Injury Prevention in Flint Hill, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or a recent retiree who wants to spend more time being physical fit, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you desire. While our professional Flint Hill, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to recover from injury, we are experts in the entire musculoskeletal system who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to guide you through 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 most convenient for you.

Physical activity is an essential part of many Flint Hill, MO people’s lives. We love activities such as playing sports, swimming, or other physical activities. Furthermore, keeping an active lifestyle helps prevent future health problems including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, degenerative brain diseases, depression, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Flint Hill, MO physical therapists allow you to come back even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention experts 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 customized for each client and the level of activity they want to reach.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a persistent injury that is not getting better with time, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Flint Hill, MO for a free injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can continue with your active lifestyle, keep reading or call to speak to a physical therapist today.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Flint Hill, MO

Injuries generally happen for one of two reasons:

1. Wear-and-tear injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. They are common in overhead athletes athletes who are required to repeat throwing or striking motions and commonly reveal themselves with joint pain.
2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen because of a specific and sudden trauma. Examples include landing on uneven ground 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, such as ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with an immediate impact to or twisting of the knee.

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Flint Hill, MO

While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and some are unpreventable, they generally happen because of dysfunction or instability 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 staving off injury. Imbalance can lead to an overreliance on one set of muscles, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. 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. Muscle imbalance applies to insufficient muscle balance in relation to other muscle groups, such as having a strong hamstring and weak quadriceps, or within muscle groups, such as an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Muscle imbalance can result in:

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

Personalized injury prevention with our licensed physical therapists in Flint Hill, MO will bring balance to your muscles.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can result in poor balance and lead to your body moving in ways it is not designed to, causing injury. Problems in your nervous system, swelling, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. Symptoms include:

• Joint mobility limitations
• Muscle imbalance
• Coordination deficiency
• Lessened balance

At our first injury prevention appointment in Flint Hill, MO, we’ll go through your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, alongside with your physician or any additional providers involved in your treatment, we’ll come up with a customized treatment plan been proven to work by 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 doing the same activity. Athletes and other physically active people can have postural dysfunction when resting, using the computer, or in specific positions necessary for a given activity. Good posture means proper 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 joints in the spine closer together, which disrupts your nervous system and makes it challenging to achieve the strength and range of motion you need to achieve. Symptoms include:

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

Good posture is an important part of injury prevention because it ensures muscle balance, flexibility, and that your nervous system can communicate as its intended to.

How to Prevent Injury in Flint Hill, MO

All sports and physical activities can potentially lead to an injury. We cannot promise that our injury prevention program completely negates the risk of injury. However, there are things you can do to greatly reduce the risk of injury:

• 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 allow your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. If you have a more modest activity level, rest for the rest of the day after an activity so your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints become too fatigued.
• Wear protective equipment — Helmets, shin guards, elbow pads, and other equipment necessary in many sports helps you avoid injuries like contusions or head injuries. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or soft tissue, your Flint Hill, MO physician or injury prevention specialist may suggest stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other methods like making sure all the equipment is snug can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
• Improve muscle strength — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them stand up to the force and torque your body is put through in sports and other activities. Our Flint Hill, MO injury prevention professionals will work to achieve optimal muscle balance and strengthen the often forgotten muscles needed to safely participate in the activities you love.
• Increase flexibility — Stretching contributes to injury prevention in three way:
  1. It improves your range of motion, which allows for your soft tissue to handle more dramatic positions.
  2. It enhances circulation, which carries nourishing blood to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and revitalizing the muscles.
  3. It improves your posture, which, as you read earlier, is is one of the most important aspects of injury prevention.

  According to studies, sports like soccer that include sudden twists and movements require soft tissue flexible enough to perform those movements. Stretching and warm up exercises before activities further helps prevent injuries.

• 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 perform better but help prevent injuries by not forcing your body into unnatural positions and movements. Football players learn to tackle with the shoulder in order to reduce the risk of brain damage, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to make sure their muscles are moving unnaturally. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to break down your movement and educate you on how to both improve your performance and prevent injury.
• Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If you feel pain in a muscle or joint, your body is trying to send you a message. If you feel something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, immediately withdraw from the activity and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body isn’t feeling up to a particularly rigorous training session, save it for another day.
• Don’t play through an injury — While playing through pain is often seen as a valiant act among competitors, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could make that injury worse and leave you off the field or court for longer than it originally would have. Depending on the nature of your injury, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, seeing your doctor, and a series of physical therapy sessions to make sure your body heals properly 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 to help prevent injury. 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 put in place to keep participants safe. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that there are penalties for them.
• Speak a professional physical therapist — It’s always advisable to have a medical evaluation before another season begins or starting up a new activity or training regimen. During your physical, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a expert physical therapist in Flint Hill, MO is something you should consider. Every treatment plan we employ has been proven 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 Senior Citizens in Flint Hill, MO

Falls in the elderly were responsible for more than 3 million emergency room admissions and over 34,000 fatalities. Research demonstrates that being physical active is a great method for preventing falls. Other conditions like arthritis that accumulate over time can be more bearable and take longer to progress 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, healthy strength, stability, flexibility, and correct posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Flint Hill, 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

Flint Hill, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in in an activity you prepare and train for and love can create a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same joy. The experienced Flint Hill, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to design for you a 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. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits that you once valued so much. Make an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to learn more about what our Flint Hill, MO injury prevention experts can do for you.