Injury Prevention Ironton, MO

Injury Prevention in Ironton, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, or are entering your golden years and want to dedicate your time to hiking, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our professional Ironton, 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 show you techniques that are proven to reduce the risk of injury by preparing your body for the stressors of your desired activity. Make 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 Ironton, MO residents. Many of us participate in activities such as playing sports, swimming, or other physical activities. Additionally, keeping an active lifestyle helps prevent significant health problems such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, degenerative brain diseases, mental health issues, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Ironton, MO physical therapists allow you to return to action as fierce as ever, but our injury prevention professionals can help you reduce the risk of further injury by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our treatment plans, 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 activities they want to return to.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a nagging injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Ironton, 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 Ironton, MO

Most injuries fall into two categories:

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 such as softball or soccer goalies and typically manifest themselves as joint pain.
Acute injuries are injuries that happen in an instant. Examples include landing on uneven ground or a sudden impact by an object or another person. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some common injuries, like rotator cuff tears, can result from either overuse or acute trauma. Other injuries, such as ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.

Injury Prevention Ironton, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Ironton

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

While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and some are inescapable, they generally happen because of dysfunction or imbalance and your body and between body parts. There are three common dysfunctions that lead to injury:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is crucial to supporting joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can result in overemphasis for one set of muscles, 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. Injuries can be caused by inadequate 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 not having proportionate strength. Symptoms include:

Muscle weakness
Muscle inflexibility
Poor muscle recruitment
Poor coordination

Personalized injury prevention with our certified physical therapists in Ironton, MO will bring balance to your muscles.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and impede your body’s ability to naturally perform functional movements, causing injury. It can be caused by a variety of musculoskeletal issues. Symptoms include:

Joint mobility restrictions
Muscle imbalance
Coordination deficits
Reduced balance

At our initial injury prevention appointment in Ironton, MO, we’ll go over your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, in tandem with with your physician or any other providers treating you, we’ll design a customized plan of attack been proven to work by research and studies to get your body moving as it should.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people who spend a lot of time in the same position. People who play sports and others with active lifestyles can suffer from postural dysfunction when resting, using the computer, or in specific stances related to their sport. Healthy posture refers to proper positioning of the different joints and muscles of your body in a way that does not remove the spine from its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the joints in the spine closer together, which has a negative affect on our body’s ability to communicate with itself and reach optimal motion health. It can also lead to:

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

By teaching you correct 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 spine is in its natural position.

How to Prevent Injury in Ironton, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything you could to prevent one. 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 strong and flexible enough for your desired activity level:

Take a rest — Your body needs time to rest and recover after any moderate to intense activity. If you’re heavily active, one or two rest days a week will allow your body to engage in its natural healing and recovery processes. If you have a more moderate activity level, take a break for the few hours after an activity so your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints become too fatigued.
Use protective equipment — Helmets, shin guards, elbow pads, and other required equipment in many sports helps you avoid injuries such as bruises or head injuries. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or muscle, tendon, or ligament, your Ironton, MO doctor or physical therapist may advise stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other measures like tying your cleats tightly can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
Strengthen muscles — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them withstand the force and torque your body is put through in sports and other activities. In your personalized injury prevention program with our professional Ironton, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to achieve ideal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to be able to avoid injury in the activities you want to participate in.
Enhance flexibility — Increasing your flexibility contributes to injury prevention in three way:
1. It boosts your range of motion, which lets for your tendons and ligaments to handle more drastic movements.
2. It increases circulation, which carries nourishing blood to your muscles, removing waste byproduct and fortifying 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 sudden twists and movements require soft tissue flexible enough to perform those movements. Stretching and warm up exercises before games or training further helps prevent injuries.
Use proper technique — In every physical activity, there is an accepted way to position and move your body. These techniques not only improve performance but help prevent injuries. Football players are taught to tackle with the shoulder in order to avoid brain damage, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best rotate their body. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to break down your movement and evaluate how to both improve your performance and prevent injury.
Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If a part of your body is bothering you, your body is trying to send you a message. If you feel a sudden pop or grinding sensation, immediately stop all physical activity and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t holing up well in a particularly rigorous training session, don’t force it.
Don’t play through an injury — Even though teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate an athlete that guts it out through pain, forcing your body to perform with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could make that injury worse 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, seeing 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 helmet to helmet hits in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the presence of bike lanes are all rules that were adopted to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. Those are in place for a reason, and there’s a reason that violations of those rules are punished.
Speak 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. While there, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a experienced physical therapist in Ironton, MO is right for you. All of our techniques have been proven to help athletes remain healthy, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to your age, your injury history, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention Ironton, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Ironton

Injury Prevention for Older Ironton, MO Adults

Falls in the elderly accounted for over 3 million urgent care admissions and over 34,000 fatalities. Research demonstrates that being physical active is a great method for preventing falls. Other conditions that limit mobility like arthritis that accumulate over time can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints active. While the physical demands for seniors may not be as high as an athlete, the same principles of strength, balance, flexibility, and optimal posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Ironton, MO include:

Ironton, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in in an activity you prepare and train for and love can lead to a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same joy. The experienced Ironton, 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 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 of doing what you do best. Request an appointment online or reach out to the location nearest you to find out more about what our Ironton, MO injury prevention specialists can do for you.