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Writer's pictureDrCole

Reschke's Second Law of Chiropractic: Force

Updated: Sep 17, 2019


The take home message:

-If you want to be a big Force, then you need to be Fast and/or Heavy.

I often tell patients that, "I'm as gentle as I can be to get results needed to help you when it comes to treatment."

I prefer to be fast and gentle when performing chiropractic adjustments.

In my clinical experience, using more speed to provide a greater force benefits both patient and doctor with less soreness and quicker improvement.

Read on for more information:

Reschke's Laws of Chiropractic

Reschke's Laws of Chiropractic mirror Isaac Newton's laws of motion -- because motion is what I focus on as a chiropractor, Link to the first law -- keep moving if you want to keep moving.


Reschke's Second Law of Chiropractic

-If you want to be a big Force, then you need to speed up and/or be heavy. If you're not heavy, you better be moving fast.


Isaac Newton's second law, from high school physics, is:

Force is equal to Mass multiplied by Acceleration, F=m*a...That's fantastic Dr Cole, you can remember bits and pieces of information, how in the hashtag does that apply to me? And where is your Star Wars reference about the Force?


How it applies to us:

In order to apply a big force to something, you need to have a lot of weight or be moving fast, or be both heavy and fast. As a chiropractor, I use either my hands or other tools to apply a force to your body to create motion in your joints. And if I were given the choice of 'heavy' or 'fast' to increase the effect of the force, I would choose fast almost every time. "Quick" typically gets better results with adjustments, such as less soreness, and I prefer to speed up pain relief as fast as possible.


--The faster we restore proper motion --> the faster we can reduce inflammation and muscle spasm --> the faster we reduce pain. Or in other words --> Big acceleration leads to bigger healing force--as in chiropractic treatment forces your body to accelerate the healing process, see what I did there?


Chiropractic adjustments can either be heavy or fast, and I prefer to focus on the speed and gentle aspect rather than the heavy handed adjustments. I tell patients, "I'm as gentle as I can be to get results that help you when it comes to treatment."


But as my sociology teacher Pete Padilla, PhD. said, "Do not mistake my kindness for weakness!!!" I will be as gentle as I can be, but we need to understand that sometimes there is soreness associated with treatment. Have you ever heard the phrase "No pain, no gain"? Here at Reschke's Active Chiropractic we try to balance the "pain" you feel with the "gain" in your movement. Hmmmm, seems like balance could be a very important topic................more on that later.


Contained within this second law is the idea of the patient being as relaxed as they can be during treatment. Relaxed muscles allow for quick work and less discomfort after treatment. Sometimes when an area of the body is inflamed, relaxing the muscles can be downright impossible, at which point we need to try and reduce inflammation before adjusting.


I often tell patients that when I have to fight against tight muscles, the end result is typically a "win-lose" scenario - although we may have gotten the proper adjustment, pulling on tight, inflamed muscles may create more soreness. My goal is to have people leave the office in a better condition whence they arrived, but sometimes the soreness and pain take longer to dissipate and in some cases pain gets worse before the condition gets better.

(Yes, I did use the word whence)


In my clinical experience, having more speed to provide a greater force benefits both patient and doctor. I know plenty of colleagues that are smaller and lighter than me, and they are fantastic chiropractors that get great results because they are fast like lightning. Size matters not, if you are moving fast enough.

Thank you for reading.

See my next post for further information on...wait, what was all that stuff about balance???


Reschke's Laws of Chiropractic, CARE THAT KEEPS YOU MOVING


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