All Saints Village, MO

All Saints Village, MO

Don't let a mental block over reinjury prevent you from participating in the activities you love.

Injury Prevention in All Saints Village, MO. Whether you play a sport and are trying to get an opportunity at the next level, or a recent retiree who wants to spend more time bike riding, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you deserve. While our licensed All Saints Village, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others recover from injury, we are experts in the entire musculoskeletal system who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to guide you through methods that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or contact the location nearest you.

Being physically active is an essential part of many All Saints Village, MO people’s lives. We love activities like playing sports, biking, and more. Furthermore, pursuing an active lifestyle reduces the risk of chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, eurodegenerative disease, anxiety, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed All Saints Village, MO physical therapists help you return to action and perform even better than before, but our injury prevention professionals can help you reduce the risk of further injury by improving your overall strength, flexibility, and posture. All of our methods, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, are based on evidence-backed techniques and are customized for each client and the level of activity they want to reach.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a lingering injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in All Saints Village, MO for a free injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can continue with your active lifestyle, read on below or call to speak to a physical therapist at your earliest convenience.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in All Saints Village, MO

Injuries typically fall into two categories:

  1. Repetitive demand injuries are injuries happen gradually as a body part degrades because of repetitive movements. They are common in overhead athletes athletes who use throwing or striking motions, with joint pain usually being the first symptom.
  2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include falling or a sudden impact by an object or another person. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some of the injuries we see most frequently, such as rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, like ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, with a sudden impact to the knee.

Injury Prevention All Saints Village, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near All Saints Village

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in All Saints Village, MO

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally happen because of dysfunction or instability and your body and between body parts. There are three common dysfunctions that lead to injury:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is crucial to supporting joints and staving off injury. Imbalance can cause an overreliance on one set of muscles, which may cause your body to force it to participate in an activity it shouldn’t. It can also lead to poor posture, and one set of muscles becoming fatigued faster, increasing the risk of injury. Injuries can be caused by insufficient muscle balance in relation to other muscle groups, such as having a strong hamstring and weak quadriceps, or within muscle groups, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff having different levels of strength. Muscle imbalance can result in:

Tailored injury prevention with our certified physical therapists in All Saints Village, MO will ensure that your muscles are at optimal proportional strength.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can result in poor balance and lead to your body bending in unnatural ways, causing injury. Neurological issues, swelling, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. It can lead to:

  • Joint mobility restrictions
  • Muscle imbalance
  • Coordination deficits
  • Decreased balance

When you initially visit our injury prevention professionals in All Saints Village, MO, we’ll discuss your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, together with your physician or any additional medical professionals treating you, we’ll come up with a tailored plan of attack based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your movement health to the level you need it to to do what you love.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people with slouched shoulders. People who play sports and others with active lifestyles can be affected by postural dysfunction when lying down, driving, or in certain positions related to a given activity. Optimal posture refers to proper alignments of your body from your head to your toes in a way that does not remove the spine from its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the joints in the spine closer together, which has a negative affect on our body’s ability to communicate with itself and achieve ideal movement health. It causes injuries through:

  • Muscle weakness
  • Muscle imbalance
  • Poor positioning
  • Joint mobility restrictions
  • Poor muscle recruitment

Good posture is an important part of injury prevention because it ensures muscle balance, range of motion, and that your spine is in its natural position.



Injury Prevention Techniques in All Saints Village, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything you could to reduce that risk. No one safety tip is 100% foolproof in injury prevention. However, there are several steps you can take to make sure your body is strong and flexible enough for your desired activity level:

  • Take a rest — Injuries are more common when you do not give your body time to restore itself. If you’re heavily active, make sure to take one or two days off per week to signal to your body to engage in its natural healing processes. If you’re moderately active, relax for the rest of the day after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
  • Wear protective equipment — Helmets, chin straps, safety pads and guards, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities can help prevent injuries like contusions or head injuries. If you’ve had a previous injury, your All Saints Village, MO physician or physical therapist may advise braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize a joint. Other measures like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further protection.
  • Boost muscle strength — Strengthening soft tissue helps it withstand the rigors of heavy activity. In your customized injury prevention program with our experienced All Saints Village, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to build up your body to be able to avoid injury in the activities you love.
  • Enhance flexibility — Stretching accomplishes three important things for injury prevention:
    1. It enhances which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which lets for the tendons and ligaments connecting your muscles to your bones to adapt to more pronounced positions.
    2. It boosts blood flow, which carries nourishing blood to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to heal.
    3. It enhances your posture, which, as we’ve discussed, is an important part of injury prevention.

