Injury Prevention in Earth City, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or you just retired and want to dedicate your time to camping, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our certified Earth City, 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 body’s current condition and how you move to show you exercises that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location most convenient for you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many Earth City, MO residents. We love activities like playing sports, swimming, or other physical activities. Additionally, pursuing an active lifestyle helps stave off serious health problems like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, eurodegenerative disease, anxiety, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Earth City, MO physical therapists allow you to return to action even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention professionals can help you reduce the risk of further injury by improving your overall strength, flexibility, and posture. All of our methods, for both healing from and preventing injury, are proven to be effective and are personalized to each client and the activities they want to return to.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a persistent injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Earth City, MO for a free injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and ensure that you can continue with your active lifestyle, read on below or call to speak to a physical therapist at your earliest convenience.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Earth City, MO

Injuries typically happen for one of two reasons:

1. Repetitive demand injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. They are common in overhead athletes such as softball or basketball players, with joint pain usually being the first symptom.
2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen suddenly. Examples include falling or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, fractures, and dislocations.

Some common injuries, such as rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, like ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, with a sudden impact to the knee.

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Earth City, MO

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally occur 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 key to supporting joints and reducing injury. Imbalance can result in dependency on one set of muscles, which may cause your body to force it to participate in an activity 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 insufficient muscle balance in relation to other muscle groups, such as having a strong bicep and weak tricep, or in the same muscle group, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff having different levels of strength. Muscle imbalance can cause injury through:

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

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

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can result in poor balance and lead to your body moving in unnatural ways, increasing your risk of injury. Neurological issues, swelling, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. It can cause injury through:

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

At our first injury prevention appointment in Earth City, MO, we’ll go over your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, in tandem with with your physician or any additional medical professionals involved in your treatment, we’ll come up with a customized plan of attack based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your movement health to reach its potential.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people who spend a lot of time doing the same activity. Athletes and others with active lifestyles can have postural dysfunction when resting, driving, or in specific poses related to their sport. Optimal posture means 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 compress the vertebrae, which disrupts our body’s internal communications and makes it harder to achieve 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 ideal posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring you are using your muscles equally, your flexibility can be improved and maintained, and your nervous system can communicate as its intended to.

Injury Prevention Techniques in Earth City, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything possible to prevent one. No one precaution is 100% foolproof in injury prevention. However, there are precautions to make sure your body is strong and flexible enough 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 signal to your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. If you have a more modest activity level, take it easy for the few hours after an activity so your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints become too fatigued.
• Wear the right equipment — Helmets, shin guards, elbow pads, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities can help prevent injuries like rashes or concussions. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your Earth City, MO physician or injury prevention specialist may advise 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.
• Improve muscle strength — Strengthening soft tissue helps it withstand the force and torque your body is put through in sports and other activities. In your personalized injury prevention program with our knowledgeable Earth City, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to achieve ideal muscle balance and strengthen the often forgotten muscles needed to safely participate in the activities you love.
• Increase flexibility — Stretching achieves three critical things for injury prevention:
  1. It boosts your range of motion, which allows for the tendons and ligaments connecting your muscles to your bones to handle more extreme movements.
  2. It increases circulation, which allows for nourishing blood to flow to your muscles, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to recover.
  3. It encourages good posture, which, as you read earlier, is an important part of injury prevention.

  According to studies, sports like basketball that necessitate dynamic motions require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility to store 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 proper technique — In every sport, there are accepted techniques to use. These techniques not only help you perform better but help reduce the risk of injury. Football players are taught to tackle with the shoulder in order to reduce the risk of brain damage, 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 improve your performance and reduce your risk of injury.
• Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If a part of your body is bothering you, that’s your body’s way of telling you something is wrong. If you feel a sudden crack or grinding sensation, immediately withdraw from the activity and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t feeling up to a particularly rigorous training session, don’t force it.
• Don’t play through an injury — Even though teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate an athlete that plays through pain, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could exacerbate a current injury and leave you on the sidelines for much longer than you would have been sitting out. Depending on what caused your injury and how severe it is, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, seeing your doctor, and a series of physical therapy sessions to make sure your body heals properly and can handle a return to physical activity.
• Play by the rules — Many sports have special rules at different levels in the interest of safety. Penalties for targeting in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the presence of bike lanes are all rules put in place to keep players safe. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that violations of those rules are punished.
• Consult a licensed physical therapist — It’s always advisable to have a medical evaluation before another season begins or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. During your appointment, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a experienced physical therapist in Earth City, MO is something you should consider. Every treatment plan we employ has been demonstrated to prevent injury, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to how old you are, any previous injuries, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Earth City, MO

Falls in the elderly were responsible for over 3 million urgent care visits and more than 34,000 fatalities. Research demonstrates that physical activity is invaluable in reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions like arthritis that are wear and tear injuries can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints healthy. While the physical demands for older adults may not be as high as an athlete, appropriate strength, stability, flexibility, and proper posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Earth City, MO include:

• Dry Needling Near Me
• Tendonitis Treatment
• Manual Physical Therapy
• Orthopedic Rehab Near Me
• Beginner Running Program
• Chronic Pain Treatment
• Spine Specialist Near Me
• MCL Injury
• Shoulder Pain

Earth City, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in one of your favorite activities can lead to a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same exhilaration. The professional Earth City, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to design for you a personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body as safe and healthy as can be, 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 once valued so much. Request an appointment online or call the location nearest you to discover what our Earth City, MO injury prevention experts can do for you.