Injury Prevention in Ellisville, MO. Whether you’re an athlete hoping for an opportunity at the next stage, 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 deserve. While our professional Ellisville, 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 show you measures 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 call the location nearest you.

Physical activity is an essential part of many Ellisville, MO people’s lives. Many of us participate in activities like playing sports, kayaking, or other physical activities. Additionally, keeping an active lifestyle reduces the risk of chronic conditions including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, degenerative brain diseases, depression, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Ellisville, MO physical therapists help you come back and perform even better than before, but our injury prevention specialists can help you reduce the risk of further injury by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our treatment plans, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, are based on evidence-backed techniques and are personalized to each client and the activities they want to return to.

If you’ve recently sustained an injury, or have a lingering injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Ellisville, MO for a no-risk, no-obligation injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can keep up with your active lifestyle, keep reading or call to speak to a physical therapist today.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Ellisville, MO

Injuries generally fall into two categories:

1. Wear-and-tear 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 such as baseball or quarterbacks and commonly are accompanied by joint pain.
2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen because of a specific and sudden trauma. 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, like rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, such as ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Ellisville, MO

While injuries occur for many different reasons, and some are unpreventable, they generally happen because your muscles, ligaments, tendons, 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 crucial to supporting joints and staving off injury. Imbalance can result in an overreliance on one set of muscles, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also prevents you from having optimal posture, and the weaker set of muscles will be pushed past its limit, resulting in failure and a higher probability of injury. Injuries can be caused by inadequate muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong bicep and weak tricep, or within muscle groups, such as an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Muscle imbalance can lead to:

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

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

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 limitations
• Muscle imbalance
• Poor coordination
• Lessened balance

When you initially see our injury prevention professionals in Ellisville, MO, we’ll evaluate your medical history and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, together with your doctor or any other medical professionals treating you, we’ll design a personalized plan of attack based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your body moving as it should.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people who spend a lot of time in the same position. People who play sports and other physically active people can have postural dysfunction when resting, driving, or in certain poses necessary for a given activity. Optimal posture refers to proper alignments when both static and moving in a way that does not remove the spine from its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the bones of the spine closer together, which has a negative affect on our body’s ability to communicate with itself and achieve optimal motion health. It causes injuries through:

• 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 your muscles equally, your flexibility is not jeopardized, and your spine is in its natural position.

Injury Prevention Best Practices in Ellisville, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything possible to prevent one. We cannot promise that our injury prevention program completely negates the risk of injury. However, there are several steps you can take to make sure your body is strong and flexible enough for your desired activity level:

• 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 signal to your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. If you have a more moderate activity level, rest for the rest of the day after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
• Use the correct equipment — Helmets, mouth guards, safety pads and guards, and other required equipment in sports and other activities can help prevent injuries like rashes or concussions. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Ellisville, MO physician or physical therapist may suggest stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other methods like tying your cleats tightly offers further stabilization.
• Increase muscle strength — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them stand up to the force and torque of heavy activity. In your customized injury prevention program with our expert Ellisville, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to achieve ideal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to safely participate in the activities you love.
• Increase flexibility — Stretching 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 extreme movements.
  2. It improves blood flow, which allows for nourishing blood to flow to your soft tissue, eliminating waste byproduct and revitalizing the muscles.
  3. It encourages good posture, which, as we’ve discussed, is is one of the most important factors of injury prevention.

  According to research, sports like soccer that necessitate dynamic motions require soft tissue 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 proper technique — Through the years, each sport and physical activity develops a consensus of the best techniques to use. These techniques not only improve performance but help prevent injuries. Football players are taught to tackle a certain way to reduce the risk of brain damage, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to use the appropriate muscles. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to slow down your movement and analyze how to improve it.
• Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If a part of your body is bothering you, that means that body part is telling your brain that something is wrong. If you feel a sudden pop or grinding sensation, immediately stop all physical activity and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t holing up well in an intense training session, save it for another day.
• Don’t play through an injury — While gritting through pain is often viewed as a heroic act among competitors, forcing your body to perform with soft tissue or structural damage could aggravate a current injury and put you out of commission for longer than it originally would have. Depending on the severity of your injury, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, visiting your doctor, and scheduling appointments with a physical therapist to ensure your body heals properly and can withstand the activity you want to return to.
• Follow the rules — Most sports have special rules at different levels in the interest of safety. Penalties for helmet to helmet hits in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the existence of special lanes on the street and sidewalk for bikers are all rules that were adopted to keep participants safe. Those were enacted for a reason, and there’s a reason that violations of those rules are punished.
• Consult a licensed physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to have a medical evaluation before another season begins or committing yourself to any strenuous activity or training regimen. During your appointment, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a expert physical therapist in Ellisville, MO is right for you. All of our techniques have been demonstrated to reduce the risk of injury, 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 Older Ellisville, MO Adults

Falls in adults over 65 were responsible for over 3 million urgent care admissions and over 34,000 fatalities. Research demonstrates that being physical active is a great method for reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions that cause pain like arthritis that develop over the course of several years can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints strong. While seniors typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, the same principles of strength, balance, flexibility, and ideal posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Ellisville, MO include:

• 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
• Hip Replacement Physical Therapy

Ellisville, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in in an activity you prepare and train for and love can lead to a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same joy. The professional Ellisville, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to develop your personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body strong and flexible, and your mind confident that you can safely return to the activities you love. We will aid you in feeling the physical and mental health benefits that you do not want to lose. Schedule an appointment online or call the location nearest you to learn more about what our Ellisville, MO injury prevention experts can do for you.