Injury Prevention in Boles, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or are entering your golden years and want to spend more time bike riding, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you deserve. While our professional Boles, 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 movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to teach out techniques that are proven to prevent injury. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or contact the location nearest you.

Physical activity is vitally important to many Boles, MO residents. Many of us participate in active endeavors like playing sports, kayaking, and more. Furthermore, pursuing an active lifestyle helps prevent future health problems such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia, mental health issues, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Boles, MO physical therapists help you come back and perform even better than before, but our injury prevention experts can help keep you active by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our treatment plans, for both recovery and injury prevention, are proven to be effective 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 most convenient for you in Boles, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and protect your active lifestyle, keep reading or inquire about an appointment at your earliest convenience.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Boles, MO

Injuries typically happen for one of two reasons:

1. Repetitive demand injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. They are common in overhead athletes athletes who are required to repeat throwing or striking motions and commonly reveal themselves with joint pain.
2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen suddenly. Examples include falling or a sudden impact by an object or another person. These can result in bruises, twisting joints, fractures, and dislocations.

Some of the injuries we see most frequently, for example rotator cuff tears, can result from either overuse or acute trauma. Other injuries, for example ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Boles, MO

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally happen 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 chief causes of why your body cannot adjust to an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is crucial to maintaining healthy joints and staving off injury. Imbalance can cause an overreliance on one set of muscles, 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 probability of injury. Muscle imbalance applies to 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. Muscle imbalance can result in:

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

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

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and lead to your body moving in unnatural ways, causing injury. Problems in your nervous system, swelling, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. Symptoms include:

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

At our initial injury prevention appointment in Boles, MO, we’ll evaluate your medical records and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, in tandem with with your physician or any additional medical professionals involved in your treatment, we’ll design a customized game plan based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your movement health to reach its potential.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people with desk jobs. People who play sports and others with active lifestyles can have postural dysfunction when resting, driving, or in certain poses necessary for their sport. Good posture means proper alignments of the neck, torso, pelvis, and extremities in a way that does not remove the spine from its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the vertebrae closer together, which disrupts your nervous system and makes it difficult to achieve the strength and range of motion you need to achieve. It can also lead to:

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

By guiding you to good posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring you are using the right muscles for the right movements, your flexibility is not jeopardized, and your vertebrae remain in place.

Injury Prevention Techniques in Boles, MO

All sports and physical activities can potentially lead to an injury. We cannot promise that our injury prevention program completely negates the risk of injury. However, there are things you can do to greatly reduce the risk of injury:

• Take breaks — Your body needs time to rest and recover after any moderate to intense activity. If you’re heavily active, make sure to take one or two days off per week to signal to your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. If you’re moderately active, relax for the rest of the day after an activity so your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints become too fatigued.
• Use protective equipment — Helmets, chest guards, elbow pads, and other recommended equipment in sports and other activities helps you avoid injuries such as contusions or concussions. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Boles, MO physician or injury prevention professional may fit you for braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the injured area. Other methods like making sure all the equipment is snug can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
• Increase muscle strength — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them withstand the rigors necessary for in sports and other activities. In your tailored injury prevention program with our professional Boles, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to build up your body to be able to stay healthy in the activities you love.
• Boost flexibility — Increasing your flexibility contributes to injury prevention in three way:
  1. It enhances 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 extreme movements.
  2. It boosts circulation, which carries nourishing blood to your muscles, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to restore themselves.
  3. It increases your posture, which, as you read earlier, is an important part of injury prevention.

  According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like football that necessitate bouncing and jumping require soft tissue flexible enough to incorporate and release 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 proper technique — In every sport, there are accepted techniques to use. These techniques not only improve performance but help reduce the risk of injury. Football players learn to tackle with the shoulder in order to reduce the risk of a concussion, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to use the appropriate muscles. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and evaluate how to both be a better athlete and reduce your risk of injury.
• Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If you feel pain in a muscle or joint, your body is trying to send you a message. If you feel a sudden crack or grinding sensation, immediately stop all physical activity and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t holing up well in an intense workout, don’t force it.
• Don’t play through an injury — Even though gutting it out through pain is often viewed as a valiant act among competitors, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could make that injury worse and put you out of commission for longer than it originally would have. Depending on the nature of your injury, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, visiting your doctor, and a series of physical therapy sessions to make sure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
• Follow the rules — Many sports have special rules at different levels in the interest of safety. Penalties for targeting in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the presence of bike lanes are examples of rules that were adopted to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. Those were enacted for a reason, and there’s a reason that violations of those rules are punished.
• Speak a licensed physical therapist — It’s a good idea to see a doctor before a new season or committing yourself to any strenuous activity or training regimen. While there, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a experienced physical therapist in Boles, MO is a good idea for you. All of our techniques have been proven to reduce the risk of injury, and we’ll personalize your program to how old you are, your injury history, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention for Older Boles, MO Adults

Falls in senior citizens accounted for over 3 million emergency room visits and over 34,000 fatalities. Research demonstrates that physical activity can go a long way in preventing falls. Other conditions such as arthritis that develop over the course of several years can be slowed down by physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints healthy. While the physical demands for seniors may not be as high as an athlete, the same principles of strength, stability, flexibility, and good posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Boles, 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

Boles, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in in an activity you prepare and train for and love can lead to a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same joy. The experienced Boles, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to develop your 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 doing most. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits that you do not want to lose. Make an appointment online or reach out to the location nearest you to get started with one of our injury prevention experts in Boles, MO.