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 spend more time taking ski vacations, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you desire. While our professional 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 exercises that are proven to prevent injury. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or contact the location most convenient for you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many Foristell, MO residents. Many of us participate in activities such as playing sports, swimming, or other physical activities. Furthermore, committing to an active lifestyle helps stave off significant health problems such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia, anxiety, and many types of 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, have been prove to work and are customized for each client and the lifestyle they desire.

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

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Foristell, MO

Injuries typically fall into two categories:

1. Wear-and-tear injuries are injuries that occur when a part of the body repeats the same motion time and time again. In sports, we see them the most in in overhead athletes such as tennis or shotput and pole-vaulters, with joint pain usually being the first symptom.
2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include landing on uneven ground or a sudden impact by an object or another person. 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.

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

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally happen because of dysfunction or instability and your body and between body parts. There are three main causes of why your body cannot adjust to an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is key to maintaining healthy joints and reducing 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 can also lead to poor posture, and one set of muscles becoming tired faster, increasing the risk of injury. Injuries can be caused by poor muscle balance in relation to other muscle groups, such as having a strong chest and weak back, or within muscle groups, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff having different levels of strength. Symptoms include:

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

Customized injury prevention with our experienced 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, causing injury. It can be caused by many different musculoskeletal issues. Symptoms include:

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

When you initially visit our injury prevention specialists in Foristell, 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 medical professionals treating you, we’ll develop a customized plan of attack been proven to work through research and studies to get your movement health to reach its potential.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture is not just an issue for people with desk jobs. People who play sports and others with active lifestyles can be affected by postural dysfunction when at lest, sitting, or in specific stances related to a given activity. Optimal posture means correct alignments of the neck, torso, pelvis, and extremities in a way that keeps the spine within its natural curves. Poor posture can compact the joints in the spine, which has a negative affect on our body’s ability to communicate with itself and attain optimal movement health. It can also lead to:

• 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 your muscles equally, your flexibility is not jeopardized, and your vertebrae remain in place.

Keys to Injury Prevention in Foristell, 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 several steps you can take 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 have a very high activity level, make sure to take one or two days off per week to encourage your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. If you’re moderately active, take a break after activity so your body doesn’t become too fatigued.
• Use protective equipment — Helmets, chin straps, elbow pads, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities helps you avoid injuries like contusions or brain injuries. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Foristell, MO doctor or injury prevention expert may advise braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize a joint. Other measures 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 withstand the force and torque your body is put through in sports and other activities. Our Foristell, MO injury prevention experts will work to achieve ideal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to be able to stay healthy in the activities you love.
• Boost flexibility — Stretching achieves three critical things for injury prevention:
  1. It boosts which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which allows for your tendons and ligaments to handle more forceful movements.
  2. It boosts blood flow, which carries nutrient-rich blood to your muscles, eliminating waste byproduct and re-energizing 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, don’t forget to stretch and warm up before games or training to further reduce the risk of injury.

• Use accepted 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 get be the best athlete you can be but help prevent injuries by not forcing your body into unnatural positions and movements. Football players are taught to tackle a certain way to avoid a concussion, 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 analyze 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, that’s your body’s way of telling you something isn’t right. If you feel something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, immediately stop all physical activity and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t feeling up to an intense workout, save it for another day.
• Don’t play through an injury — While gritting through pain is often viewed as commendable 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, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, visiting your doctor, and rehab with a physical therapist to make sure 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 to reduce the risk of injury. 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 all rules that leagues enacted to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that there are penalties for them.
• Speak a licensed physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to see a doctor before another season begins or starting up a new activity or training regimen. During your physical, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a knowledgeable physical therapist in Foristell, MO is a good idea for you. Every treatment plan we employ has 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 The Elderly in Foristell, MO

Falls in adults over 65 accounted for more than 3 million urgent care visits and more than 34,000 fatalities. Studies show that being physical active can go a long way in 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 healthy. While older adults typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, the same principles of strength, balance, flexibility, and proper posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Foristell, MO include:

• 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
• Hip Replacement Physical Therapy

Foristell, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in something you love doing can lead to a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same euphoria. The professional Foristell, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to develop your personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body prepared for the rigors of physical activity, and your mind at ease that you do not have to fear going back to what you love. We will aid you in feeling the physical and mental health benefits of doing what you do best. Request an appointment online or reach out to the location nearest you to get started with one of our injury prevention professionals in Foristell, MO.