Injury Prevention in Grover, MO. Whether you’re an athlete hoping for an opportunity at the next level, or you just retired 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 licensed Grover, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others 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 exercises that are proven to reduce the risk of injury by preparing your body for the stressors of your desired activity. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location most convenient for you.

Physical activity is vitally important to many Grover, MO residents. We love activities like playing sports, hiking, or other physical activities. Furthermore, pursuing an active lifestyle reduces the risk of future health problems including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, degenerative brain diseases, anxiety, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Grover, MO physical therapists help you come back as fierce as ever, but our injury prevention professionals can help preserve your active lifestyle by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our methods, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, are proven to be effective and are developed uniquely for each client and the activities they want to return to.

If you’ve recently sustained an injury, or have a nagging injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Grover, MO for a free injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can continue 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 Grover, MO

Most injuries fall into two categories:

1. Chronic injuries are injuries happen gradually as a body part degrades because of repetitive movements. They are common in overhead athletes such as tennis or soccer goalies, with joint pain usually being the first symptom.
2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen suddenly. Examples include falling or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, broken bones, and dislocations.

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

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Grover, MO

While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and are sometimes unpreventable, they generally happen because of dysfunction or instability and your body and between body parts. There are three chief causes of why your body cannot handle an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is key to maintaining healthy joints and staving off injury. Imbalance can cause an overreliance on one muscle group, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also prevents you from having ideal posture, and one set of muscles becoming tired sooner, increasing the risk of injury. Muscle imbalance can refer to inadequate muscle balance in relation to other muscle groups, such as having a strong bicep and weak tricep, or in the same muscle group, such as an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Muscle imbalance can cause injury through:

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

Personalized injury prevention with our professional physical therapists in Grover, 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 cause injury through:

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

When you initially visit our injury prevention professionals in Grover, MO, we’ll evaluate your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, together with your doctor or any additional medical professionals treating you, we’ll come up with a customized treatment plan been proven to work by research and studies to get your movement health to reach its potential.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people with slouched shoulders. Athletes and others with active lifestyles can be affected by postural dysfunction when at lest, sitting, or in certain positions necessary for their sport. Correct posture means proper positioning 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 bring the vertebrae closer together, which disrupts your nervous system and makes it difficult to reach the strength and range of motion you need to achieve. It causes injuries through:

• Muscle weakness
• Muscle imbalance
• Poor positioning
• Joint mobility limitations
• 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 can be improved and maintained, and your vertebrae remain in place.

Keys to Injury Prevention in Grover, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything you could 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 make sure your body is prepared for your intended activity:

• 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 allow your body to engage in its natural healing and recovery 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 the right equipment — Helmets, chest guards, safety pads and guards, and other equipment necessary in many sports helps you avoid injuries such as bruises or concussions. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your Grover, MO physician or physical therapist may advise stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other techniques like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further stabilization.
• Strengthen muscles — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them stand up to the force and torque of heavy activity. In your personalized injury prevention program with our professional Grover, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to achieve optimal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to be able to avoid injury in the activities you love.
• Improve flexibility — Stretching accomplishes three important things for injury prevention:
  1. It improves your range of motion, which lets for your tendons and ligaments to adjust to more forceful positions.
  2. It boosts blood flow, which allows for protein-rich blood to flow to your soft tissue, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to heal.
  3. It encourages good posture, which we already know is an is one of the most important factors of injury prevention.

  According to studies, sports like basketball that require bouncing and jumping require soft tissue flexible enough to perform those movements. Also, remember to stretch and warm up before any physical activity to further reduce the risk of injury.

• Use correct technique — Through the years, each sport and physical activity develops a consensus of the best techniques to use. These techniques not only help you get be the best player 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 avoid a head injury, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best rotate their body. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to break down your movement and analyze how to both be a better athlete and prevent injury.
• Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If you feel pain in a muscle or joint, that means that body part is telling your brain that something is wrong. If you feel something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, immediately stop all physical activity and get the appropriate medical treatment. 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 seen as a courageous act among competitors, playing with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could exacerbate an existing injury and leave you on the sidelines for longer than it originally would have. Depending on the nature of your injury, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, visiting urgent care, and rehab with a physical therapist to make sure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
• Follow the rules — Most sports have special rules at different levels to reduce the risk of injury. Penalties for targeting 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 prevent injuries to ourselves and others. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that there are penalties for them.
• Consult a professional physical therapist — It’s always advisable to have a medical evaluation before a new season or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. During your appointment, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a experienced physical therapist in Grover, MO is right 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, any previous injuries, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention for Older Grover, MO Adults

Falls in senior citizens were responsible for over 3 million urgent care visits and more than 34,000 deaths. Studies show that physical activity is invaluable in reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions such as arthritis that develop over the course of several years can be more bearable and take longer to progress with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints active. While older adults typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, appropriate strength, balance, flexibility, and good posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Grover, 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

Grover, 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 elation. The experienced Grover, 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 at ease that you can safely return to the activities you love doing most. We will aid you in feeling the physical and mental health benefits that you once valued so much. Make an appointment online or call the location nearest you to discover what our Grover, MO injury prevention professionals can do for you.