Moved to Improve

Skull & Bones Athletics by Coastal Integrative Health helps athletes young and old move more efficiently and establish better movement habits.

Skull & Bones Athletics is a new athlete-building business, and who better to launch it than a guy who’s already a popular, successful chiropractor in Leland and Shallotte? The brainchild of Brian Lank and co-founder Paul Hrvol, Skull & Bones Athletics is powered by Coastal Integrative Health, Lank’s successful total health business.

“If you’re a parent who cares about your child’s total athletic development, Skull & Bones Athletics has a spot for you,” Lank says. “We accept candidates from age 9 to 79 who want to improve their athletic capability in all aspects.” The little gleam in his eye said he’d take you if you’re older than 79, too.

Lank, an athlete and the father of three young athletes, knows what of he speaks.

“There are parents who see their child’s proficiency emerge in one sport, and then commit them to just that one sport at an early age,” Lank says. “That’s not what Skull & Bones Athletics is about.”

Neither is Lank. His own sons are proficient in baseball, but they will not be focusing on it to the exclusion of other sports. Lank’s organization seeks to develop the whole athlete by analyzing the totality of the subject’s movements. He believes, as many professional coaches do, that if you give him an athlete, that athlete can do anything in any sport they choose.

“We’re going to assess everything, from foot stability to hip mobility to core stability,” Lank says. “We’re going to assess how they move so they can begin to develop better athletic habits at an earlier age.”
That’s not the way most of us came up in the world of athletics, but with the procedures and equipment Lank uses, it’s definitely cutting edge.

“We’ll put a special monitor on a kid’s bat and have him hit in our Swing Lab,” Lank says. “Those sensors will detect things like bat speed, swing plane, etc. And we’ll also video the entire hitting and throwing process to analyze the biomechanics of the entire body.”

Lank can do the same with those older athletes who may want to improve their golf swings. “Since most of us are not natural Rory McIlroys, there are adjustments, based on science, that we can prescribe to help improve your health and your golf swing,” he says. He explains that they’ll do selective functional movement screens to determine if there are any major asymmetry or dysfunctions present. That will allow the athlete to build a stronger athletic foundation to be applied in any and every sport.

“They’re the same systems used by MLB, PGA and the NFL to screen athletes,” Lank says. “And, like them, we break down and analyze an athlete’s moves.”