doctor and we will not treat it in the meantime.
Sports Injury Care in western Queens
Injuries come with a deadline attached. We work backwards from the date you need to run, lift or play again, and tell you plainly when that date is not realistic.
Every course of care here starts the same way: a full hour, a proper history, an examination, and then a plain statement of what we think is going on and how confident we are about it. You are told what we propose, roughly how many visits it ought to take and what should have changed by when — and we agree a date to stop and look at whether it worked. If the honest answer at any point is that this needs somebody else, you get that instead, and we write to them the same week.
Chiropractic care is not a substitute for medical diagnosis. Chiropractic care is not a substitute for medical diagnosis, and nothing on this website is medical advice for your particular problem. We are not physicians: we do not prescribe medication, we do not perform surgery, and we do not treat disease. What we do is examine how your spine and joints move, work on them by hand, and give you something to do between visits. If your problem turns out to be outside that, we say so and refer you — which happens often enough that you should expect it as a normal outcome rather than a failure.
What chiropractic does not treat. We treat musculoskeletal problems: the spine, the joints, the muscles and the nerves that are irritated by them. We do not claim that adjusting a spine treats asthma, allergies, ear infections, colic, digestive disease, high blood pressure, infertility, immune function or any other internal illness. Chiropractors who make those claims are making them without good evidence, and you should be wary of anybody who does. If somebody has told you that spinal care will fix a condition on that list, we will tell you honestly that it will not.
Questions
Sports Injury Care — the questions we are asked most
Should I rest my injury or keep training?
Almost never complete rest, and almost never carrying on unchanged. The useful approach is to find what you can load today without provoking symptoms and work from there — which for most injuries means modifying rather than stopping. Tendons in particular do badly with rest and well with progressive loading. Meanwhile keep your general fitness going with something the injury tolerates, because six weeks of nothing has its own cost.
How long until I can run again?
It depends on the tissue and on what you have been doing, and you will get a straight answer rather than a comfortable one. We prefer return criteria to dates — a number of single-leg hops without symptoms, a tolerated session at the intended intensity, symmetry between sides — because a date arrives whether or not the tissue is ready. If your target race is unrealistic, we will tell you at the first visit.
Do I need a scan?
Usually not. Most soft-tissue injuries are diagnosed and managed perfectly well from the history and the examination, and imaging rarely changes the plan. Where it does matter: a joint that gave way and swelled fast, a suspected fracture or bone stress injury, or an injury that is not improving as expected. In those cases we refer you the same week and read the report with you.
Is taping actually useful or is it a placebo?
It has a real but modest role, and it is oversold. Elastic tape will not hold a joint together and it will not correct anything structurally. What it does reasonably well is provide skin feedback that changes how you move, reduce the sense of instability, and let somebody complete a session more comfortably. We use it where it helps and we do not put it on everybody as a matter of routine.
Can you help with a shoulder problem from lifting?
Usually yes. Shoulders that hurt with pressing, overhead work or the bottom of a bench are among the more common things through this door, and most respond well to a period of modified loading plus targeted work on the shoulder blade and rotator cuff. What changes the plan is a shoulder that has dislocated or one with genuine loss of strength rather than pain-limited weakness. The shoulder pain page covers those.
I am a runner with knee pain. What is the first thing to check?
What changed in the six weeks before it started — mileage, pace, surface, hills, shoes or a return to full volume after a break. Runner's knee is overwhelmingly a loading problem rather than a structural one, and the fix is usually a temporary reduction, some specific hip and quadriceps work, and a sensible rebuild. Knee pain with swelling, locking or giving way is a different conversation and needs assessing.
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Book an appointment
Pick a chiropractor and an hour from the calendar — it shows only the times each of them genuinely has free. A first visit is a full hour and costs $95 for the examination on its own, or $145 if we treat you at the same appointment. You decide which after the examination, not before.