Injury Prevention in Hazelwood, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, or you just retired and want to spend more time bike riding, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our certified Hazelwood, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others recover from injury, we are experts in the entire musculoskeletal system who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to teach out methods 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.

Being physically active is an essential part of many Hazelwood, MO people’s lives. We love active endeavors such as playing sports, kayaking, and more. Additionally, committing to an active lifestyle helps stave off significant health problems like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, degenerative brain diseases, depression, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Hazelwood, MO physical therapists allow you to come back even stronger after an injury, 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, have been prove to work and are developed uniquely for each client and the level of activity they want to reach.

If you’ve recently sustained 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 Hazelwood, MO for a free injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and protect your active lifestyle, keep reading or call to speak to a physical therapist today.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Hazelwood, MO

Most injuries happen for one of two reasons:

1. Wear-and-tear injuries are injuries happen gradually as a body part degrades because of repetitive movements. In sports, we see them the most in in overhead athletes such as baseball or basketball players, with joint pain usually being the first indicator.
2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen in an instant. Examples include falling or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, twisting joints, 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, such as ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with an immediate impact to or twisting of the knee.

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

While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and are sometimes inescapable, they generally occur 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 main causes of why your body cannot adjust to an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is essential to maintaining healthy joints and reducing injury. Imbalance can lead to dependency on one muscle group, which may cause your body to use it in a way it shouldn’t. It can also lead to poor posture, and the weaker muscles will become fatigued sooner, making them more susceptible to injuries. Injuries can be caused by insufficient muscle balance in relation to other muscle groups, such as having a strong bicep and weak tricep, 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
• Poor coordination

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

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can result in poor balance and lead to your body moving in ways it is not designed to, increasing your risk of injury. Neurological issues, inflammation, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. Symptoms include:

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

When you first see our injury prevention experts in Hazelwood, MO, we’ll discuss your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, together with your physician or any additional providers involved in your treatment, we’ll devise a tailored plan of attack been proven to work by research and studies to get your movement back on track.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people with desk jobs. People who play sports and others with active lifestyles can suffer from postural dysfunction when at lest, using the computer, or in certain positions they need to be in for a given activity. Healthy posture means proper alignments of your body from your head to your toes in a way that keeps the spine within its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the bones of the spine closer together, which has a negative affect on our body’s ability to communicate with itself and reach the strength and range of motion you need to achieve. Symptoms include:

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

By guiding you to correct posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring muscle balance, range of motion, and that your vertebrae remain in place.

Injury Prevention Techniques in Hazelwood, MO

All sports and physical activities can potentially lead to an 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 — Injuries are more common in overworked bodies. If you’re heavily active, one or two rest days a week will encourage your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. If you have a more moderate activity level, rest for the rest of the day after an activity so your body doesn’t become too fatigued.
• Use protective equipment — Helmets, shin guards, safety pads and guards, and other recommended equipment in many sports can help prevent injuries such as contusions or brain injuries. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or soft tissue, your Hazelwood, MO doctor or injury prevention professional may suggest braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the injured area. Other methods like tying your athletic footwear tightly can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
• Strengthen muscles — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them stand up to the force and torque of heavy activity. Our Hazelwood, MO injury prevention specialists will work to build up your body to safely participate in the activities you want to participate in.
• Boost flexibility — Stretching achieves three critical things for injury prevention:
  1. It increases which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which lets for your soft tissue to handle more extreme positions.
  2. It improves blood flow, which carries nutrient-rich blood to your muscles, eliminating waste byproduct and fortifying the muscles.
  3. It improves your posture, which we already know is an is one of the most important aspects of injury prevention.

  According to research, sports like soccer that include sudden twists and movements require muscles and tendons with sufficient flexibility to perform those movements. Stretching and warm up exercises before activities further helps prevent injuries.

• Use proper 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 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 reduce the risk of a concussion, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best rotate their body. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and analyze how to both be a better athlete and reduce your risk of injury.
• Listen to your body — 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 something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, stop immediately and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t holing up well in a particularly rigorous workout, don’t force it.
• Don’t play through an injury — While teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate a player that guts it out through pain, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could aggravate a current injury and put you out of commission for much longer than you would have been sitting out. 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 a series of physical therapy sessions 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 in the interest of safety. Penalties for targeting in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the existence of bike lanes are examples of rules that were adopted to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. 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 get a physical before a new season or starting up a new activity or training regimen. While there, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a licensed physical therapist in Hazelwood, MO is right for you. Every treatment plan we employ has been demonstrated to reduce the risk of injury, and we’ll personalize your program to your age, your injury history, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention for The Elderly in Hazelwood, MO

Falls in senior citizens were responsible for more than 3 million urgent care admissions and more than 34,000 fatalities. Studies show that physical activity can go a long way in preventing falls. Other conditions such as arthritis that accumulate over time can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints active. While seniors typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, appropriate strength, stability, flexibility, and ideal posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Hazelwood, MO include:

• Neck Pain Treatment
• 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

Hazelwood, 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 euphoria. The licensed Hazelwood, 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 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. Request an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to start your program with one of our injury prevention specialists in Hazelwood, MO.