Calgary chiro helps athletes keep the good times rolling

By Keith Bradford

When he’s not racing around rinks on eight wheels, Dr. Brad Recsky spends a lot of time helping fellow roller-derby athletes get back on their feet.

The Calgary-born chiropractor, who works at MRU’s Injury & Prevention Clinic, was destined to spend his days at the roller rink after his parents met at the old Hollywood Roller Gardens.

After picking up the fast-paced, full-contact sport at a young age and going on to play and coach nationally and internationally, Recsky trained as a chiro and now uses his skills to help high-impact sport athletes recover from injury.

“I’ve been roller skating since you could get me into skates. I grew up at the rink and spent years at Roller Land and Lloyd’s,” he says of the former Calgary roller rinks.

“My parents met at the rink. I can kind of picture them hanging out there – dad has his group of friends and mom has hers. My dad sees my mom skating around faster than him. I almost picture it in that old veneer film, you know? They had bell bottoms on and my dad used to have an Afro. It was pretty awesome times.”

Recsky played football and rugby in high school but got bitten by the roller derby bug. He represented Canada in the 2014 and 2016 world cups and now helps run and coach the national teams. He is also on the board of Team Canada Roller Derby.

“You start getting into it and before you know it, it sucks you in,” he says. “I coach the Calgary Roller Derby All-Stars and play men’s roller derby as well. I have my hands in everything.”

After playing just one game Recsky called his father (Steve) and told him he needed to try the sport as well. His dad is also very involved, having coached the same women’s team as Recsky and acting as the current women’s national team coach.

Roller derby is a contact sport played on four-wheeled roller skates on an oval track. It features two teams of five skaters and involves a series of timed “jams.” Players skate counterclockwise and the jammer — designated with a star on their helmet — scores a point for each opposing blocker they lap.

“It’s like rugby on roller skates,” Recsky says. “In a perfect world, we’d have a derby venue in town, but that’s just a pipe dream at this point. Right now, we play in hockey rinks when the ice is out in the summer.”

While in chiro school, Recsky’s roller derby career suffered a setback.  

“I injured my hip and couldn’t play,” he says. “I fell on my hip, tore my labrum and was out for a few years.”

As someone who plays sports and is also a chiropractor, Recsky treats a lot of athletes in the roller derby community. But anyone playing sports can use a chiro, Recsky says. He has treated athletes in skiing, snowboarding hockey, football, volleyball … even MMA fighters either in or close to UFC status. 

“I joke that we treat the athletes that probably do too much training and need help with whatever injury is nagging them at the time.”

How chiros get you back on your feet

Chiropractic care focuses on the neuro-musculoskeletal system and helps patients get their body back to its proper alignment after injury. Even small strains can impact other parts of the body and your overall posture and alignment. 

MRU chiropractors practice conservative chiropractic medical care and take a hands-on approach to restore proper function to the spine, extremities and associated muscular system. 

“Physiotherapists treat ligaments and muscles, and we get into the joint spaces themselves — kind of work on them and make sure they’re moving properly,” Recsky says. For example, a physiotherapist will treat an ankle injury with rehab and work on ligaments and muscles in the area with some modalities. Chiropractors will look up into the chain more holistically, looking at the ankle, the knee, the hip and the lower back to see how they are connected.

“Usually, there’s an injury and some consequences from the injury itself. The body is really smart and will adapt to the injury. When you sprain your ankle, you might hobble on it a bit and you don’t really notice but you end up with a sore lower back. A lot of time after the injury, it’s often the adaptation to the injury that causes the most pain.”

When patients make an appointment, Recsky starts with an assessment.

“We talk about your chief complaint and see where you are at with adjusting and what you’re comfortable with,” he says. “If someone is not comfortable with adjusting, I don’t recommend adjusting them — I don’t want to try to convince someone to do something they don’t want to do.

“We have a whole toolbox of tools we can use to treat people. Typically, my first line is adjusting and soft tissue work. For me it’s more like massage, muscle-release technique, mobilization. We add exercises for rehab on top of that. I have used shockwave and ultrasound. But if something is obviously not on the chiro side, like a hyper-mobile ankle, I can refer them to physio or other members of the (multidisciplinary) team.”

Chiropractic care is best known for what some would call “back-cracking,” which isn’t for everyone.

“The evidence says it’s very safe,” Recsky says. “But I don’t want any patient to go through with it if they’re not comfortable. We can often get to issues without having to adjust.”

While Recsky treats patients from many different walks of life, not all of whom play sports, he’s found that chiro can be particularly beneficial for those who play high-impact sports. 

“The big one when it comes to high-impact sports is disc herniation of the lumbar and neck,” he says. “There is a lot of cross training when it comes to high-impact sports,” such as Olympic lifting and power lifting, which can lead to numbness, sciatica. and disc issues. “A lot of the stuff I treat from the roller derby side is mostly knee and ankle. We still treat the spine — low back, neck, whiplash too. In my sport we get a lot of injuries from just falling and impact injuries. A lot of the chaos you see in roller derby results in you smashing into someone and they fall over. Sometimes, someone else smashes into you and all of a sudden, you’re landing underneath, on concrete.”

Roller skating is enjoying something of a renaissance in Calgary. The city used to be home to three roller rinks — Hollywood Roller Gardens, Roller Land in the northeast and Lloyd's just off Macleod Trail,which closed in 2019. The opening of House of Skate in the southeast in February 2024 brought the good times rolling back.

“We want more people on skates – everyone trying it,” Recsky says. “It’s a blast and that’s what it comes down to — the love of roller skating, that freedom you feel when you’re on your skates. There are ‘try it’ nights when you can just come out and try the sport for the first time. We’d love to see more people out there.”

Roller skating has always been a family affair for Recsky, but the torch is about to be passed to a new generation.

“My mom roller skates, too, and me, my dad and sister and I went to the opening of House of Skate together,” Recsky adds, whose roller derby moniker is ‘BrADASS,’ as in ‘bad ass.’ “My daughter is 11 and she plays now so we have a three-generation roller thing going on. 

“The day she turned to me and said, ‘Dad, I want to play!’ I was like, ‘Yes!’ When she’s a bit older we’ll be able to play on the same team together. That’s my dream.”

High-impact sports that could benefit from chiropractic care:

1. Rugby
2. Football
3. Hockey
4. MMA
5. Roller derby
6. Volleyball
7. Skiing
8. Snowboarding
9. Martial arts
10. Basketball