Why I Became a Chiropractor
A personal account of the injury, the athlete's mindset, and the community that shaped 19+ years of chiropractic practice in Northern Kentucky.
It Started With My Own Pain
I grew up in a small town in Missouri — the kind of place where sports weren't just an after-school activity, they were the fabric of the community. I wrestled all through high school and into college, and like most athletes who push hard, eventually my body pushed back.
It was a shoulder injury that first brought me face-to-face with chiropractic care. I'd already seen what it had done for my father — years of back problems that responded to chiropractic when nothing else had — but my own experience was different. It wasn't just that my shoulder got better. It was how it got better.
The chiropractor I saw didn't start with the shoulder. He started with a full assessment — spine, posture, mechanics, how everything connected. He found the actual cause: a thoracic restriction that was loading my shoulder unevenly. He treated that, not just where it hurt. And it worked.
That moment clarified everything for me. There was a whole discipline built around finding mechanical problems before they became chronic ones — around identifying what was actually wrong rather than managing how it felt. I wanted to be that person for someone else. That's when I decided to become a chiropractor.
The Athlete's Perspective
After wrestling, I transitioned into powerlifting — and I never stopped. Today I hold Kentucky state records in the bench press and total weight lift for my age and weight class. I train seriously. I compete seriously. And I think that changes how I practice.
When a patient comes in with a hip flexor that won't release, or a thoracic spine that's restricting their deadlift, or a shoulder that deteriorates under load — I understand that from the inside. I know the difference between the discomfort that comes with training and the mechanical dysfunction that tells you something's actually wrong.
I also know the frustration of being told to “just rest it.” Rest doesn't fix a structural problem. It just delays it.
My patients aren't all powerlifters. They're office workers and nurses and parents chasing toddlers and retirees who want to stay active. But the principle is the same: the body has a mechanical baseline, and when something disrupts it — joint restriction, nerve compression, asymmetric load — the solution is to find that specific disruption and correct it. Not just manage the pain around it.
I don't just tell patients what to do. I do it myself. That's not a tagline — it's how I stay honest about what actually works.
Kentucky State Powerlifting Record Holder
Bench press and total weight lift — competitive powerlifting, active record holder
Why Northern Kentucky
After graduating from Logan University of Chiropractic in 2007, I practiced in the greater Louisville and southern Indiana area. Then in 2011, I made my way to Northern Kentucky — and felt it immediately.
It reminded me of where I grew up. Communities where people know each other. Where a business owner knows his patients by name, their kids, their jobs, what they're training for, what they're recovering from. That's the kind of medicine I wanted to practice. Not a high-volume clinic where patients are processed. A place where the relationship matters.
In 2014, I opened Triple Crown Chiropractic in Union, KY. The name comes from the region — horse country, Thoroughbred country, the Kentucky Derby, the Belmont. It felt right. We started small, grew organically, and in July 2017 moved into our current Walton location at 11053 Clay Drive — a full facility with on-site X-ray, multiple adjusting rooms, a stretching area, and a massage therapy suite.
We later opened a second location in Covington, bringing ARPwave and SoftWave therapy to patients on the north side of the metro. Both offices serve the same communities I fell in love with in 2011: Walton, Florence, Burlington, Union, Erlanger, Covington — people who work hard and deserve care that takes them seriously.
The Philosophy Behind the Practice
The thing that frustrated me early in my career — before I had my own practice — was how often chiropractic care was applied generically. Come in, get adjusted, same protocol as everyone else. No evaluation. No explanation. No connection between what the exam found and what was being treated.
That's not how I think about it. Every patient gets a clinical examination before treatment. I want to know where the restriction is, which nerve is involved, what motion is limited, what reproduces the pain and what relieves it. Then I treat that, specifically.
I also believe patients deserve to understand their own bodies. When I explain to someone exactly which lumbar segment is restricted, why that's causing their leg symptoms, and how the adjustment is designed to restore movement at that specific level — they become partners in their care. They understand what we're doing and why. That changes outcomes.
Our sciatica success rate is around 90%. That doesn't happen by accident. It happens because we identify whether the compression is at L4, L5, or S1; whether it's disc-mediated or foraminal; whether the piriformis is involved. Then we target the actual source — not a standard lumbar protocol applied to everyone who points at their leg.
19+ Years Later
People sometimes ask what keeps me doing this. The honest answer is: I still see it work every day.
The patient who came in unable to sit through a meal because of low back pain — and eight weeks later sent me a message saying she ran her first 5K. The guy who had been told he'd need surgery for his sciatica, and didn't. The kid-athlete whose shoulder had been bothering her all season, fixed in three visits because it turned out to be a rib head, not a rotator cuff.
Every one of those outcomes started with one thing: actually finding the problem.
I also think about trust. When someone walks into my office, they're placing a kind of trust in me — that I'll take their problem seriously, that I know what I'm doing, that I'm going to be straight with them about what I find and what I can realistically help with. Earning that trust, and keeping it, is what this practice is built on.
If you've been managing symptoms that never really resolve — the same stiff neck every few weeks, the sciatic flare that keeps coming back, the hip that starts aching every time you train — there's probably a mechanical reason for that. I'd like to help you find it.
I became a chiropractor because I believe the body can do remarkable things when the mechanical obstacles are removed. My job is to find those obstacles and get out of the way.
Dr. Erik Simms, DC
Founder, Triple Crown Chiropractic
Ready to Experience Care Built on These Values?
New patients welcome at both Walton and Covington. No referral required. Most insurance accepted.