first i think the freq of appts is constrained by how much you’re willing to pay out of pocket. here in the SF bay, ART/Chiro/Graston can run $85-$120 per visit. i doubt it would be covered by insurance, and especially in today’s crappy, declining insurance coverage.

second i think that it depends on how much you’re willing to work on your movement problems. 

back when i went weekly, i was training for ironman. basically ironman training would essentially “break me down” each week, and ART/graston/chiro would put me back together for the next week’s workouts. so those treatments allowed me to survive training and get to the race! but also back then, i knew nothing about proper movement patterns, mobility, muscle compensations, and the fact that my glutes were inactive.  these all conspired to cause the break down each week despite me being able to get enough fitness to race ironman.  so i didn’t work on any of that, and thus required a lot of extra treatments to keep me going during training.

HOWEVER, now that i’m a MWOD devotee, as well as studying other training concepts/disciplines, i now understand why i needed those treatments every week. i’m working on all my problems so actually i dont need to go as often now.

but as you transition from dysfunction to good function, you may need to support the process if you continue training through that period.

i think weekly is a good thing especially if you train weekly. but if you do a good job with movement patterns and mobility, i think you’ll find that you don’t need to go as often.  

last thing – training load will also affect this. if you go hard every week, then the need goes up to release muscles that you for some reason can’t get to by yourself via MWOD methods.  certainly other disciplines like trigger point therapy can reveal that pain is not always local to where it exists and that you have to treat other areas that are non-intuitive to the untrained to really get at the root of the problem.

re: MRI vs. Xray

certainly Xrays are cheaper and easier to do. but they are two dimensional whereas MRIs are 3D. you’d have to take Xrays from multiple angles or else you might miss a disc protruding. also, sometimes Xrays are not that clear although i suppose experts at looking at them would spot problems. in an MRI, you’d be much more less likely to miss a problem.

ha yeah i suppose you might find other problems in these body scans. but i think you should worry about the obvious problem and really figuring it out vs worrying about other possible problems they might find.

i’d let the doc determine whether an MRI is necessary or not.

as for surgery, i would always advocate trying any and every other treatment before you go under the knife. docs are trained to know what they know. if you go to a spinal surgeon for treatment, the first thing he will say is cut you open to fix the problem. know that you can always say no to any treatment. you don’t have to do anything anyone tells you they think you should do. if they get insulted you now have exposure to their character; i’d go find someone else on that aspect alone.

two decades ago, i had 3 partially herniated discs. it took me 9 months of rehab but i didn’t have to get surgery to get painfree and back to function. certainly surgery for treating backs was much more common then than now.