Injury Prevention in Grantwood Village, MO. Whether you play a sport and are hoping for a shot at the next level, 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 activities you love. While our professional Grantwood Village, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to heal after an injury, we are complete movement health specialists who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to guide you through exercises that are proven to prevent injury. Make an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or reach out to the location nearest you.

Being physically active is an essential part of many Grantwood Village, MO people’s lives. We love active endeavors like playing sports, playing golf, or other physical activities. Furthermore, keeping an active lifestyle helps prevent chronic conditions including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, degenerative brain diseases, anxiety, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Grantwood Village, MO physical therapists help you come back even stronger after an injury, 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 methods, for both healing from and preventing injury, have been prove to work 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 nagging injury that won’t heal on its own, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Grantwood Village, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can continue with your sport or hobby, read on below or inquire about an appointment at your earliest convenience.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Grantwood Village, MO

Most injuries happen for one of two reasons:

1. Overuse 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 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 a sudden impact by an object or another person. These can result in bruises, twisting joints, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some common injuries, such as rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, for example ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with a sudden impact to the knee.

Why Do Injuries Happen? | Injury Prevention in Grantwood Village, MO

While injuries occur for many different reasons, and are sometimes unpreventable, they generally happen because your muscles, ligaments, tendons, bones, and joints cannot handle the force, torque, or stretching that they are subjected to in a given movement or collision. There are three common dysfunctions that lead to injury:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is crucial to supporting joints and staving off injury. Imbalance can lead to dependency on one set of muscles, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also prevents you from having good posture, and the weaker muscles will become fatigued more quickly, making them more susceptible to injuries. Injuries can be caused by insufficient muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong bicep and weak tricep, or in the same muscle group, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff having different levels of strength. Symptoms include:

• Muscle weakness
• Muscle inflexibility
• Poor muscle recruitment
• Poor coordination

Customized injury prevention with our licensed physical therapists in Grantwood Village, 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 a range of musculoskeletal issues. It can lead to:

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

At our initial injury prevention appointment in Grantwood Village, MO, we’ll go through your medical history and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, alongside with your physician or any other providers treating you, we’ll come up with a customized treatment plan been proven to work through research and studies to get your body moving as it should.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people with slouched shoulders. People who play sports and other physically active people can be affected by postural dysfunction when lying down, sitting, or in specific stances they need to be in for a given activity. Correct posture refers to proper positioning of the different joints and muscles of your body in a way that keeps the spine within its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the bones of the spine closer together, which disrupts communication between your brain and body and makes it challenging to achieve ideal movement health. It can also lead to:

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

By helping you understand the best practices for posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring you are using the right muscles for the right movements, your flexibility is not jeopardized, and your nervous system can communicate as its intended to.

Injury Prevention Methods in Grantwood Village, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything possible to reduce that risk. 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 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 allow your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. If you have a more modest activity level, take it easy after activity so your body doesn’t become too fatigued.
• Wear the appropriate equipment — Helmets, shin guards, protective eyewear, and other required equipment in sports and other activities can help prevent injuries such as rashes or brain injuries. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Grantwood Village, MO physician or injury prevention expert may fit you for braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the affected area. Other measures like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further protection.
• Increase muscle strength — Strengthening soft tissue helps it stand up to the rigors of heavy activity. Our Grantwood Village, MO injury prevention experts will work to achieve optimal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to safely participate in the activities you love.
• Enhance flexibility — Increasing your flexibility accomplishes three important things for injury prevention:
  1. It enhances your range of motion, which lets for the tendons and ligaments connecting your muscles to your bones to adapt to more extreme movements.
  2. It increases blood flow, which allows for nourishing blood to flow to your muscles, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to heal.
  3. It enhances your posture, which we already know is an an essential part of injury prevention.

  According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like basketball that include sudden twists and movements require soft tissue flexible enough to store and expel the high amount of energy required. Stretching and warm up exercises before activities further helps prevent injuries.

• 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 with the shoulder in order to reduce the risk of brain damage, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best rotate their body. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and analyze how to improve it.
• 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 withdraw from the 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 an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could exacerbate an existing injury and put you out of commission for longer than it originally would have. Depending on what caused your injury and how severe it is, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, seeing an emergency room, and scheduling appointments 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 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 violations of those rules are punished.
• Consult a professional physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to see a doctor before another season begins or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. During your appointment, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a experienced physical therapist in Grantwood Village, MO is right for you. 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, any previous injuries, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Grantwood Village, MO

Falls in senior citizens accounted for more than 3 million urgent care admissions and over 34,000 deaths. Studies show that physical activity can go a long way in reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions such as arthritis that accumulate over time can be more bearable and take longer to progress with physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints active. While the physical demands for seniors may not be as high as an athlete, appropriate strength, balance, flexibility, and ideal posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Grantwood Village, 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

Grantwood Village, 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 exultation. The experienced Grantwood Village, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to guide you through your own 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. Request an appointment online or reach out to the location nearest you to learn more about what our Grantwood Village, MO injury prevention experts can do for you.