Injury Prevention in Green Park, MO. Whether you’re an athlete hoping for a shot at the next stage, or a recent retiree who wants to spend more time hiking, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you deserve. While our licensed Green Park, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others heal after an injury, we are complete movement health specialists who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to teach out exercises that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or reach out to the location most convenient for you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many Green Park, MO residents. We love activities like playing sports, biking, and more. Additionally, pursuing an active lifestyle helps prevent chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, eurodegenerative disease, depression, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Green Park, MO physical therapists allow you to come back even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention specialists can help you reduce the risk of further injury by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our treatment plans, for both healing from and preventing injury, are proven to be effective and are customized for each client and the lifestyle they desire.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a persistent injury that is not getting better with time, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Green Park, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and protect your active lifestyle, keep reading or inquire about an appointment at your earliest convenience.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Green Park, MO

Injuries typically fall into two categories:

1. Overuse injuries are injuries happen gradually as a body part degrades because of repetitive movements. They are common in overhead athletes such as water polo or quarterbacks and typically are accompanied by joint pain.
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, sprains and strains, fractures, 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, almost always occur spontaneously, with a sudden impact to the knee.

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Green Park, MO

While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and are sometimes unpreventable, they generally happen because your soft tissue, 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 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 the weaker set of muscles will be pushed past its limit, resulting in failure and a higher likelihood of injury. Muscle imbalance can refer to inadequate 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
• Coordination deficiency

Personalized injury prevention with our professional physical therapists in Green Park, MO will ensure that different muscles and muscle groups are equally strong.

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. Problems in your nervous system, inflammation, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. It can lead to:

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

At our initial injury prevention appointment in Green Park, MO, we’ll go over your medical history and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, alongside with your doctor or any other medical professionals treating you, we’ll create a personalized plan of attack based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your movement health to reach its potential.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture is not just an issue for people with slouched shoulders. Athletes and others with active lifestyles can be affected by postural dysfunction when resting, using the computer, or in certain body positions related to a given activity. Good posture means correct positioning of your body from your head to your toes in a way that keeps the spine within 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 optimal motion health. It causes injuries through:

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

By guiding you to ideal posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring you are using your muscles equally, your flexibility is not jeopardized, and your spine is in its natural position.

Injury Prevention Methods in Green Park, 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 greatly reduce the risk of injury:

• Take breaks — Your body needs time to rest and recover after any moderate to intense activity. If you’re heavily active, make sure to take one or two days off per week to signal to your body to engage in its natural healing processes. If you’re moderately active, relax for the rest of the day after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
• Use protective equipment — Helmets, chest guards, protective eyewear, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities can help prevent injuries such as lacerations or brain injuries. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your Green Park, MO physician or injury prevention professional may advise stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other techniques like tying your cleats tightly can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
• Boost muscle strength — Strengthening soft tissue helps it stand up to the rigors of heavy activity. Our Green Park, 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 — Increasing your flexibility achieves three critical things for injury prevention:
  1. It enhances which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which lets for the tendons and ligaments connecting your muscles to your bones to adjust to more pronounced positions.
  2. It enhances circulation, which allows for nourishing blood to flow to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to heal.
  3. It encourages good posture, which we already know is an an essential part of injury prevention.

  According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like football that necessitate dynamic movements require muscles and tendons 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 accepted technique — In every physical activity, there are accepted techniques to use. 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 learn to tackle a certain way to avoid a head injury, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to use the appropriate muscles. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and evaluate how to both be a better athlete and prevent injury.
• Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If a part of your body is bothering you, that means that body part is telling your brain that something isn’t right. If you feel a sudden crack or grinding sensation, stop immediately and seek proportional medical care. If your body does not feel well enough for an intense training session, don’t force it.
• Don’t play through an injury — While teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate an athlete that guts it out through pain, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could aggravate a current injury and leave you on the sidelines 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, visiting your doctor, and a series of physical therapy sessions 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 leading with the helmet in football, rules against coming from behind in soccer, and even the existence of special lanes on the street and sidewalk for bikers are all rules that leagues enacted to keep players 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 see a doctor before a new season or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. During your visit, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a experienced physical therapist in Green Park, MO is right for you. All of our techniques have been demonstrated to prevent injury, and we’ll personalize your program to your age, your injury history, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Green Park, MO

Falls in senior citizens accounted for more than 3 million urgent care admissions and more than 34,000 deaths. Research demonstrates that being physical active is invaluable in preventing falls. Other conditions that cause pain such as arthritis that are wear and tear injuries can be more bearable and take longer to progress with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints strong. While the physical demands for older adults may not be as high as an athlete, appropriate strength, balance, flexibility, and optimal posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Green Park, 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

Green Park, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in in an activity you prepare and train for and love can create a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same joy. The professional Green Park, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to design for you a personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body prepared for the rigors of physical activity, and your mind confident that you do not have to fear going back to what you love doing most. 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 discover what our Green Park, MO injury prevention professionals can do for you.