Injury Prevention in Creve Coeur, MO. Whether you’re an athlete trying to get an opportunity at the next level, or are entering your golden years and want to dedicate your time to being physical fit, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our certified Creve Coeur, 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 guide you through exercises that are proven to reduce the risk of injury by preparing your body for the stressors of your desired activity. Request 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 Creve Coeur, MO residents. Many of us participate in activities such as playing sports, hiking, and more. Additionally, pursuing an active lifestyle helps stave off serious health problems including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, degenerative brain diseases, anxiety, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Creve Coeur, MO physical therapists allow you to return to action even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention professionals can help preserve your active lifestyle by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our treatment plans, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, 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 persistent injury that is not getting better with time, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Creve Coeur, MO for a free injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and protect your sport or hobby, keep reading or call to speak to a physical therapist today.
Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Creve Coeur, MO
Injuries generally happen for one of two reasons:
- Overuse injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. In sports, we see them the most in in overhead athletes athletes who use throwing or striking motions, 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, twisting joints, broken bones, and dislocations.
Some of the injuries we see most frequently, such as rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, such as ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with a sudden impact to the knee.
What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Creve Coeur, MO
While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and some are inescapable, they generally occur because your soft tissue, 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 maintaining healthy joints and staving off injury. Imbalance can result in dependency on 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 set of muscles will be pushed past its limit, resulting in failure and a higher likelihood of injury. Muscle imbalance can refer to inadequate muscle balance in relation to other muscle groups, such as having a strong chest and weak back, 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
Customized injury prevention with our experienced physical therapists in Creve Coeur, 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, increasing your risk of injury. It can be caused by many different musculoskeletal issues. Symptoms include:
- Joint mobility restrictions
- Muscle imbalance
- Poor coordination
- Lessened balance
When you initially visit our injury prevention specialists in Creve Coeur, MO, we’ll go over your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, alongside with your physician or any additional providers involved in your care, we’ll develop a customized treatment plan based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your movement back on track.
Posture Dysfunction
Bad posture is not just an issue for people with slouched shoulders. People who play sports and others with active lifestyles can suffer from postural dysfunction when lying down, driving, or in certain stances necessary for their sport. Healthy posture means proper positioning of the different joints and muscles of your body in a way that keeps the spine within its natural curves. Poor posture can compress the bones of the spine, which disrupts our body’s internal communications and makes it challenging to reach the strength and range of motion you need to achieve. Symptoms include:
- Muscle weakness
- Muscle imbalance
- Poor positioning
- Joint mobility restrictions
- Poor muscle recruitment
By guiding you to 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 nervous system can communicate as its intended to.
Injury Prevention Best Practices in Creve Coeur, MO
You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything you could to prevent one. No one precaution is guaranteed to be effective in injury prevention. However, there are precautions to make sure your body is prepared for your intended activity:
- Take breaks — Injuries are more common in overworked bodies. If you’re heavily active, one or two rest days a week will encourage your body to engage in its natural healing and recovery processes. 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.
- Wear the appropriate equipment — Helmets, mouth guards, safety pads and guards, and other recommended equipment in sports and other activities can help prevent injuries such as contusions or brain injuries. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or soft tissue, your Creve Coeur, MO doctor or physical therapist may fit you for braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the injured area. Other methods like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further stabilization.
- Increase muscle strength — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them stand up to the force and torque of heavy activity. Our Creve Coeur, MO injury prevention specialists will work to build up your body to be able to avoid injury in the activities you love.
- Increase flexibility — Stretching contributes to injury prevention in three way:
- It improves your range of motion, which allows for the tendons and ligaments connecting your muscles to your bones to adjust to more pronounced movements.
- It increases blood flow, which allows for nutrient-rich blood to flow to your soft tissue, eliminating waste byproduct and re-energizing the muscles.
- It improves your posture, which, as you read earlier, is an essential part of injury prevention.
According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like basketball that necessitate sudden twists and movements require muscles and tendons flexible enough to incorporate and release the high levels 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 physical activity, there is an accepted way to position and move your body. These techniques not only help you perform better but help prevent injuries. Football players learn to tackle with the shoulder in order to avoid a concussion, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best apply torque to your body. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to slow down your movement and analyze how to both improve your performance and reduce your risk of injury.
- Listen to your body — If a part of your body is bothering you, that’s your body’s way of telling you something isn’t right. If you feel a sudden crack or grinding sensation, stop immediately and seek proportional medical care. If your body does not feel well enough for an intense 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 make that injury worse and put you out of commission for longer than it originally would have. Depending on what caused your injury and how severe it is, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, seeing an emergency room, and rehab with a physical therapist to make sure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
- Follow 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 targeting 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 leagues enacted to keep participants safe. Those are in place for a reason, and there’s a reason that there are penalties for them.
- Speak a professional physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to see a doctor before another season begins or starting up a new activity or training regimen. While there, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a experienced physical therapist in Creve Coeur, MO is right for you. Every treatment plan we employ has been demonstrated to help athletes remain healthy, and we’ll personalize your program to how old you are, your injury history, and how physically active you wish to be.
Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Creve Coeur, MO
Falls in senior citizens accounted for more than 3 million urgent care visits and over 34,000 fatalities. Research demonstrates that physical activity can go a long way in preventing falls. Other conditions that cause pain like arthritis that are wear and tear injuries can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints strong. While the physical demands for seniors may not be as high as an athlete, healthy strength, balance, flexibility, and good posture are great agents in injury prevention.
Other services we offer in Creve Coeur, MO include:
- Total Knee Replacement Physical Therapy
- Vestibular Therapy
- Concussion Treatment
- Soft Tissue Mobilization
- Post Surgical Rehabilitation
- Shin Splint Treatment
- Direct Access Physical Therapy
- Gait Analysis
- Pelvic Floor Therapy
- Dry Needling Near Me
Creve Coeur, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy
Suffering in injury in something you love doing causes a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same joy. The experienced Creve Coeur, 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 confident that you do not have to fear going back to what you love doing most. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits of doing what you do best. Request an appointment online or reach out to the location nearest you to learn more about what our Creve Coeur, MO injury prevention experts can do for you.