Injury Prevention in Arnold, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, or a recent retiree who wants to dedicate your time to hiking, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you desire. While our professional Arnold, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to recover from injury, we are experts in the entire musculoskeletal system who can evaluate your movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to teach out measures that are proven to prevent injury. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location most convenient for you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many Arnold, MO residents. Many of us participate in activities such as playing sports, swimming, or other physical activities. Additionally, committing to an active lifestyle reduces the risk of chronic conditions including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia, mental health issues, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Arnold, MO physical therapists allow you to return to action as fierce as ever, but our injury prevention professionals can help keep you active by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our methods, for both recovery and injury prevention, are proven to be effective and are developed uniquely for each client and the activities they want to return to.

If you’ve recently sustained an injury, or have a nagging injury that is not getting better with time, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Arnold, MO for a no-risk, no-obligation injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can keep up with your active lifestyle, read on below or call to speak to a physical therapist at your earliest convenience.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Arnold, MO

Most injuries fall into two categories:

1. Repetitive motion 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 and typically reveal themselves with joint pain.
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, such as ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.

Why Do Injuries Happen? | Injury Prevention in Arnold, MO

While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and some are inescapable, they generally occur because your muscles, ligaments, tendons, bones, and joints cannot handle the force, torque, or stretching that they are subjected to in a given movement or collision. There are three common dysfunctions that lead to injury:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is essential to supporting joints and reducing injury. Imbalance can cause dependency on one set of muscles, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It can also lead to poor posture, and the weaker set of muscles will be pushed past its limit, resulting in failure and a higher probability 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 in the same muscle group, such as an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Muscle imbalance can result in:

• Muscle weakness
• Muscle inflexibility
• Poor muscle recruitment
• Coordination deficits

Customized injury prevention with our licensed physical therapists in Arnold, MO will bring balance to your muscles.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can result in poor balance and impede your body’s ability to naturally perform functional movements, increasing your risk of injury. It can be caused by numerous musculoskeletal issues. It can cause injury through:

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

When you first visit our injury prevention specialists in Arnold, MO, we’ll go over your medical history and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, together with your doctor or any additional medical professionals involved in your care, we’ll develop a personalized game plan based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your movement health to reach its potential.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture is not just an issue for people who sit a lot. Athletes and other physically active people can have postural dysfunction when lying down, driving, or in specific poses they need to be in for their sport. Correct posture means proper positioning of the neck, torso, pelvis, and extremities in a way that keeps the spine within its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the vertebrae closer together, which has a negative affect on our body’s ability to communicate with itself and attain ideal movement health. It causes injuries through:

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

Good posture is a vital part of injury prevention because it ensures you are using your muscles equally, your flexibility is not jeopardized, and your nervous system can communicate as its intended to.

How to Prevent Injury in Arnold, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything you could to prevent one. We cannot promise that our injury prevention program completely negates the risk of injury. However, there are precautions to greatly reduce the risk of injury:

• Take breaks — Injuries are more common when you do not give your body time to restore itself. If you’re heavily active, one or two rest days a week will allow your body to engage in its natural healing processes. If you have a more modest activity level, take it easy for the few hours after an activity so your body doesn’t become too fatigued.
• Use protective equipment — Helmets, chin straps, protective eyewear, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities can help prevent injuries such as cuts or brain injuries. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Arnold, MO doctor or injury prevention professional may fit you for stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other measures like tying your shoes tightly offers further stabilization.
• Strengthen muscles — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them stand up to the rigors of heavy activity. In your personalized injury prevention program with our expert Arnold, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to achieve ideal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to be able to stay healthy in the activities you love.
• Improve flexibility — Stretching accomplishes three critical things for injury prevention:
  1. It boosts which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which allows for your tendons and ligaments to adjust to more forceful positions.
  2. It boosts blood flow, which allows for nutrient-rich blood to flow to your muscles, removing waste byproduct and rebuilding the muscles.
  3. It improves your posture, which, as you read earlier, is is one of the most important factors of injury prevention.

  According to research, sports like basketball that require sudden twists and movements require soft tissue compliant enough to perform those movements. Stretching and warm up exercises before activities further helps prevent injuries.

• 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 prevent injuries. Football players are taught to tackle a certain way to avoid a head injury, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to use the appropriate muscles. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to break down your movement and analyze how to improve it.
• Listen to your body — If you feel pain in a muscle or joint, your body is trying to send you a message. If you feel something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, immediately withdraw from the activity and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body isn’t feeling up to a particularly rigorous workout, save it for another day.
• Don’t play through an injury — Even though gritting through pain is often seen as commendable among competitors, forcing your body to perform with soft tissue or structural damage could aggravate an existing injury and leave you off the field or court for much longer than if you had sat out at the time of the injury. Depending on the severity of your injury, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, seeing your doctor, and scheduling appointments with a physical therapist to make sure your body heals properly and can withstand a return to physical activity.
• Play by the rules — Depending on the sport or activity and age level of the participants, it likely has special rules to help prevent injury. Penalties for leading with the helmet in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the existence of bike lanes are examples of rules that leagues enacted to keep participants safe. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that there are penalties for them.
• Consult a licensed physical therapist — It’s a good idea to get a physical before another season begins or starting up a new physical activity. While there, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a experienced physical therapist in Arnold, MO is something you should consider. All of our techniques have been proven to help athletes remain healthy, and we’ll personalize your program to your age, your injury history, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention for The Elderly in Arnold, MO

Falls in senior citizens accounted for over 3 million urgent care visits and more than 34,000 deaths. Studies show that being physical active can go a long way in reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions that cause pain like arthritis that develop over the course of several years can be more bearable and take longer to progress with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints active. While the physical demands for older adults may not be as high as an athlete, healthy strength, balance, flexibility, and proper posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Arnold, MO include:

• Physical Therapy Clinic
• Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Treatment
• Sciatica Treatment
• Sports Medicine
• Hand Pain Physical Therapy
• Foot & Ankle Pain Treatment
• Hip Pain Treatment
• Plantar Fasciitis Treatment
• Stroke Rehabilitation
• Hip Replacement Physical Therapy

Arnold, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in one of your favorite activities causes a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same euphoria. The experienced Arnold, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to guide you through your own personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body prepared for the rigors of physical activity, and your mind at ease that you can safely return to the activities you love. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits of doing what you do best. Request an appointment online or call the location nearest you to get started with one of our injury prevention professionals in Arnold, MO.