Foristell, MO

Foristell, MO

Don't let a mental block over reinjury prevent you from participating in the things what you do best.

Injury Prevention in Foristell, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, or are entering your golden years and want to dedicate your time to bike riding, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you desire. While our licensed Foristell, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to recover from injury, we are complete movement health specialists who can evaluate your movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to guide you through measures that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location most convenient for you.

Physical activity is vitally important to many Foristell, MO residents. Many of us participate in active endeavors such as playing sports, playing golf, or other physical activities. Furthermore, keeping an active lifestyle reduces the risk of significant health problems like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, eurodegenerative disease, mental health issues, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Foristell, MO physical therapists allow you to come back as fierce as ever, but our injury prevention specialists can help you reduce the risk of further injury by improving your overall strength, flexibility, and posture. All of our methods, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, are proven to be effective and are personalized to each client and the lifestyle they desire.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a lingering injury that won’t heal on its own, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Foristell, MO for a free injury screening. To take preventative measures and protect your sport or hobby, keep reading or call to speak to a physical therapist today.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Foristell, MO

Injuries generally fall into two categories:

  1. Repetitive demand 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 such as baseball or quarterbacks, with joint pain usually being the first warning sign.
  2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include falling or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, fractures, and dislocations.

Some of the injuries we see most frequently, for example rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, like ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with an immediate impact to or twisting of the knee.

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

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

While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and some are unpreventable, they generally happen because your soft tissue, bones, and joints cannot handle 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 key to maintaining healthy joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can lead to overemphasis for one muscle group, which may cause your body to use it in a way it shouldn’t. It also causes posture dysfunction, and one set of muscles becoming fatigued more quickly, increasing the risk of injury. Muscle imbalance can refer to insufficient muscle balance in relation to other 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 result in:

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

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 a range of musculoskeletal issues. It can lead to:

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

When you initially see our injury prevention professionals in Foristell, 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 involved in your care, we’ll develop a tailored game plan 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 at lest, using the computer, or in certain body positions related to a given activity. Healthy posture means proper 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 compact the bones of the spine, which interferes with our body’s ability to communicate with itself and achieve the strength and range of motion you need to achieve. It causes injuries through:

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

By teaching you good posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring you are using the right muscles for the right movements, your flexibility can be improved and maintained, and your vertebrae remain in place.



Injury Prevention Methods in Foristell, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything you could to prevent one. We cannot promise that our injury prevention program completely negates the risk of injury. 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 have a very high activity level, make sure to take one or two days off per week to encourage your body to engage in its natural healing and recovery processes. If you have a more moderate activity level, take a break after activity so your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints become too fatigued.
  • Use protective equipment — Helmets, chest guards, safety pads and guards, and other recommended equipment in sports and other activities helps you avoid injuries such as lacerations or head injuries. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or muscle, tendon, or ligament, your Foristell, MO physician or injury prevention expert may advise stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other methods like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further protection.
  • Strengthen muscles — Strengthening soft tissue helps it stand up to the force and torque your body is put through in sports and other activities. Our Foristell, MO injury prevention professionals will work to achieve ideal muscle balance and strengthen the often forgotten muscles needed to safely participate in the activities you love.
  • Boost flexibility — Increasing your flexibility contributes to injury prevention in three way:
    1. It increases 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 carries protein-rich blood to your soft tissue, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to recover.
    3. It boosts your posture, which, as you read earlier, is an essential part of injury prevention.

    According to studies, sports like soccer that necessitate sudden twists and movements require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility to perform those movements. Stretching and warm up exercises before games or training further helps prevent injuries.

  • Use proper technique — In every physical activity, there are accepted techniques to use. These techniques not only help you perform better but help prevent injuries by not forcing your body into unnatural positions and movements. Football players are taught to tackle with the shoulder in order to avoid 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 capture how you move and evaluate how to both be a better athlete and reduce your risk of injury.
  • 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, immediately withdraw from the activity and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body isn’t holing up well in a particularly rigorous training session, save it for another day.
  • Don’t play through an injury — While teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate a player that plays through pain, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could make that injury worse and leave you on the sidelines for longer than it originally would have. Depending on the nature of your injury, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, seeing your doctor, and a series of physical therapy sessions to ensure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
  • Follow 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 coming from behind in soccer, and even the presence of special lanes on the street and sidewalk for bikers are examples of rules that leagues enacted to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. Those were enacted 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 a new season or starting up a new activity or training regimen. During your visit, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a experienced physical therapist in Foristell, MO is a good idea for you. Every treatment plan we employ has been demonstrated 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 how physically active you wish to be.

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

Injury Prevention for Older Foristell, MO Adults

Falls in the elderly were responsible for over 3 million urgent care visits and over 34,000 deaths. Research demonstrates that being physical active is a great method for preventing falls. Other conditions that limit mobility such as arthritis that accumulate over time can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints active. While seniors typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, the same principles of strength, balance, flexibility, and correct posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Foristell, MO include:

Foristell, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in something you love doing causes a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same exultation. The experienced Foristell, 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 at ease that you do not have to fear going back to what you love. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits that you do not want to lose. Schedule an appointment online or reach out to the location nearest you to get started with one of our injury prevention experts in Foristell, MO.

Services Offered

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

Our Team

Sara Crain
PT, CEAS, Astym Cert.
Julie Freiner
OTR/L, CHT
Samantha Bixby
PT, DPT, Astym Cert.
Farren Holman
PT, DPT, Astym Cert.
Matt Williams
MS, OTR/L, ATC/L, CHT
Jeff Hunter
Clinic Director, PT, Cert. MDT, MBA
Bailey Zimmermann
Front Office Supervisor
Amanda Reynolds
Front Office

Locations

Begin Your Recovery Today

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