Injury Prevention Clearwater, MO

Injury Prevention in Clearwater, MO. Whether you’re an athlete hoping for a shot at the next level, or are entering your golden years and want to spend more time hiking, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our professional Clearwater, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to heal after an injury, we are experts in the entire musculoskeletal system who can evaluate your movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to guide you through methods that are proven to reduce the risk of injury by preparing your body for the stressors of your desired activity. Make an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or reach out to the location most convenient for you.

Physical activity is vitally important to many Clearwater, MO residents. We love activities such as playing sports, kayaking, and more. Furthermore, committing to an active lifestyle helps stave off future health problems like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, anxiety, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Clearwater, MO physical therapists help you return to action even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention professionals can help you reduce the risk of further injury by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our treatment plans, 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 is not getting better with time, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Clearwater, MO for a free injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can keep up with your active lifestyle, keep reading or call to speak to a physical therapist at your earliest convenience.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Clearwater, MO

Most injuries happen for one of two reasons:

Overuse 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 baseball or basketball players and commonly manifest themselves as joint pain.
Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include landing on uneven ground or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, fractures, and dislocations.

Some common injuries, like rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, such as ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, with an immediate impact to or twisting of the knee.

Injury Prevention Clearwater, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Clearwater

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

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally occur 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 maintaining healthy joints and reducing injury. Imbalance can lead to overemphasis for one muscle group, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also causes posture dysfunction, and one set of muscles becoming fatigued sooner, increasing the risk of injury. Muscle imbalance applies to insufficient muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong chest and weak back, or in the same muscle group, such as an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Muscle imbalance can cause injury through:

Muscle weakness
Muscle inflexibility
Poor muscle recruitment
Poor coordination

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

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and impede your body’s ability to naturally perform functional movements, causing injury. Problems in your nervous system, inflammation, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. Symptoms include:

Joint mobility limitations
Muscle imbalance
Poor coordination
Decreased balance

When you initially see our injury prevention professionals in Clearwater, MO, we’ll evaluate your medical history and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, in concert with with your physician or any other providers involved in your treatment, 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 who sit a lot. Athletes and others with active lifestyles can have postural dysfunction when resting, using the computer, or in certain stances necessary for their sport. Good posture means proper positioning of your body from your head to your toes in a way that keeps the spine within its natural curves. Poor posture can compact the joints in the spine, which disrupts our body’s internal communications and makes it challenging to attain ideal motion health. It causes injuries through:

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

By guiding you to ideal 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 nervous system can communicate as its intended to.

Injury Prevention Best Practices in Clearwater, MO

All sports and physical activities carry an inherent risk of injury. We cannot promise that our injury prevention program completely negates the risk of injury. However, there are things you can do to make sure your body is strong and flexible enough for your desired activity level:

Take breaks — Your body needs time to rest and recover after any moderate to intense activity. If you have a very high activity level, 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 have a more modest activity level, take it easy after activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
Use the correct equipment — Helmets, chin straps, safety pads and guards, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities helps you avoid injuries such as cuts or head injuries. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Clearwater, MO doctor or injury prevention expert may advise braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the injured area. Other techniques like tying your cleats tightly can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
Increase muscle strength — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them withstand the rigors of heavy activity. In your personalized injury prevention program with our certified Clearwater, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to build up your body to be able to avoid injury in the activities you love.
Increase flexibility — Increasing your flexibility accomplishes three important things for injury prevention:
1. It increases your range of motion, which lets for your tendons and ligaments to handle more extreme movements.
2. It boosts blood flow, which carries protein-rich blood to your muscles, removing waste byproduct and rebuilding the muscles.
3. It encourages good posture, which, as you read earlier, is an important part of injury prevention.
According to studies, sports like football that require bouncing and jumping require muscles and tendons compliant enough to incorporate and expel the high amount of energy required. Stretching and warm up exercises before games or training further helps prevent injuries.
Use proper technique — In every sport, there are accepted techniques to use. These techniques not only help you get be the best athlete you can be but help prevent injuries. Football players learn to tackle a certain way to reduce the risk of a head injury, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best apply torque to your body. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and analyze how to improve it.
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 something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, immediately stop all physical activity and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body does not feel well enough for 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, playing with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could exacerbate a current injury and leave you off the field or court for longer than it originally would have. Depending on the severity 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 body heals naturally and can withstand the activity you want to return to.
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 head-first sliding in baseball, and even the presence of special lanes on the street and sidewalk for bikers are all rules that were adopted to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. There’s a reason those rules exist, and 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 committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. During your appointment, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a knowledgeable physical therapist in Clearwater, MO is a good idea for you. 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 how old you are, any previous injuries, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention Clearwater, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Clearwater

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Clearwater, MO

Falls in the elderly accounted for over 3 million urgent care visits and over 34,000 fatalities. Studies show that being physical active is a great method for preventing falls. Other conditions like arthritis that are wear and tear injuries can be more bearable and take longer to progress 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, appropriate strength, balance, flexibility, and ideal posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Clearwater, MO include:

Clearwater, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in one of your favorite activities can lead to a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same exhilaration. The experienced Clearwater, 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 confident that you do not have to fear going back to what you love doing most. We will aid you in feeling the physical and mental health benefits of doing what you do best. Request an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to start your program with one of our injury prevention specialists in Clearwater, MO.