Kinloch, MO

Kinloch, MO

Don't let a mental block over reinjury keep you from the things what you do best.

Injury Prevention in Kinloch, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, 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 licensed Kinloch, 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 movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to guide you through techniques that are proven to prevent injury. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or contact the location most convenient for you.

Physical activity is vitally important to many Kinloch, MO residents. We love active endeavors such as playing sports, swimming, and more. Additionally, keeping an active lifestyle helps prevent serious health problems including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, eurodegenerative disease, mental health issues, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Kinloch, MO physical therapists help you return to action and perform even better than before, but our injury prevention specialists can help preserve your active lifestyle 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 level of activity they want to reach.

If you’ve recently sustained an injury, or have a persistent injury that won’t heal on its own, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Kinloch, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and ensure that you can keep up with your active lifestyle, keep reading or call to speak to a physical therapist today.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Kinloch, MO

Injuries generally happen for one of two reasons:

  1. Wear-and-tear injuries are injuries happen gradually as a body part degrades because of repetitive movements. They are common in overhead athletes athletes who use throwing or striking motions, with joint pain usually being the first warning sign.
  2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen in an instant. Examples include falling 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, for example ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, with an immediate impact to or twisting of the knee.

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

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Kinloch, MO

While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and are sometimes inescapable, they generally occur 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 reducing injury. Imbalance can cause overemphasis for one set of muscles, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also causes posture dysfunction, and the weaker muscles will become fatigued faster, making them more susceptible to injuries. Muscle imbalance applies to inadequate muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong hamstring and weak quadriceps, or in the same muscle group, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff not having proportionate strength. Muscle imbalance can result in:

Personalized injury prevention with our licensed physical therapists in Kinloch, 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, increasing your risk of injury. Neurological issues, swelling, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. It can cause injury through:

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

At our first injury prevention appointment in Kinloch, MO, we’ll go over your medical records and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, in tandem with with your doctor or any other providers treating you, we’ll devise a personalized plan of attack been proven to work by research and studies to get your body moving as it should.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture is not just an issue for people who sit a lot. People who play sports and other physically active people can be affected by postural dysfunction when resting, sitting, or in certain stances related to a given activity. Good posture means 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 compact the joints in the spine, which has a negative affect on our body’s ability to communicate with itself and attain ideal movement health. Symptoms include:

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

Good posture is a vital part of injury prevention because it ensures muscle balance, flexibility, and that your spine is in its natural position.



How to Prevent Injury in Kinloch, 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 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 you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
  • Wear protective equipment — Helmets, mouth guards, elbow pads, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities can help prevent injuries like rashes or brain injuries. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or muscle, tendon, or ligament, your Kinloch, MO doctor or physical therapist may suggest braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the injured area. Other methods like making sure all the equipment is snug can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
  • Increase muscle strength — Strengthening soft tissue helps it stand up to the rigors of heavy activity. Our Kinloch, MO injury prevention specialists will work to build up your body to safely participate in the activities you want to participate in.
  • Improve flexibility — Increasing your flexibility accomplishes three important things for injury prevention:
    1. It increases which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which lets for your tendons and ligaments to adjust to more extreme movements.
    2. It increases circulation, which carries nutrient-rich blood to your muscles, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to heal.
    3. It boosts your posture, which we already know is an an important part of injury prevention.

    According to research, sports like soccer that necessitate sudden twists and movements require soft tissue flexible enough to perform those movements. Stretching and warm up exercises before activities further helps prevent injuries.

  • Use correct technique — In every physical activity, there is an accepted way to position and move your body. These techniques not only help you perform better but help prevent injuries. Football players learn to tackle a certain way to reduce the risk of a head injury, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best apply torque to your body. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to break down your movement and analyze how to both be a better athlete and prevent injury.
  • Listen to your body — If you feel pain in a muscle or joint, that means that body part is telling your brain that something isn’t right. If you feel a sudden pop or grinding sensation, immediately stop all physical activity and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t feeling up to a particularly rigorous training session, don’t force it.
  • Don’t play through an injury — Even though gritting through pain is often seen as a valiant act among competitors, playing with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could make that injury worse and put you out of commission for longer than it originally would have. Depending on the severity of your injury, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, seeing your doctor, and scheduling appointments with a physical therapist to make sure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
  • Follow 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 coming from behind in soccer, and even the existence of bike lanes are examples of rules that leagues enacted to keep players safe. 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 get a physical before another season begins or starting up a new physical activity. While there, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a licensed physical therapist in Kinloch, MO is something you should consider. All of our techniques have been proven to prevent injury, and we’ll personalize your program to how old you are, any previous injuries, and how physically active you wish to be.

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

Injury Prevention for Older Kinloch, MO Adults

Falls in senior citizens accounted for over 3 million emergency room admissions and more than 34,000 deaths. Research demonstrates that being physical active is invaluable in reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions like 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 soft tissue and joints active. While seniors typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, healthy strength, balance, flexibility, and ideal posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Kinloch, MO include:

Kinloch, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in one of your favorite activities causes a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same exultation. The knowledgeable Kinloch, 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 that you do not want to lose. Make an appointment online or reach out to the location nearest you to start your program with one of our injury prevention experts in Kinloch, MO.

Services Offered

Services Offered
  • Physical Therapy
    • Pre/Post Surgical Rehabilitation
    • Acute Injury Management
    • Chronic Injury Management
  • Certified Hand Therapy
  • Work Conditioning/Hardening
  • Functional Capacity Evaluations
  • Sports Physical Therapy
  • Pediatric Orthopedic Physical Therapy
  • Geriatric Physical Therapy
  • Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization
  • Free Injury Screenings
  • Kinesio Taping®
  • Blood Flow Restriction Therapy
  • Spine Specialty

Our Team

Sara Crain
PT, CEAS, Astym Cert.
Brandi Arndt
MPT, CMPT
Brett Shelton
PT, DPT, OCS, COMT, CSMT
John Teepe
Partner, MPT
TJ Jung
PT, DPT
Justin Bridwell
Front Office
Chris Casner
PT, Clinic Director

Locations

Begin Your Recovery Today

Injuries and pain shouldn’t keep you from moving and doing the things you love.