Injury Prevention in Ballwin, MO. Whether you’re an athlete hoping for a shot at the next stage, 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 Ballwin, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to recover from injury, we are complete movement health specialists who can evaluate your movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to guide you through exercises that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or reach out to the location nearest you.

Physical activity is an essential part of many Ballwin, MO people’s lives. Many of us participate in active endeavors like playing sports, biking, and more. Furthermore, pursuing an active lifestyle reduces the risk of future health problems like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, eurodegenerative disease, anxiety, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Ballwin, MO physical therapists allow you to come back as fierce as ever, but our injury prevention professionals can help you reduce the risk of further injury by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our methods, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, are based on evidence-backed techniques and are developed uniquely for each client and the lifestyle they desire.

If you’ve recently sustained an injury, or have a persistent injury that won’t heal on its own, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Ballwin, MO for a no-risk, no-obligation injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and ensure that you can continue with your active lifestyle, keep reading or call to speak to a physical therapist today.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Ballwin, MO

Injuries generally happen for one of two reasons:

1. Repetitive demand injuries are injuries happen gradually as a body part degrades because of repetitive movements. In sports, we see them the most in in overhead athletes such as water polo or soccer goalies, with joint pain usually being the first warning sign.
2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include falling or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, twisting joints, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some of the injuries we see most frequently, such as rotator cuff tears, can result from either overuse or acute trauma. Other injuries, for example ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with a sudden impact to the knee.

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

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally happen because your soft tissue, bones, and joints cannot handle the force, torque, or stretching that are required or are possible in a given activity. There are three common dysfunctions that lead to injury:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is crucial to supporting joints and staving off injury. Imbalance can lead to dependency on one muscle group, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also causes posture dysfunction, and the weaker set of muscles will be pushed past its limit, resulting in failure and a higher likelihood of injury. Injuries can be caused by poor muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong chest and weak back, or within muscle groups, such as an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Symptoms include:

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

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

Movement Dysfunction

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

• Joint mobility restrictions
• Muscle imbalance
• Coordination deficiency
• Lessened balance

At our initial injury prevention appointment in Ballwin, MO, we’ll evaluate your medical history and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, in tandem with with your doctor or any additional medical professionals involved in your care, we’ll develop a tailored treatment plan been proven to work through research and studies to get your body moving as it should.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people with slouched shoulders. People who play sports and others with active lifestyles can have postural dysfunction when lying down, sitting, or in specific body positions related to their sport. Healthy posture means proper alignments when both static and moving in a way that keeps the spine within its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the joints in the spine closer together, which disrupts communication between your brain and body and makes it difficult to attain the strength and range of motion you need to achieve. Symptoms include:

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

Good posture is a necessary part of injury prevention because it ensures muscle balance, flexibility, and that your vertebrae remain in place.

Keys to Injury Prevention in Ballwin, MO

All sports and physical activities carry an inherent risk of injury. No one safety tip is guaranteed to be effective in injury prevention. However, there are things you can do 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 encourage your body to engage in its natural healing processes. If you’re moderately active, take it easy for the few hours after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
• Wear protective equipment — Helmets, chest guards, protective eyewear, and other required equipment in sports and other activities can help prevent injuries like bruises or head injuries. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Ballwin, MO physician or injury prevention specialist may advise stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other techniques like tying your athletic footwear tightly offers further stabilization.
• Increase muscle strength — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them stand up to the force and torque your body is put through in sports and other activities. In your tailored injury prevention program with our certified Ballwin, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to build up your body to be able to avoid injury in the activities you want to participate in.
• Enhance flexibility — Stretching achieves three important things for injury prevention:
  1. It increases which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which allows for the tendons and ligaments connecting your muscles to your bones to adjust to more pronounced positions.
  2. It improves blood flow, which allows for protein-rich blood to flow to your muscles, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to recover.
  3. It boosts your posture, which we already know is an is one of the most important aspects of injury prevention.

  According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, 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 proper technique — Through the years, each sport and physical activity develops a consensus of the best techniques to use. These techniques not only help you perform better but help reduce the risk of injury. Football players learn to tackle a certain way to reduce the risk of a concussion, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best rotate their body. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to break down your movement and educate you on how to improve it.
• Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If you feel pain in a muscle or joint, that’s your body’s way of telling you something is wrong. If you feel something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, immediately stop all physical activity and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t holing up well in a particularly rigorous workout, save it for another day.
• Don’t play through an injury — Even though teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate a player that guts it out through pain, forcing your body to perform with soft tissue or structural damage could exacerbate an existing injury and put you out of commission for longer than it originally would have. 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 a series of physical therapy sessions to make sure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
• Play by 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 targeting in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the presence of special lanes on the street and sidewalk for bikers are all rules that were adopted to keep players safe. Those are in place for a reason, and there’s a reason that there are penalties for them.
• Consult a professional physical therapist — It’s always advisable to see a doctor before a new season or starting up a new activity or training regimen. During your appointment, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a licensed physical therapist in Ballwin, MO is something you should consider. Every treatment plan we employ has been proven to help athletes remain healthy, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to your age, any previous injuries, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention for Older Ballwin, MO Adults

Falls in adults over 65 accounted for over 3 million urgent care visits and over 34,000 deaths. Studies show that being physical active can go a long way in preventing falls. Other conditions like arthritis that develop over the course of several years can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints strong. While seniors typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, healthy strength, balance, flexibility, and good posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Ballwin, 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

Ballwin, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in something you love doing can lead to a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same exultation. The licensed Ballwin, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to guide you through your own personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body as safe and healthy as can be, and your mind confident that you can safely return to the activities you love doing most. We will aid you in feeling the physical and mental health benefits of doing what you do best. Schedule an appointment online or call the location nearest you to see what our Ballwin, MO injury prevention professionals can do for you.