Calverton Park, MO

Calverton Park, MO

Don't let the fear of reinjury keep you from the things what you do best.

Injury Prevention in Calverton Park, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, or are entering your golden years and want to spend more time hiking, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you deserve. While our licensed Calverton Park, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others heal after an injury, we are complete movement health specialists who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to show you methods that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or reach out to the location most convenient for you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many Calverton Park, MO residents. Many of us participate in activities like playing sports, biking, and more. Additionally, keeping an active lifestyle helps stave off chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, degenerative brain diseases, anxiety, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Calverton Park, MO physical therapists allow you to return to action even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention specialists can help you reduce the risk of further injury by improving your overall strength, flexibility, and posture. All of our treatment plans, for both recovery and injury prevention, have been prove to work and are personalized to each client and the lifestyle they desire.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a lingering injury that won’t heal on its own, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Calverton Park, 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.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Calverton Park, MO

Most injuries fall into two categories:

  1. Wear-and-tear 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 are accompanied by joint pain.
  2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen because of a specific and sudden trauma. 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 common injuries, for example rotator cuff tears, can result from either overuse or acute trauma. Other injuries, such as ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, with a sudden impact to the knee.

Injury Prevention Calverton Park, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Calverton Park

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Calverton Park, MO

While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and some are inescapable, they generally happen because your muscles, ligaments, tendons, bones, and joints cannot hold up under 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 key to supporting joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can result in an overreliance on one set of muscles, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also causes posture dysfunction, and the weaker muscles will become tired more quickly, making them more susceptible to injuries. Injuries can be caused by inadequate muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong chest and weak back, or within muscle groups, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff not having proportionate strength. Muscle imbalance can cause injury through:

Personalized injury prevention with our licensed physical therapists in Calverton Park, 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, causing injury. Problems in your nervous system, swelling, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. Symptoms include:

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

At our initial injury prevention appointment in Calverton Park, MO, we’ll evaluate your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, in tandem with with your doctor or any other providers treating you, we’ll come up with a customized plan of attack been proven to work through research and studies to get your movement health to the level you need it to to do what you love.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture is not just an issue for people with desk jobs. People who play sports and other physically active people can suffer from postural dysfunction when resting, driving, or in specific positions related to their sport. Good posture means correct positioning of the different joints and muscles of your body in a way that encourages our spine to stay in 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 the strength and range of motion you need to achieve. It causes injuries through:

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

By helping you understand the best practices for posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring you are using the right muscles for the right movements, your flexibility can be improved and maintained, and your vertebrae remain in place.



Injury Prevention Best Practices in Calverton Park, 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 — 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 allow your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. If you have a more moderate activity level, take a break after activity so your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints become too fatigued.
  • Wear the appropriate equipment — Helmets, mouth guards, protective eyewear, and other recommended equipment in many sports helps you avoid injuries like bruises or head injuries. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your Calverton Park, MO physician or injury prevention specialist may suggest braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize a joint. Other techniques like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further protection.
  • Boost muscle strength — Strengthening soft tissue helps it withstand the rigors your body is put through in sports and other activities. Our Calverton Park, MO injury prevention professionals will work to build up your body to safely participate in the activities you want to participate in.
  • Boost flexibility — Increasing your flexibility achieves three critical things for injury prevention:
    1. It improves which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which lets for your soft tissue to adapt to more forceful positions.
    2. It increases blood flow, which carries nutrient-rich blood to your soft tissue, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to recover.
    3. It increases your posture, which we already know is an an important part of injury prevention.

    According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like football 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 — 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 prevent injuries. Football players are taught to tackle with the shoulder in order to avoid brain damage, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best rotate their body. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to slow down your movement and analyze how to both improve your performance and prevent injury.
  • Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If a part of your body is sore, your body is trying to send you a message. If you feel a sudden crack or grinding sensation, stop immediately and get the appropriate medical treatment. 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 gutting it out through pain is often seen as a courageous act among competitors, forcing your body to perform 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 — Most sports have special rules at different levels in the interest of safety. Penalties for targeting in football, rules against head-first sliding in baseball, and even the presence of bike lanes are examples of rules that were adopted to keep participants safe. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that there are penalties for them.
  • Speak a professional physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to have a medical evaluation before another season begins or starting up a new physical activity. During your visit, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a knowledgeable physical therapist in Calverton Park, MO is something you should consider. All of our techniques have been demonstrated to reduce the risk of injury, 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 Calverton Park, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Calverton Park

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Calverton Park, MO

Falls in senior citizens accounted for over 3 million urgent care admissions and over 34,000 fatalities. Research demonstrates that being physical active is invaluable in reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions like arthritis that are wear and tear injuries can be slowed down by 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 good posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Calverton Park, MO include:

Calverton Park, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in one of your favorite activities can lead to a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same happiness. The experienced Calverton Park, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to design for you a 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. Request an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to see what our Calverton Park, MO injury prevention professionals can do for you.

Services Offered

Services Offered
  • Physical Therapy
    • Pre/Post Surgical Rehabilitation
    • Acute Injury Management
    • Chronic Injury Management
  • Certified Hand Therapy
  • Work Conditioning/Hardening
  • Functional Capacity Evaluations
  • Sports Physical Therapy
  • Pediatric Orthopedic Physical Therapy
  • Geriatric Physical Therapy
  • Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization
  • Free Injury Screenings
  • Kinesio Taping®
  • Blood Flow Restriction Therapy
  • Spine Specialty

Our Team

Sara Crain
PT, CEAS, Astym Cert.
Brandi Arndt
MPT, CMPT
Brett Shelton
PT, DPT, OCS, COMT, CSMT
John Teepe
Partner, MPT
TJ Jung
PT, DPT
Justin Bridwell
Front Office
Chris Casner
PT, Clinic Director

Locations

Begin Your Recovery Today

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