Desloge, MO

Desloge, MO

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

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

Physical activity is an essential part of many Desloge, MO people’s lives. We love active endeavors such as playing sports, playing golf, or other physical activities. Furthermore, committing to an active lifestyle helps prevent serious health problems like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, degenerative brain diseases, anxiety, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Desloge, MO physical therapists allow you to return to action even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention specialists can help keep you active 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, have been prove to work and are developed uniquely for each client and the level of activity they want to reach.

If you’ve recently sustained an injury, or have a persistent injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Desloge, MO for a no-risk, no-obligation injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and ensure that you can continue with your sport or hobby, read on below or call to speak to a physical therapist today.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Desloge, MO

Injuries typically fall into two categories:

  1. Repetitive motion injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. In sports, we see them the most in in overhead athletes athletes who are required to repeat throwing or striking motions, with joint pain usually being the first indicator.
  2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include falling or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some common injuries, for example 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.

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

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

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally occur because of dysfunction or imbalance and your body and between body parts. There are three common dysfunctions that lead to injury:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is key to maintaining healthy joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can lead to overemphasis for one set of muscles, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. 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 applies to inadequate muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong hamstring and weak quadriceps, or in the same muscle group, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff having different levels of strength. Muscle imbalance can lead to:

Tailored injury prevention with our experienced physical therapists in Desloge, MO will ensure that your muscles are at optimal proportional strength.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and impede your body’s ability to naturally perform functional movements, increasing your risk of injury. It can be caused by a range of musculoskeletal issues. It can lead to:

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

When you initially visit our injury prevention professionals in Desloge, MO, we’ll evaluate your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, alongside with your physician or any other medical professionals involved in your treatment, we’ll come up with a personalized game plan been proven to work through research and studies to get your movement health to reach its potential.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people who sit a lot. Athletes and others with active lifestyles can be affected by postural dysfunction when resting, driving, or in specific poses related to a given activity. Optimal posture refers to correct alignments of the neck, torso, pelvis, and extremities in a way that encourages our spine to stay in its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the vertebrae closer together, which disrupts your nervous system and makes it harder to achieve ideal motion health. Symptoms include:

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

Good posture is a necessary part of injury prevention because it ensures muscle balance, flexibility, and that your spine is in its natural position.



Injury Prevention Methods in Desloge, MO

All sports and physical activities carry an inherent risk of injury. No one safety tip is guaranteed to be effective in injury prevention. However, there are several steps you can take 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’re heavily active, make sure to take one or two days off per week to allow your body to engage in its natural healing processes. If you have a more modest activity level, take a break after activity so your body doesn’t become too fatigued.
  • Wear protective equipment — Helmets, chin straps, safety pads and guards, and other equipment necessary in many sports helps you avoid injuries like contusions or concussions. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your Desloge, MO physician or injury prevention expert may fit you for stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other methods like tying your cleats tightly offers further protection.
  • Strengthen muscles — Strengthening soft tissue helps it stand up to the force and torque of heavy activity. In your personalized injury prevention program with our professional Desloge, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to achieve optimal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to safely participate in the activities you want to participate in.
  • Increase flexibility — Increasing your flexibility contributes to injury prevention in three way:
    1. It boosts which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which lets for your soft tissue to adapt to more dramatic positions.
    2. It boosts blood flow, which carries nourishing blood to your soft tissue, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to recover.
    3. It encourages good posture, which, as you read earlier, is is one of the most important factors 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. 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 ways to position and move your body. These techniques not only help you perform better but help prevent injuries. Football players are taught to tackle a certain way to avoid 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 educate you on how to both improve your performance and reduce your risk of injury.
  • Listen to your body — If a part of your body is sore, your body is trying to send you a message. If you feel something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, immediately stop all physical activity and get the appropriate medical treatment. 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 gutting it out through pain is often viewed as commendable among competitors, playing with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could make that injury worse 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 nature of your injury, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, visiting your doctor, and rehab with a physical therapist to ensure your body heals naturally and can withstand the activity you want to return to.
  • 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 head-first sliding in baseball, and even the existence of bike lanes are examples of rules that were adopted to keep players safe. Those are in place for a reason, and there’s a reason that there are penalties for them.
  • Consult a licensed physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to have a medical evaluation before a new season or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. During your physical, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a expert physical therapist in Desloge, 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 which activities you want to participate in.

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

Injury Prevention for The Elderly in Desloge, MO

Falls in adults over 65 accounted for more than 3 million urgent care 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 limit mobility like arthritis that accumulate over time can be more bearable and take longer to progress with physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints healthy. While seniors typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, appropriate strength, stability, flexibility, and good posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Desloge, MO include:

Desloge, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in something you love doing can lead to a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same joy. The experienced Desloge, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to design for you a 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. 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 start your program with one of our injury prevention specialists in Desloge, 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
  • Certified Hand Therapy
  • Sports Physical Therapy
  • Pediatric Orthopedic Physical Therapy
  • Geriatric Physical Therapy
  • Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization
  • Spine Specialty – Certified Manual Therapy
  • Vestibular Therapy and Post-Concussion Therapy
  • Free Injury Screenings
  • Kinesio Taping®
  • Blood Flow Restriction Therapy

Our Team

Stephen Brunjes
OTR/L, CEAS
Cassandra Wadlow
Front Office
Dena Rose
PT, CMPT, CHT
Anthony Meyer
PT, DPT, CMPT
Derrick Wolk
Partner, Clinic Director, MPT, CMPT
Kimberly Helm
Front Office Supervisor
Lisa Bell
Front Office

Locations

Begin Your Recovery Today

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