Posted: 8:52 PM Jun 28, 2012
Reporter: Ryan Wing

Antigo Doctor

One of the biggest goals for athletes around the world is to one day represent their country in the Olympics.

The same is true for Dr. Curt Draeger, who will be attending his third straight Summer Olympic Games as one of 40 chiropractors for Team USA.

"That's exciting for me and now I'll make many more connections to help other doctors and work with other doctors and I'll learn from other doctors and then we work together as a team."

It may not look like much on the outside of Gold Medal Motion, but on the inside, it's a state-of-the-art facility, where Dr. Draeger treats chronic pain patients, as well as heptathletes and decathletes as they prepare for the Olympics.

"Basically here we treat five things: the complete and total package, which is the muscle, the ligament, the bone, the nerve and the joint, all five."

Olympians come from all over the country to Antigo to receive Dr. Draeger's treatments, which range from an infrared sauna, to a therapy pool, to dry hydrotherapy.

But the key technique is a therapeutic laser which speeds up healing in athletes by as much as 30 to 50 percent.

"We perfected it using a high-powered laser so that you can go much deeper to be able to treat the injury at the depth that it's injured at. Most lasers only go a quarter inch deep. Now we can go 2 to 3 to 4 inches deep."

What makes working with decathletes even more rewarding for Dr. Draeger is the fact that they need to be in top physical shape for not just one event, but ten events.

"They have to be perfectly balanced in all their body parts in order to achieve what they need to achieve. So that's where I have learned the most is from the athletes because I get to tweak them to make their perfect performance."

And as Dr. Draeger said, there's a reason decathletes are called the world's greatest athletes.

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