ShawneeDispatch.com

A new chiropractor in Shawnee hopes that if bicyclists are experiencing pain, they’ll think of him.

With a specialty for treating cyclists, Joel Terry picked a good location for his new practice, JET Performance Chiropractic, 12402 W. 62nd Terr. — the only city rated a bicycle-friendly community in the Kansas City metropolitan area. A cyclist himself, Terry said he hopes to help Shawnee’s bicycle enthusiasts as well as those with typical ailments.

Terry grew up in Grant City, Mo., a small town in the northwest corner of the state, and then went to Northwest Missouri State University to get an undergraduate degree before attending Cleveland Chiropractic College in Kansas City, graduating in December of last year.

He said he first became interested in becoming a chiropractor during his sophomore year in high school. He was on the track team and turning into one of the team’s top athletes until he started having some back pain.

“I went to physical therapists and MDs over a couple of months and had quite a bit of work done, and wasn’t having any luck,” he said.

So he went to his mother’s chiropractor, who had a sports-based practice.

“In a couple of weeks, he had me back on the track,” Terry said. “I was just really interested in how he could examine you, come up with a diagnosis and treat you that quickly and get those results.”

Terry continued to use a chiropractor as an athlete in high school and college. When he got into cycling, he realized it had benefits for that type of athlete, as well.

“A lot of chiropractors focus on running and its effects on the body, but I saw there weren’t that many focusing on just cycling,” he said.

After spending four months in a preceptorship at Williams Chiropractic in Olathe, Terry prepared to open his practice with the goal of using his own cycling experience and bike fit training to help cyclists.

Terry has lived in Mission for two years and had friends who lived in western Shawnee, so he had become familiar with the Shawnee Mission Parkway corridor. After he found the Shawnee location for the office, he took his business’s name from his own initials, J.E.T.

Terry said he focuses on manual spinal adjustments, though he also uses activator techniques, a low-force adjusting instrument. Other features of his office are cold laser therapy, which is used to decrease healing time, and a spinal decompression table to help those with herniated discs or other similar disc injuries.

“It’s an excellent way to treat them without having to resort to surgery,” he said. “The decompression table is a conservative form of care.”

Terry also uses the rehabilitation area of the office for cyclists to analyze stature and fit when actually on their bicycle.

“If the bike doesn’t fit them well, it can be causing them pain,” he said.

JET Performance Chiropractic can be reached at 766-9266. For more information, visit DoctorJet.net.

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