Sports Chiropractor Without a Team: How to Build an Athlete Practice

Most chiropractors think sports chiropractic means landing a job with a professional team.

But there are only a few teams — and thousands of athletes.

In this episode of the ICA Sports & Fitness Science Council ChiroCast, Dr. Brant Hulsebus talks with Dr. Kevin Jackson about the real pathway into sports chiropractic: working one-on-one with athletes in your community and building trust that naturally grows into teams.

They discuss how athletes actually enter a practice, why availability matters more than marketing, and the difference between showing up on the sideline versus trying to be the center of attention. The conversation also covers common mistakes chiropractors make when working around coaches and other providers, and why you’re not just treating a spine — you’re protecting a career.

If you want to work with athletes but don’t have a team contract, this episode explains how successful sports practices are actually built.

Learn more about the ICA Sports & Fitness Science Council:
https://www.chiropractic.org

Transcript

0:05

Hello, and welcome to another Chiro Cast from the ICA. This is another one of the Sports and Fitness Science Council podcast. am Dr. Brant Hulsebus from Rockford, Illinois, and I am joined today by a fellow board member, Dr. Kevin Jackson. Coming from Pennsylvania, you have to remind me which city again in Pennsylvania. I am, I'm the in the Metropolis of York, Pennsylvania. Remember, as you said, York, I remembered. First capital of the United States. I might add Oh, very interesting. Very nice. home of Harley Davidson final manufacturing. Okay. York Bar Belt. Okay, York, nice. York air conditioning. It's a, it's a good town of 50,000 people. Sounds like a busy town. Yeah, industrious. I. Well, today you and I have talked many podcasts over the, well, the 10th length we've been doing this about the fact that, know, people come to me all the time and they say, Hey, you know, I want to become the Cubs chiropractor someday. And I, and I explain to them, the Cubs already have a chiropractor, they don't need you. And other teams already have team doctors, and there's, there's only so many teams in the world. But there's, there's other opportunities, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And that is the best topic, a topic that we can ever discuss is there's tons of athletes and they need our care. And once you get in with an athlete, you might get in with the whole team. Yeah, so working with a one-on-one athlete, it's a whole different game and with an entire team., You want to talk to us a little bit about how you've been able to meet individual athletes? Well, usually it's by them entering our office. And,, so there's a couple, couple things that have happened over the years is, is one time , a professional golfer on a Saturday was referred to our office and, I was available and I made myself available. And that's a big point to, for athletes is availability. And so he came in, he was on the, at the time it was the Nike. Tour, it was the minor league tour for the PGA and he had a hip issue. And yes, I don't necessarily treat hip issues, but it's an athlete and there's always a biomechanical aspect to hip issue and a neurological aspect of it. So he comes into the office, he gets adjusted, feels wonderful. The next weekend he goes out and he was on, he was both on the Nike tour and the PGA, but he goes on to a tournament in it was the St. Jude Open. I'm not sure where it was. It was down in the southern state somewhere. I think Louisiana wins the tournament, becomes absolutely obsessed with flying in New York, getting adjusted and flying me the, here flying me there. So it was one of, it was a really great opportunity, but it was, it came by being available and humble enough to say, Hey, let me help you, let me show you what chiropractic is. And from there it opened up all kinds of opportunities. But, yeah, that was that. And so becoming a individual athlete's chiropractor, I is the way, there's tons of it. And you can go on and on and on yourself. And to me, high school athletes, I have another whole high school team comes in. One of the runners, it was a cross country team. One runner comes in, gets good results, the other one comes in. Another one came in. Next thing you know, the team comes in and next thing you know, the parents and grandparents, and this is no exaggeration. They come in and so it catches on like wildfire If you're saying and doing the right things, if I was just treating hip pain and knee pain and ankle pain, that would be one thing. But if we talk about performance and career avoiding injuries and you know, extending your career, that's the language that the athlete likes to speak. You know, when you talk about athlete too, I, I think in every community across America, no questions asked. The highest population age of athletes are gonna be your high school athletes and high school athletes start high school. At eight o'clock in the morning, they go to school all day. Then immediately following school they have practice. So the idea that they're gonna come see you you have to make yourself available. I see some chiropractic clinics are open from three to five or maybe nine to. One, and that's it during the day, and they advertise themselves being a sports chiropractor. So you Yeah. just talking briefly before this about how I actually stay up until 7:00 PM to catch the athletes after practices. You Yeah. bit more about the idea of availability? Availability is, is a key not only with the athletes, but just patients in general. And I know there's a push in our, our profession to live your best life and to make your hours that are more congruent with how you want to live your life and make your fees about how you want to fund your lifestyle and all that. But we're old school chiropractors and we've been around