Florissant, MO

Florissant, MO

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

Injury Prevention in Florissant, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or a recent retiree who wants to dedicate your time to being physical fit, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you deserve. While our licensed Florissant, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others recover from injury, we are experts in the entire musculoskeletal system 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 contact the location nearest you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many Florissant, MO residents. Many of us participate in activities like playing sports, biking, or other physical activities. Additionally, keeping an active lifestyle helps prevent serious health problems like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Florissant, MO physical therapists help you come back as fierce as ever, 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 treatment plans, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, have been prove to work and are personalized to each client and the activities they want to return to.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a lingering injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Florissant, 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, keep reading or inquire about an appointment at your earliest convenience.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Florissant, MO

Most injuries 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 injuries that happen because of a specific and sudden trauma. Examples include falling or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, 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, for example ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.

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

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

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally happen because your muscles, ligaments, tendons, bones, and joints cannot hold up under the force, torque, or stretching that they are subjected to in a given movement or collision. There are three main causes of why your body cannot adjust to an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is essential to supporting joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can cause 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 probability of injury. Muscle imbalance can refer to insufficient muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong hamstring and weak quadriceps, or within muscle groups, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff not having proportionate strength. Muscle imbalance can lead to:

Personalized injury prevention with our certified physical therapists in Florissant, 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, increasing your risk of injury. It can be caused by numerous musculoskeletal issues. It can cause injury through:

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

When you first see our injury prevention experts in Florissant, MO, we’ll go through your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, together with your doctor or any additional medical professionals treating you, we’ll come up with a personalized plan of attack based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your movement health to the level you need it to to do what you love.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people who sit a lot. Athletes and others with active lifestyles can suffer from postural dysfunction when at lest, driving, or in specific poses necessary for a given activity. Healthy posture means proper positioning of your body from your head to your toes in a way that does not remove the spine from its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the joints in the spine closer together, which disrupts our body’s internal communications and makes it challenging to attain the strength and range of motion you need to achieve. It can also lead to:

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

Good posture is an important part of injury prevention because it ensures you are using your muscles equally, your flexibility can be improved and maintained, and your nervous system can communicate as its intended to.



Keys to Injury Prevention in Florissant, MO

All sports and physical activities carry an inherent risk of injury. No one safety tip 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, one or two rest days a week will signal to your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. If you’re moderately active, take a break for the few hours after an activity so your body doesn’t become too fatigued.
  • Use protective equipment — Helmets, chin straps, protective eyewear, and other recommended equipment in sports and other activities helps you avoid injuries like contusions or concussions. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your Florissant, MO doctor or injury prevention expert may advise braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the affected area. Other measures like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further stabilization.
  • Strengthen muscles — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them withstand the rigors of heavy activity. Our Florissant, MO injury prevention professionals will work to achieve optimal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to be able to stay healthy in the activities you want to participate in.
  • Boost flexibility — Stretching contributes to injury prevention in three way:
    1. It boosts your range of motion, which lets for your soft tissue to adjust to more extreme movements.
    2. It improves circulation, which allows for nutrient-rich blood to flow to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and fortifying the muscles.
    3. It improves your posture, which we already know is an an important part of injury prevention.

    According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like soccer that include dynamic activities require muscles and tendons compliant enough to incorporate and expel the high levels of energy required. Also, don’t forget to stretch and warm up before any physical activity 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 help you get be the best player you can be but help prevent injuries. Football players learn to tackle a certain way to reduce the risk of a head injury, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best apply torque to your body. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to break down your movement and evaluate how to improve it.
  • Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If a part of your body is bothering you, your body is trying to send you a message. If you feel sudden pain, stop immediately and seek proportional medical care. If your body does not feel well enough for a particularly rigorous workout, don’t force it.
  • Don’t play through an injury — While teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate a player 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 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, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, seeing urgent care, and rehab with a physical therapist to ensure your body heals naturally and can handle the activity you want to return to.
  • Play by the rules — Most sports have special rules at different levels 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 bike lanes are all rules that were adopted to keep participants safe. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that violations of those rules are punished.
  • Speak a licensed physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to have a medical evaluation before starting another season or starting up a new activity or training regimen. During your visit, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a professional physical therapist in Florissant, MO is a good idea for you. All of our techniques have been proven to help athletes remain healthy, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to how old you are, your injury history, and which activities you want to participate in.

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

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Florissant, MO

Falls in the elderly accounted for more than 3 million emergency room visits and over 34,000 deaths. Research demonstrates that physical activity is invaluable in preventing falls. Other conditions that limit mobility like arthritis that develop over the course of several years can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints strong. While seniors typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, the same principles of strength, balance, flexibility, and optimal posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Florissant, MO include:

Florissant, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in one of your favorite activities can lead to a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same joy. The licensed Florissant, 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 doing most. 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 start your program with one of our injury prevention experts in Florissant, MO.

Services Offered

Services Offered
  • Physical Therapy
    • Pre/Post Surgical Rehabilitation
    • Acute Injury Management
    • Chronic Injury Management
  • Certified Hand Therapy
  • Work Conditioning/Hardening
  • Functional Capacity Evaluations
  • Sports Physical Therapy
  • Pediatric Orthopedic Physical Therapy
  • Geriatric Physical Therapy
  • Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization
  • Free Injury Screenings
  • Kinesio Taping®
  • Blood Flow Restriction Therapy
  • Spine Specialty

Our Team

Sara Crain
PT, CEAS, Astym Cert.
Brandi Arndt
MPT, CMPT
Brett Shelton
PT, DPT, OCS, COMT, CSMT
John Teepe
Partner, MPT
TJ Jung
PT, DPT
Justin Bridwell
Front Office
Chris Casner
PT, Clinic Director

Locations

Begin Your Recovery Today

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