Cottleville, MO

Cottleville, MO

Don't let a mental block over reinjury keep you from the activities you love.

Injury Prevention in Cottleville, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, or are entering your golden years and want to dedicate your time to taking ski vacations, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our professional Cottleville, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others heal after an injury, we are experts in the entire musculoskeletal system who can evaluate your movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to teach out exercises that are proven to prevent injury. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or contact the location most convenient for you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many Cottleville, MO residents. Many of us participate in activities such as playing sports, playing golf, or other physical activities. Furthermore, keeping an active lifestyle helps stave off serious health problems like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia, depression, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Cottleville, MO physical therapists allow you to come back and perform even better than before, 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, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, are based on evidence-backed techniques and are personalized to each client and the level of activity they want to reach.

If you’ve recently sustained an injury, or have a lingering injury that won’t heal on its own, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Cottleville, MO for a no-risk, no-obligation injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and ensure that you can keep up with your sport or hobby, read on below or call to speak to a physical therapist at your earliest convenience.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Cottleville, MO

Injuries typically fall into two categories:

  1. Wear-and-tear injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. They are common in overhead athletes such as tennis or shotput and pole-vaulters and typically reveal themselves with 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, twisting joints, fractures, and dislocations.

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

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

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Cottleville, MO

While injuries occur for many different reasons, and some are unpreventable, they generally happen because your muscles, ligaments, tendons, 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 reducing injury. Imbalance can lead to overemphasis for one muscle group, which may cause your body to use it in a way it shouldn’t. It can also lead to poor posture, and the weaker muscles will become tired more quickly, making them more susceptible to injuries. Injuries can be caused by inadequate muscle balance in relation to other 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. Symptoms include:

Tailored injury prevention with our licensed physical therapists in Cottleville, MO will ensure that different muscles and muscle groups are equally strong.

Movement Dysfunction

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

  • Joint mobility limitations
  • Muscle imbalance
  • Poor coordination
  • Lessened balance

At our first injury prevention appointment in Cottleville, MO, we’ll go over your medical history 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 treating you, we’ll come up with a personalized game plan been proven to work by research and studies to get your movement back on track.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people who sit a lot. Athletes and other physically active people can suffer from postural dysfunction when resting, driving, or in specific positions they need to be in for a given activity. Optimal posture means correct alignments of your body from your head to your toes in a way that does not remove the spine from its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the bones of the spine closer together, which disrupts your nervous system and makes it harder to reach ideal movement health. 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 your muscles equally, your flexibility is not jeopardized, and your spine is in its natural position.



How to Prevent Injury in Cottleville, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything possible to reduce that risk. We cannot promise that our injury prevention program completely negates the risk of injury. However, there are precautions to make sure your body is prepared 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 allow your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. 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.
  • Wear the correct equipment — Helmets, mouth guards, elbow pads, and other required equipment in many sports can help prevent injuries such as rashes or head injuries. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or muscle, tendon, or ligament, your Cottleville, MO doctor or injury prevention professional may fit you for stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other methods like tying your athletic footwear tightly can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
  • Boost muscle strength — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them withstand the force and torque necessary for in sports and other activities. In your tailored injury prevention program with our experienced Cottleville, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to build up your body to be able to avoid injury in the activities you love.
  • Enhance flexibility — Increasing your flexibility contributes to injury prevention in three way:
    1. It improves which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which lets for the tendons and ligaments connecting your muscles to your bones to handle more pronounced movements.
    2. It improves circulation, which carries protein-rich blood to your soft tissue, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to recover.
    3. It increases your posture, which, as we’ve discussed, is is one of the most important aspects of injury prevention.

    According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like basketball that require dynamic activities require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility to perform those movements. Also, don’t forget to stretch and warm up before any physical activity to further reduce the risk of injury.

  • 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 reduce the risk of injury. Football players are taught to tackle a certain way to reduce the risk of brain damage, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to use the appropriate muscles. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to break down your movement and analyze how to improve it.
  • Listen to your body — If a part of your body is bothering you, your body is trying to send you a message. If you feel something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, stop immediately and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body does not feel well enough for an intense workout, don’t force it.
  • Don’t play through an injury — Even though gritting through pain is often viewed as a heroic act among competitors, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could make that injury worse and leave you off the field or court for longer than it originally would have. Depending on what caused your injury and how severe it is, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, visiting an emergency room, and rehab with a physical therapist to ensure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
  • Follow the rules — Many sports have special rules at different levels to help prevent 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 examples of rules that were adopted to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that violations of those rules are punished.
  • Speak a professional physical therapist — It’s a good idea to see a doctor before starting another season or committing yourself to any strenuous activity or training regimen. During your appointment, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a licensed physical therapist in Cottleville, MO is something you should consider. Every treatment plan we employ has been proven to reduce the risk of injury, and we’ll personalize your program to your age, your injury history, and which activities you want to participate in.

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

Injury Prevention for Older Cottleville, MO Adults

Falls in senior citizens were responsible for more than 3 million emergency room admissions and over 34,000 deaths. Studies show that being physical active is invaluable in reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions that cause pain such as arthritis that accumulate over time can be more bearable and take longer to progress with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints active. While seniors typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, the same principles of strength, balance, flexibility, and correct posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Cottleville, MO include:

Cottleville, 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 elation. The professional Cottleville, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to guide you through your own personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body strong and flexible, and your mind at ease that you do not have to fear going back to what you love. We will aid you in feeling the physical and mental health benefits that you do not want to lose. Request an appointment online or call the location nearest you to start your program with one of our injury prevention professionals in Cottleville, MO.

Services Offered

Services Offered
  • Physical Therapy
    • Pre/Post Surgical Rehabilitation
    • Acute Injury Management
    • Chronic Injury Management
  • Occupational Therapy
    • Certified Hand Therapy
  • Work Conditioning/Hardening
  • Functional Capacity Evaluations
  • Sports Physical Therapy
  • DorsaVi Video Motion Analysis
  • Trigger Point Dry Needling
  • Pediatric Orthopedic Physical Therapy
  • Geriatric Orthopedic Physical Therapy
  • Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization (IASTYM)
  • Spine Specialty – Manual Therapy Certified
  • Free Injury Screenings
  • Kinesio Taping®
  • Blood Flow Restriction Therapy

Our Team

Sara Crain
PT, CEAS, Astym Cert.
Amanda Long
DPT, CMPT, ATC
John Ruesler
Clinic Director, DPT, CMPT, Astym Cert.
Megan Phillips
Front Office
Megan Mason
OTD, OTR/L
Hannah Drake
DPT, CMPT, ATC, LAT
Kayla Kowal
PT, DPT, CSCS
Heather Guffey
Front Office
Justin Bridwell
Front Office

Locations

Begin Your Recovery Today

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