    According to studies, sports like basketball that necessitate sudden twists and movements require muscles and tendons flexible enough to store and expel the high amount of energy required. Also, remember to stretch and warm up before games or training to further reduce the risk of injury.

  • Use accepted technique — In every physical activity, there is an accepted way to position and move your body. These techniques not only help you perform better but help reduce the risk of injury. Football players are taught to tackle with the shoulder in order to avoid a concussion, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best apply torque to your body. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to break down your movement and evaluate how to both improve your performance and prevent injury.
  • Listen to your body — If a part of your body is bothering you, that’s your body’s way of telling you something isn’t right. If you feel a sudden pop or grinding sensation, stop immediately and seek proportional medical care. If your body does not feel well enough for an intense training session, don’t force it.
  • Don’t play through an injury — While gritting through pain is often viewed as a courageous act among competitors, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could make that injury worse and put you out of commission for much longer than if you had sat out at the time of the injury. Depending on what caused your injury and how severe it is, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, seeing your doctor, and scheduling appointments with a physical therapist to make sure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
  • Follow the rules — Depending on the sport or activity and age level of the participants, it likely has special rules to reduce the risk of injury. Penalties for helmet to helmet hits in football, rules against coming from behind in soccer, and even the existence of bike lanes are all rules that leagues enacted to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. Those were enacted for a reason, and there’s a reason that there are penalties for them.
  • Speak a licensed physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to have a medical evaluation before a new season or starting up a new physical activity. While there, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a professional physical therapist in All Saints Village, MO is a good idea for you. All of our techniques have been demonstrated to help athletes remain healthy, and we’ll personalize your program to how old you are, any previous injuries, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention All Saints Village, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near All Saints Village

Injury Prevention for Older All Saints Village, MO Adults

Falls in senior citizens were responsible for over 3 million urgent care admissions and more than 34,000 deaths. Studies show that physical activity can go a long way in preventing falls. Other conditions that limit mobility like arthritis that are wear and tear injuries can be more bearable and take longer to progress with physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints active. While older adults typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, appropriate strength, stability, flexibility, and proper posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in All Saints Village, MO include:

All Saints Village, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in in an activity you prepare and train for and love causes a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same happiness. The knowledgeable All Saints Village, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to design for you a personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body as safe and healthy as can be, and your mind at ease that you do not have to fear going back to what you love. We will aid you in feeling the physical and mental health benefits that you do not want to lose. Request an appointment online or call the location nearest you to start your program with one of our injury prevention experts in All Saints Village, MO.

Services Offered

Services Offered
  • Physical Therapy
    • Pre/Post Surgical Rehabilitation
    • Acute Injury Management
    • Chronic Injury Management
  • Occupational Therapy
    • Certified Hand Therapy
  • Work Conditioning/Hardening
  • Functional Capacity Evaluations
  • Sports Physical Therapy
  • DorsaVi Video Motion Analysis
  • Trigger Point Dry Needling
  • Pediatric Orthopedic Physical Therapy
  • Geriatric Orthopedic Physical Therapy
  • Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization (IASTYM)
  • Spine Specialty – Manual Therapy Certified
  • Free Injury Screenings
  • Kinesio Taping®
  • Blood Flow Restriction Therapy

Our Team

Sara Crain
PT, CEAS, Astym Cert.
Amanda Long
DPT, CMPT, ATC
John Ruesler
Clinic Director, DPT, CMPT, Astym Cert.
Megan Phillips
Front Office
Megan Mason
OTD, OTR/L
Hannah Drake
DPT, CMPT, ATC, LAT
Kayla Kowal
PT, DPT, CSCS
Heather Guffey
Front Office
Justin Bridwell
Front Office

Locations

Begin Your Recovery Today

Injuries and pain shouldn’t keep you from moving and doing the things you love.