Injury Prevention in Foley, MO. Whether you’re an athlete hoping for an opportunity at the next level, or a recent retiree who wants to dedicate your time to taking ski vacations, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you desire. While our professional Foley, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to heal after an injury, we are experts in the entire musculoskeletal system who can evaluate your movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to guide you through techniques that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or contact the location most convenient for you.

Physical activity is vitally important to many Foley, MO residents. We love activities like playing sports, swimming, or other physical activities. Furthermore, pursuing an active lifestyle helps prevent serious health problems including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia, anxiety, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Foley, MO physical therapists help you return to action as fierce as ever, 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, have been prove to work and are developed uniquely for each client and the lifestyle they desire.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a lingering injury that is not getting better with time, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Foley, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and ensure that you can keep up with your sport or hobby, read on below or inquire about an appointment at your earliest convenience.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Foley, MO

Most injuries fall into two categories:

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 and typically are accompanied by joint pain.
2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include landing on uneven ground 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, like ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Foley, MO

While injuries occur for many different reasons, and some are inescapable, they generally occur 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 chief causes of why your body cannot adjust to an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is crucial to maintaining healthy joints and staving off injury. Imbalance can result in overemphasis for one set of muscles, which may cause your body to force it to participate in an activity it shouldn’t. It also prevents you from having ideal posture, and the weaker muscles will become tired more quickly, increasing the risk of injury. Muscle imbalance can refer to inadequate muscle balance between 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. Symptoms include:

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

Customized injury prevention with our professional physical therapists in Foley, MO will ensure that your muscles are at optimal proportional strength.

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 a variety of musculoskeletal issues. It can lead to:

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

When you first visit our injury prevention experts in Foley, MO, we’ll go over your medical history and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, in concert with with your physician or any additional medical professionals involved in your care, we’ll develop a personalized treatment plan been proven to work by research and studies to get your movement back on track.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture is not just an issue for people with slouched shoulders. Athletes and other physically active people can be affected by postural dysfunction when resting, driving, or in specific poses related to a given activity. Correct posture refers to correct alignments of the different joints and muscles of your body in a way that encourages our spine to stay in its natural curves. Poor posture can compress the joints in the spine, which has a negative affect on our body’s ability to communicate with itself and attain ideal motion health. It causes injuries through:

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

By guiding you to correct 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 vertebrae remain in place.

How to Prevent Injury in Foley, MO

All sports and physical activities carry an inherent risk of injury. We cannot promise that our injury prevention program completely negates the risk of injury. However, there are precautions to make sure your body is prepared for your intended activity:

• Take a rest — Your body needs time to rest and recover after any moderate to intense activity. If you have a very high activity level, make sure to take one or two days off per week to allow your body to engage in its natural healing processes. If you’re moderately active, rest for the rest of the day after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
• Wear protective equipment — Helmets, chest guards, protective eyewear, and other required equipment in many sports can help prevent injuries such as rashes or brain injuries. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your Foley, MO doctor or injury prevention specialist may recommend braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the injured area. Other methods like tying your cleats tightly can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
• Strengthen muscles — Strengthening soft tissue helps it stand up to the force and torque of heavy activity. In your customized injury prevention program with our certified Foley, 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.
• Enhance flexibility — Increasing your flexibility accomplishes three critical things for injury prevention:
  1. It enhances which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which lets for your tendons and ligaments to handle more forceful positions.
  2. It enhances blood flow, which allows for nourishing blood to flow to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and reinvigorating the muscles.
  3. It encourages good posture, which we already know is an an important part of injury prevention.

  According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like football that require dynamic motions require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility to perform those movements. Also, remember to stretch and warm up before any physical activity to further reduce the risk of injury.

• Use proper technique — In every sport, there is an accepted way to position and move your body. These techniques not only improve performance but help prevent injuries. Football players learn to tackle a certain way to reduce the risk of brain damage, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to use the appropriate muscles. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to break down your movement and educate you on how to improve it.
• 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 a sudden pop or grinding sensation, immediately withdraw from the activity and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t holing up well in an intense training session, don’t force it.
• Don’t play through an injury — While gritting through pain is often viewed as a courageous act among competitors, forcing your body to perform with soft tissue or structural damage could make that injury worse and put you out of commission for much longer than if you had sat out at the time of the injury. Depending on what caused your injury and how severe it is, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, seeing your doctor, and rehab with a physical therapist to ensure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
• Play by the rules — Depending on the sport or activity and age level of the participants, it likely has special rules in the interest of safety. Penalties for helmet to helmet hits 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 leagues enacted to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. Those are in place for a reason, and there’s a reason that violations of those rules are punished.
• Consult a professional physical therapist — It’s a good idea to see a doctor before starting another season or committing yourself to any strenuous activity or training regimen. During your physical, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a expert physical therapist in Foley, MO is a good idea for you. All of our techniques have been proven to prevent injury, and we’ll personalize your program to how old you are, your injury history, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention for Older Foley, MO Adults

Falls in senior citizens accounted for more than 3 million urgent care admissions and over 34,000 fatalities. Studies show that being physical active is a great method for 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 muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints strong. While older adults typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, healthy strength, balance, flexibility, and correct posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Foley, MO include:

• Stroke Rehabilitation
• Hip Replacement Physical Therapy
• Workers Comp' Physical Therapy
• Migraine Relief
• Sprain and Strain Treatment
• Geriatric Physical Therapy
• Injury Rehabilitation
• Pain Management Services
• TMJ Treatment
• Herniated Disc Treatment

Foley, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in something you love doing causes a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same exhilaration. The professional Foley, 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 do not have to fear going back to what you love. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits of doing what you do best. Make an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to discover what our Foley, MO injury prevention specialists can do for you.