chiropractic for a long time. And to me, success is this, is, is success is actually. Accomplishing something for an individual in your community to make their life better. That would be my goal, or, or my definition of success is not how much money I made or how many people I saw, or how many times I got to go to this restaurant or that island or what have you. But I moved my hours from and on Thursdays I'm open every day until seven. I'm open five, five days a week until seven. I'm open Saturday mornings too, from nine to 10. Just for an hour, but just being open on Thursday from five till eight, and that making myself available till 8:00 PM and then making myself available Saturday morning if someone wants to get checked, is, is, makes all the difference in the world. All the difference in the world and, and availability to anybody to any person, to any worker. Most people work nine to five job. And they can't get in between nine and five. So, but it makes, it makes everything worthwhile. And, and here's a, here's a, a, a success tip for sports chiropractic and regular chiropractic. You have to be open enough hours for people to come in and I like to have Friday nights off, and I've been in practice for 34 years, but I go on Friday night because. People need me and I even go in Saturday morning 'cause people need me. And a lot of those people are athletes. So it makes a big difference, the availability and that is so true. And then if they can't get in during those times, I have a clinic inside my house, I replicated my office clinic in one of the rooms in my house and you can gimme a call at any time for any reason. I'll be available to you And it's commitment. And I think one of the big things if, if a, if an athlete or an athlete's parents. Can detect that you are committed to them. That you're not just a number that you're trying to sell a, a care plan to, but you're actually committed to their athletic performance and their wellbeing. Boy, that is marketing like you've ever seen marketing before. It's just the greatest thing going. A hockey game when they're. And the medical coverage is myself, a dentist, an er, an orthopedic surgeon, and the orthopedic surgeon couldn't believe my hours and the dentist hours. And the dentist probably said, well, we're blue collar physicians. You're a white collar physician. People don't take the time off of work to come see us, but they will take a day off of work if they've got a shoulder surgery coming up. So he is always described this as blue collar doctors, us and the dentist, and I've always thought that was a very appropriate thing to say. Yeah. And that's, that's a beautiful thing. And I don't, I don't mind being open being a blue collar chiropractor. I mean, you have to be available sometime. Yep. the problem is if you, if you're expecting people to come in Repetitiously and to come in and see you, I mean, you have to be open those hours. And but it's a great point. Availability is the key. The. You talked about, you know, when you see one athlete, then you have great success, you see more. I know one of the most powerful things I ever did was a couple years ago, I was taking care of a young lady who's ended up getting 20 different D Division one scholarship offers for basketball, but I attended some of her milestone And everybody was there. All the other parents, like, who's that guy in the corner? And I, you know, I had like maybe in my clinic logo on my pullover, and everyone said, that's your chiropractor now. Do you ever get a chance to sneak out and cheer him on? Oh yeah. Yeah. So especially with the football players, I'd go by on a Saturday or Sunday and I just, I'm available on the sideline if they need me for an adjustment. And, and the truth is, is not a lot of care gets delivered on the sideline during a football game. They're just involved in the game. And if they, they have trainers there and, but there are a few times that I'm available, but just. Just the parents seeing you there and just saying hello and just them, you know, just seeing the commitment, it, it means everything. Even if you just drop by to say hello, you know, and I don't want to spend my life going to little league games when it's not my own family. But it certainly if it's close by and it makes a difference. And you know, again, the little things that we do have just speaks volumes. I have these wrestlers that come in and the wrestlers. The current ones that I'm talking about, were actually from the football team that I took care of. But the I had this whole program where we had kids hooked up with with sensors and we looked at the impacts and the velocity of their head movement and. And but these particular people didn't want anything to do with what I was doing from a concussion or you know, a sub-concussive standpoint. They just avoided the whole program, but they saw how committed I was to the other players, but. A year or two later, I get a call and someone gets hurt wrestling and next, you know, the two brothers are in, another friend comes in. The parents started getting adjusted. So it's, it's, it's, you know, and we can't, you can't force chiropractic onto people. You just gotta kind of let people understand what it is and what it isn't certainly isn't physical therapy. They have enough of those and it's not training being a trainer. You know, and, but once they catch it, it's the, the marketing behind the whole thing is, is, is when you are there for the people, the, it really makes a big difference and just grows exponentially, even in ways you don't think it would grow. Yeah, say when you go to the sidelines of games, you, you might not give care, but you show your care and exactly. drives the men big time. Exactly. I volunteered East High School on the sidelines for many years 'cause I was friends with the athletic trainer and he just said, you want to come hang out? I did. Never did anything