Injury Prevention in Femme Osage, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, or a recent retiree who wants to spend more time bike riding, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our certified Femme Osage, 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 teach out techniques that are proven to reduce the risk of injury by preparing your body for the stressors of your desired activity. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or contact the location nearest you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many Femme Osage, MO residents. Many of us participate in activities like playing sports, kayaking, or other physical activities. Additionally, pursuing an active lifestyle helps stave off future health problems like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, degenerative brain diseases, depression, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Femme Osage, MO physical therapists help you come back even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention professionals can help you reduce the risk of further injury by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our methods, for both healing from and preventing injury, have been prove to work 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 most convenient for you in Femme Osage, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To take preventative measures and protect your sport or hobby, keep reading or call to speak to a physical therapist at your earliest convenience.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Femme Osage, MO

Most injuries happen for one of two reasons:

1. Repetitive motion injuries are injuries that occur when a part of the body repeats the same motion time and time again. They are common 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 in an instant. Examples include falling or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, twisting joints, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some of the injuries we see most frequently, like rotator cuff tears, can result from either overuse or acute trauma. 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 Femme Osage, MO

While injuries occur for many different reasons, and are sometimes inescapable, they generally happen because of dysfunction or instability and your body and between body parts. There are three primary causes of why your body cannot handle an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is essential to supporting joints and staving off injury. Imbalance can lead to dependency on one muscle group, which may cause your body to use it in a way 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 likelihood of injury. Injuries can be caused by inadequate muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong chest and weak back, or within muscle groups, such as an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Muscle imbalance can cause injury through:

• Muscle weakness
• Muscle inflexibility
• Poor muscle recruitment
• Coordination deficiency

Personalized injury prevention with our professional physical therapists in Femme Osage, MO will ensure that different muscles and muscle groups are equally strong.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and impede your body’s ability to naturally perform functional movements, causing injury. Neurological issues, swelling, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. Symptoms include:

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

When you initially visit our injury prevention experts in Femme Osage, MO, we’ll discuss your medical history and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, together with your doctor or any other medical professionals treating you, we’ll devise a tailored treatment plan been proven to work through research and studies to get your movement back on track.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people who sit a lot. People who play sports and other physically active people can have postural dysfunction when lying down, driving, or in specific positions related to their sport. Correct posture refers to proper positioning when both static and moving in a way that encourages our spine to stay in its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the bones of the spine closer together, which interferes with our body’s ability to communicate with itself and reach optimal motion health. It causes injuries through:

• 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 muscle balance, range of motion, and that your vertebrae remain in place.

Keys to Injury Prevention in Femme Osage, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything you could to reduce that risk. We cannot promise that our injury prevention program completely negates the risk of injury. However, there are precautions to greatly reduce the risk of injury:

• Take breaks — Your body needs time to rest and recover after any moderate to intense activity. 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’re moderately active, relax for the rest of the day after an activity so your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints become too fatigued.
• Use protective equipment — Helmets, shin guards, elbow pads, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities helps you avoid injuries such as bruises or concussions. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or soft tissue, your Femme Osage, MO doctor or physical therapist may suggest braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the injured area. Other measures like tying your shoes tightly offers further protection.
• Strengthen muscles — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them stand up to the rigors your body is put through in sports and other activities. Our Femme Osage, MO injury prevention experts will work to build up your body to be able to stay healthy in the activities you want to participate in.
• Increase flexibility — Stretching accomplishes three critical things for injury prevention:
  1. It improves which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which lets for the tendons and ligaments connecting your muscles to your bones to handle more drastic movements.
  2. It improves circulation, which allows for nourishing blood to flow to your muscles, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to heal.
  3. It encourages good posture, which we already know is an is one of the most important factors of injury prevention.

  According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like soccer that necessitate dynamic motions require muscles and tendons flexible enough to perform those movements. Also, remember to stretch and warm up before any physical activity to further reduce the risk of injury.

• Use accepted technique — In every physical activity, there is an accepted way to position and move your body. 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 a certain way to avoid a concussion, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to use the appropriate muscles. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and evaluate how to improve it.
• Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If a part of your body is sore, that’s your body’s way of telling you something is wrong. If you feel something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, immediately withdraw from the activity and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body does not feel well enough for an intense workout, don’t force it.
• Don’t play through an injury — While teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate an athlete that guts it out through pain, forcing your body to perform with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could make that injury worse and leave you on the sidelines for longer than it originally would have. Depending on what caused your injury and how severe it is, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, visiting an emergency room, and a series of physical therapy sessions to make sure your body heals properly and can handle the activity you want to return to.
• Follow the rules — Depending on the sport or activity and age level of the participants, it likely has special rules to reduce the risk of injury. Penalties for leading with the helmet in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the presence of special lanes on the street and sidewalk for bikers are all rules that were adopted to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. 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 get a physical before starting another season or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. During your appointment, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a licensed physical therapist in Femme Osage, MO is something you should consider. All of our techniques have been demonstrated to help athletes remain healthy, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to your age, your injury history, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention for The Elderly in Femme Osage, MO

Falls in the elderly were responsible for more than 3 million emergency room admissions and over 34,000 deaths. Research demonstrates that physical activity is invaluable in preventing falls. Other conditions like arthritis that are wear and tear injuries can be slowed down by physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints active. While the physical demands for seniors may not be as high as an athlete, the same principles of strength, stability, flexibility, and ideal posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Femme Osage, MO include:

• Shin Splint Treatment
• Direct Access Physical Therapy
• Gait Analysis
• Pelvic Floor Therapy
• Dry Needling Near Me
• Tendonitis Treatment
• Manual Physical Therapy
• Orthopedic Rehab Near Me
• Beginner Running Program
• Chronic Pain Treatment

Femme Osage, 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 won’t allow us to experience the same happiness. The licensed Femme Osage, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to develop your 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 doing most. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits of doing what you do best. Request an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to start your program with one of our injury prevention experts in Femme Osage, MO.