Injury Prevention in Defiance, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or a recent retiree who wants to spend more time hiking, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you desire. While our licensed Defiance, 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 measures that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Make an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or contact the location most convenient for you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many Defiance, MO residents. We love active endeavors like playing sports, swimming, or other physical activities. Additionally, committing to an active lifestyle reduces the risk of future health problems like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, degenerative brain diseases, mental health issues, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Defiance, MO physical therapists allow you to come back and perform even better than before, but our injury prevention experts can help preserve your active lifestyle by improving your overall strength, flexibility, and posture. All of our treatment plans, for both recovery and injury prevention, are based on evidence-backed techniques and are developed uniquely for each client and the level of activity they want to reach.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a nagging injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Defiance, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can keep up with your active lifestyle, keep reading or inquire about an appointment at your earliest convenience.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Defiance, MO

Injuries generally happen for one of two reasons:

1. Wear-and-tear injuries are injuries happen gradually as a body part degrades because of repetitive movements. They are common in overhead athletes such as baseball or soccer goalies and commonly reveal themselves with joint pain.
2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include landing on uneven ground or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some of the injuries we see most frequently, for example rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, like ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with a sudden impact to the knee.

Why Do Injuries Happen? | Injury Prevention in Defiance, 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 handle 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 essential to supporting joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can cause dependency on 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 set of muscles will be pushed past its limit, resulting in failure and a higher probability of injury. Muscle imbalance applies to insufficient 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 not having proportionate strength. Muscle imbalance can cause injury through:

• Muscle weakness
• Muscle inflexibility
• Poor muscle recruitment
• Poor coordination

Tailored injury prevention with our experienced physical therapists in Defiance, 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, swelling, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. It can cause injury through:

• Joint mobility restrictions
• Muscle imbalance
• Poor coordination
• Reduced balance

When you initially visit our injury prevention experts in Defiance, MO, we’ll evaluate your medical history and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, in tandem with with your doctor or any additional providers treating you, we’ll create a personalized game plan based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your movement health to reach its potential.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture is not just an issue for people who spend a lot of time in the same position. People who play sports and others with active lifestyles can be affected by postural dysfunction when at lest, using the computer, or in specific stances necessary for their sport. Healthy posture refers to 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 joints in the spine closer together, which disrupts our body’s internal communications and makes it difficult to achieve ideal motion health. It can also lead to:

• 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 is not jeopardized, and your vertebrae remain in place.

Injury Prevention Best Practices in Defiance, 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 several steps you can take to greatly reduce the risk of injury:

• Take a rest — 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 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 right equipment — Helmets, shin guards, elbow pads, and other required equipment in sports and other activities helps you avoid injuries like rashes or brain injuries. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your Defiance, MO physician or physical therapist may suggest braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize a joint. Other measures like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further stabilization.
• Strengthen muscles — Strengthening soft tissue helps it stand up to the force and torque of heavy activity. Our Defiance, MO injury prevention experts will work to achieve optimal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to safely participate in the activities you want to participate in.
• Boost 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 your tendons and ligaments to handle more drastic movements.
  2. It boosts blood flow, which carries nourishing blood to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and rebuilding the muscles.
  3. It encourages good posture, which, as we’ve discussed, is an important part of injury prevention.

  According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like football that require dynamic activities require muscles and tendons with sufficient flexibility to perform those movements. Also, don’t forget to stretch and warm up before games or training to further reduce the risk of injury.

• Use correct 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 by not forcing your body into unnatural positions and movements. Football players learn 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 use DorsaVi video motion analysis to slow down your movement and evaluate how to improve it.
• Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If you feel pain in a muscle or joint, that means that body part is telling your brain that something is wrong. If you feel sudden pain, immediately stop all physical activity and seek proportional medical care. 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 teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate an athlete that guts it out through pain, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could aggravate a current injury and leave you off the field or court for much longer than if you had sat out at the time of the injury. Depending on the severity of your injury, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, visiting your doctor, and scheduling appointments 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 helmet to helmet hits in football, rules against coming from behind 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. Those were enacted for a reason, and there’s a reason that there are penalties for them.
• Speak a licensed physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to see a doctor before a new season or starting up a new activity or training regimen. While there, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a licensed physical therapist in Defiance, MO is right for you. Every treatment plan we employ has been proven to help athletes remain healthy, and we’ll personalize your program to your age, any previous injuries, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention for The Elderly in Defiance, MO

Falls in adults over 65 accounted for more than 3 million emergency room visits and over 34,000 deaths. Studies show that physical activity is invaluable in preventing falls. Other conditions that limit mobility such as arthritis that accumulate over time can be slowed down by physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints healthy. While the physical demands for seniors may not be as high as an athlete, healthy strength, balance, flexibility, and correct posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Defiance, MO include:

• Stroke Rehabilitation
• Hip Replacement Physical Therapy
• Workers Comp' Physical Therapy
• Migraine Relief
• Sprain and Strain Treatment
• Geriatric Physical Therapy
• Injury Rehabilitation
• Pain Management Services
• TMJ Treatment
• Herniated Disc Treatment

Defiance, 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 exultation. The licensed Defiance, 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 at ease 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 that you once valued so much. Schedule an appointment online or reach out to the location nearest you to start your program with one of our injury prevention professionals in Defiance, MO.