on the sideline. Unfortunately. This is a school where. Not a lot of parents attended the the events and so there was nobody there to authorize me to take care of the minors. Right. you knew it, half the teaching staff's coming in and half the coaching staff's coming in and now they're recommending me to left and right. So if you're a young chiropractor and you want to build your practice, just showing up at stuff and hanging out and making yourself available is huge. Yeah. some of the the pluses, but have you seen some things that you want to try to avoid? Also to kinda warn our young people getting into this. Well, let's say, let's say you are invited into a. Hockey. Teams, inner circle. They want you to be the team chiropractor, and let's say you made it that far and you're happy to be there. And it's, see, it's a, it is a real privilege to be part of a team and you know, but what you want to do is you don't want to appear like you're the superstar and you're the know it all. And you're greater than everybody. What you want to do is be a humble healthcare provider. And you don't want to make the mistake of making it all about you. You actually want to make it all about them. And basically what an athlete wants to know, it's a little different what, what a patient wants to know, but they want to know, how can I improve my performance? How can you. Prevent me from getting injured. How can you help me be a better player? And if you can deliver those goods to someone without, without getting yourself in the way, then you're gonna do, you're gonna do well. Other things is this. If someone tells you something in private. Say a fear that they have or a concern that they have, but you're, you're letting it leak out to other parents or you're, you're, you're, you're, you're not being part of the team mentality. You go rogue, you're like, you know, so whenever you, and it's, I mean, we shouldn't have to tell anybody this, but this is the little things that we accidentally do in good faith. It's not like you're, you're. Broadcasting someone's you know, medical status and violating hipaa. But if you just, if you're just talking about people, never a good thing on a team. You want to be as private as can be. You just want to be focused on that person. You certainly never, ever, ever want to condemn a coach for not. Playing a player this certain way. You don't want to get into any politics like that, that is like shooting yourself in the foot. So you never want to talk about any other healthcare provider, any, any, any patient. You just keep to yourself and you just become a team player. And see, chiropractors are used to being their own superstar in their office because it's you. Everybody thinks that you're wonderful, that's why they're there. But that doesn't translate into a team format. I also don't run in there and try to teach the orthopedic doctors that everything they do is wrong, and what you have is so much better. Oh, speak for themselves. Right. oh my totally dear. Totally right on that. And to, oh my gosh, that would be so embarrassing. You know, we're not there to teach anybody, you know, we're just there to help. And that's, that's, it's, you have to humble yourself, but it's so rewarding, you know? As you know, I always give my guests the the final say. So as we're wrapping this up, I'm gonna give you the, the stage One more time here. Anything that I didn't talk about that you were hoping to discuss today, I'm gonna give you the open floor to go ahead and let us know. Well, I even wrote this down this time. So the biggest mistake I think a team chiropractor can make is thinking that they're treating a spine. You're actually treating a career, a career that runs on trust. So trust ends up being the biggest thing. You know, even when you're dealing with these high school athletes, they have aspirations that are gonna make it to a D one school, and when they make it to a D one school, they might have an aspiration that they're making it to the pro level. So you want to, you want to earn their trust, show their trust. You want to support their belief system that they have. You don't want to be a negative Nancy to 'em. You just want to be there to let them flourish. And by golly, they just might. You know, think about this too, is that their body's their entire investment. Even if they're not gonna go pro, they want to pay for college. You know, Yes. with the daughter, with the D one athlete, he actually paid for a WNBA player to come down and practice with her. And Wow. that must have been expensive. He said, not as expensive pains, tuition. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know. That's their machine. That's, that's their, that's everything they have. And let 'em know how to make that machine run good. Well, that's a realistic thing to let a person know is that if they can pay for their education, they've become very, very successful. And that would be a wonderful, and that's an attainable goal. You know, you make it to a D one, a D two situation, even D three, they give you an academic type scholarship. You are, you are just, you are eons ahead of everybody else because you come outta school without 150, $200,000 in debt and that's well worth it. Very much. Yeah. thank you for joining us today. If you want to learn more, go to chiropractic.org, the ICA website. You'll find the Sports and Fitness Council there. If you have questions about the Sports and Science Fitness Council, either reach out to myself or Dr. Jackson as we're both board members, and we'd love to teach you more how to get more involved. We've got big things coming, big conferences and seminars coming up. You're gonna start seeing us more at some of these big chiropractic conferences that we all go to. And please hit like and subscribe and come back for more. Dr. Jackson. Thank you. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Talk to you all later.