Injury Prevention in Dellwood, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, or a recent retiree who wants to spend more time camping, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you desire. While our licensed Dellwood, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others recover from injury, we are complete movement health specialists who can evaluate your movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to show you measures that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location nearest you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many Dellwood, MO residents. Many of us participate in active endeavors such as playing sports, hiking, and more. Additionally, committing to an active lifestyle helps prevent chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, anxiety, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Dellwood, MO physical therapists allow you to come back even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention specialists can help preserve your active lifestyle by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our treatment plans, for both healing from and preventing injury, are based on evidence-backed techniques and are personalized to each client and the lifestyle they desire.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a persistent injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Dellwood, MO for a no-risk, no-obligation injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can continue with your active lifestyle, keep reading or inquire about an appointment today.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Dellwood, MO

Injuries typically happen for one of two reasons:

1. Chronic 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 athletes who use throwing or striking motions, with joint pain usually being the first warning sign.
2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen suddenly. Examples include falling or a sudden impact by an object or another person. These can result in bruises, twisting joints, fractures, and dislocations.

Some common injuries, such as 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 a sudden impact to the knee.

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

While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and are sometimes inescapable, they generally occur because your muscles, ligaments, tendons, 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 crucial to maintaining healthy joints and staving off 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 also prevents you from having ideal posture, and one set of muscles becoming tired more quickly, increasing the risk of injury. Muscle imbalance applies to poor muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong hamstring and weak quadriceps, 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 deficiency

Tailored injury prevention with our professional physical therapists in Dellwood, 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, increasing your risk of injury. Neurological issues, swelling, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. Symptoms include:

• Joint mobility restrictions
• Muscle imbalance
• Coordination deficiency
• Decreased balance

When you first visit our injury prevention professionals in Dellwood, MO, we’ll discuss your medical history and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, in concert with with your doctor or any additional medical professionals involved in your care, we’ll develop a customized game plan based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your body moving as it should.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture is not just an issue for people who sit a lot. People who play sports and other physically active people can suffer from postural dysfunction when lying down, using the computer, or in certain body positions they need to be in for a given activity. Correct posture refers to correct alignments of your body from your head to your toes in a way that keeps the spine within its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the vertebrae closer together, which disrupts communication between your brain and body and makes it difficult to achieve ideal movement health. It can also lead to:

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

By teaching you correct posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring you are using your muscles equally, your flexibility is not jeopardized, and your vertebrae remain in place.

How to Prevent Injury in Dellwood, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything possible to prevent one. No one safety tip is guaranteed to be effective in injury prevention. However, there are several steps you can take to greatly reduce the risk of injury:

• Take breaks — Injuries are more common when you do not give your body time to restore itself. If you’re heavily active, one or two rest days a week will allow your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. If you have a more modest activity level, relax for the rest of the day after an activity so your body doesn’t become too fatigued.
• Use the correct equipment — Helmets, shin guards, elbow pads, and other equipment necessary in many sports helps you avoid injuries such as contusions or brain injuries. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Dellwood, MO doctor or injury prevention professional may advise stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. 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 withstand the force and torque of heavy activity. Our Dellwood, MO injury prevention specialists will work to achieve optimal muscle balance and strengthen the often forgotten muscles needed to be able to avoid injury in the activities you love.
• Improve flexibility — Stretching achieves three critical things for injury prevention:
  1. It increases your range of motion, which allows for your soft tissue to adapt to more pronounced positions.
  2. It boosts circulation, which carries nutrient-rich blood to your muscles, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to restore themselves.
  3. It encourages good posture, which we already know is an is one of the most important aspects of injury prevention.

  According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like football that include dynamic motions require muscles and tendons with sufficient flexibility to incorporate and exert the high levels of energy required. 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 ways to position and move your body. These techniques not only help you get be the best player you can be but help prevent injuries. Football players learn to tackle with the shoulder in order to reduce the risk of 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 capture how you move and educate you on how to both be a better athlete and reduce your risk of injury.
• Listen to your body — If a part of your body is sore, 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 an intense workout, save it for another day.
• Don’t play through an injury — While teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate an athlete that plays through pain, playing with soft tissue or structural damage 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, recommended actions may be using 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.
• 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 helmet to helmet hits in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the existence of bike lanes are examples of rules put in place to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that violations of those rules are punished.
• Consult a professional physical therapist — It’s a good idea to see a doctor before a new season or committing yourself to any strenuous activity or training regimen. During your visit, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a experienced physical therapist in Dellwood, MO is a good idea for you. Every treatment plan we employ has been proven to prevent injury, and we’ll personalize your program to how old you are, your injury history, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Dellwood, MO

Falls in adults over 65 accounted for over 3 million emergency room visits and over 34,000 fatalities. Studies show that physical activity is a great method for preventing falls. Other conditions 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 older adults may not be as high as an athlete, healthy strength, balance, flexibility, and ideal posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Dellwood, MO include:

• Neck Pain Treatment
• Physical Therapy Clinic
• Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Treatment
• Sciatica Treatment
• Sports Medicine
• Hand Pain Physical Therapy
• Foot & Ankle Pain Treatment
• Hip Pain Treatment
• Plantar Fasciitis Treatment
• Stroke Rehabilitation

Dellwood, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in in an activity you prepare and train for and love causes a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same happiness. The professional Dellwood, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to guide you through your own 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. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits that you do not want to lose. Make an appointment online or call the location nearest you to start your program with one of our injury prevention specialists in Dellwood, MO.