By Lauri Lee
Northside News
When he joined Madison Chiropractic-North team in April, the strengths Brad Neitzel (pronounced Night-zell) brought to the practice at 2205 N. Sherman Ave. were his abilities to help athletes with sports injuries as well as to help anyone who came with pain issues. “I help treat the whole person no matter their age or whether they’re seeking relief from low back pain, neck pain, sciatica, migraines, or to help with injuries. I’ve treated young children as well as those in their 90s and enjoy working with people who want to live more active and healthier lifestyles.”
As a young man, his career interest changed from engineering to chiropractic because of his own sports injuries. He played basketball and football as most high school boys do, but the muscle tears and injuries from ATV motocross race crashes often required him to seek specialized sports medicine chiropractic care to get through the pain of deep, soft-tissue trauma. Through rehabilitative and therapeutic exercises, he was able to stay safe and prevent future injuries. When he added Strongman and power lifting competitions to his growing list of sport interests, it became more critical than ever for him to focus on the whole body and how it moves and functions. Neitzel modestly shared that he holds a dead lift record for 920 pounds, which ranks him in the top 20-30 strongest people in the world. In the gym, people typically dead lift an average of 400 pounds.
Neitzel’s educational path started at University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse where he obtained a double major in exercise sport science and pre-chiropractic with a minor in nutrition and psychology. From there, he attended and graduated from Northwestern Health Sciences in Bloomington, Minn., a southern suburb of Minneapolis, due to their focus on evidence-based chiropractic. Exercise sports training focuses on the body as a whole and how it ties together and helps us function as humans. The psychology background helps with active listening for picking up on cues for how to treat people’s pain and understanding their state of mind which impacts the threshold for pain.
During his time at Northwestern, Neitzel ran the strength and conditioning club, and helped the Minnesota Vixen Women’s Tackle Football team. He’s coached a lot of power lifters and strong man competitors as far away as California from first time athletes to professionals. He’s personally competed professionally in strongman competitions, including the 2019 Arnold Europe Strongman Classic in Barcelona, Spain. He’s won Strongman and Power Lifting national championships and held American records in both. His American Strongman record still holds.
After graduating from chiropractic school in 2018, Neitzel opened a powerlifting strongman gym in Minneapolis. He and his wife are the parents of a newborn baby and chose to move closer to family in Wisconsin as they started their family.