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

Injury Prevention in Crestwood, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, or a recent retiree who wants to dedicate your time to being physical fit, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you desire. While our certified Crestwood, 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 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 call the location most convenient for you.

Physical activity is vitally important to many Crestwood, MO residents. We love active endeavors like playing sports, hiking, or other physical activities. Furthermore, pursuing an active lifestyle helps stave off chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, degenerative brain diseases, depression, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Crestwood, MO physical therapists help you come back even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention experts can help you reduce the risk of further injury by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our treatment plans, for both recovery and injury prevention, are proven to be effective and are personalized to each client and the lifestyle they desire.

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 most convenient for you in Crestwood, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and ensure that you can keep up with your sport or hobby, keep reading or call to speak to a physical therapist today.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Crestwood, MO

Most injuries happen for one of two reasons:

Chronic injuries are injuries that occur when a part of the body repeats the same motion time and time again. They are common in overhead athletes such as water polo or volleyball players, with joint pain usually being the first indicator.
Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. 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, such as rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, such as ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.

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

Why Do Injuries Happen? | Injury Prevention in Crestwood, 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 hold up under 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 force it to participate in an activity it shouldn’t. It also causes posture dysfunction, and the weaker muscles will become tired sooner, making them more susceptible to injuries. Muscle imbalance can refer to insufficient muscle balance in relation to other muscle groups, such as having a strong bicep and weak tricep, or within muscle groups, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff having different levels of strength. Symptoms include:

Muscle weakness
Muscle inflexibility
Poor muscle recruitment
Coordination deficits

Personalized injury prevention with our certified physical therapists in Crestwood, MO will ensure that your muscles are at optimal proportional strength.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and lead to your body bending in unnatural ways, increasing your risk of injury. It can be caused by a range of musculoskeletal issues. It can cause injury through:

Joint mobility restrictions
Muscle imbalance
Coordination deficiency
Decreased balance

At our initial injury prevention appointment in Crestwood, MO, we’ll discuss 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 providers treating you, we’ll come up with a personalized 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. People who play sports and other physically active people can have postural dysfunction when resting, using the computer, or in specific stances necessary for their sport. Good posture means proper alignments of the neck, torso, pelvis, and extremities in a way that keeps the spine within its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the bones of the spine closer together, which interferes with our body’s ability to communicate with itself and achieve ideal motion health. It causes injuries through:

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

By helping you understand good posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring muscle balance, flexibility, and that your spine is in its natural position.

How to Prevent Injury in Crestwood, MO

All sports and physical activities can potentially lead to an injury. No one safety tip is 100% foolproof in injury prevention. 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 encourage your body to engage in its natural healing processes. If you’re moderately active, relax for the rest of the day after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
Wear protective equipment — Helmets, shin guards, protective eyewear, and other equipment necessary in many sports helps you avoid injuries like contusions or brain injuries. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or soft tissue, your Crestwood, MO doctor or physical therapist may suggest braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the affected area. Other methods like making sure all the equipment is snug can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
Strengthen muscles — Strengthening soft tissue helps it stand up to the force and torque of heavy activity. In your tailored injury prevention program with our certified Crestwood, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to achieve ideal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to safely participate in the activities you want to participate in.
Improve flexibility — Stretching achieves three critical things for injury prevention:
1. It enhances your range of motion, which lets for your tendons and ligaments to handle more dramatic positions.
2. It improves blood flow, which allows for nourishing blood to flow to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to heal.
3. It boosts your posture, which, as you read earlier, is is one of the most important aspects of injury prevention.
According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like basketball that necessitate sudden twists and movements require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility to perform those movements. Stretching and warm up exercises before games or training further helps prevent injuries.
Use accepted technique — Through the years, each sport and physical activity develops a consensus of the best ways to position and move your body. These techniques not only help you perform better but help prevent injuries by not forcing your body into unnatural positions and movements. Football players learn to tackle a certain way to avoid a head injury, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best rotate their body. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and educate you on how to improve it.
Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If a part of your body is sore, that’s your body’s way of telling you something isn’t right. If you feel sudden pain, immediately withdraw from the activity and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t holing up well in a particularly rigorous training session, don’t force it.
Don’t play through an injury — While teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate a player that guts it out through pain, forcing your body to perform with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could aggravate an existing injury and leave you on the sidelines for much longer than if you had sat out at the time of the injury. Depending on what caused your injury and how severe it is, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, seeing an emergency room, and a series of physical therapy sessions to ensure 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 in the interest of safety. Penalties for leading with the helmet in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the existence of bike lanes are all rules put in place 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 professional physical therapist — It’s a good idea to get a physical before starting another season or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. While there, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a knowledgeable physical therapist in Crestwood, MO is right for you. All of our techniques have been proven to reduce the risk of injury, and we’ll personalize your program to your age, your injury history, and how physically active you wish to be.

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

Injury Prevention for The Elderly in Crestwood, MO

Falls in senior citizens were responsible for more than 3 million emergency room visits and over 34,000 fatalities. Research demonstrates that being physical active is a great method for reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions that cause pain like arthritis that develop over the course of several years can be more bearable and take longer to progress with physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints strong. While the physical demands for older adults may not be as high as an athlete, appropriate strength, balance, flexibility, and ideal posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Crestwood, MO include:

Crestwood, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in in an activity you prepare and train for and love can create a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same happiness. The professional Crestwood, 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 can safely return to the activities you love. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits that you do not want to lose. Request an appointment online or call the location nearest you to learn more about what our Crestwood, MO injury prevention professionals can do for you.