Injury Prevention Knob Lick, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Knob Lick

Injury Prevention in Knob Lick, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or you just retired and want to spend more time hiking, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our licensed Knob Lick, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others recover from injury, we are complete movement health specialists who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to teach out techniques that are proven to prevent injury. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location nearest you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many Knob Lick, MO residents. We love activities like playing sports, playing golf, or other physical activities. Additionally, committing to an active lifestyle helps stave off significant health problems such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, eurodegenerative disease, mental health issues, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Knob Lick, MO physical therapists help you return to action and perform even better than before, but our injury prevention experts can help keep you active by improving your overall strength, flexibility, and posture. All of our methods, for both recovery and injury prevention, 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 won’t heal on its own, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Knob Lick, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To take preventative measures and protect your sport or hobby, read on below or inquire about an appointment today.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Knob Lick, MO

Injuries generally fall into two categories:

Chronic injuries are injuries that occur when a part of the body repeats the same motion time and time again. They are common in overhead athletes such as raquetball or soccer goalies, with joint pain usually being the first indicator.
Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. 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, such as rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, like ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.

Injury Prevention Knob Lick, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Knob Lick

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Knob Lick, MO

While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and some are inescapable, they generally occur 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 key to maintaining healthy joints and staving off injury. Imbalance can lead to overemphasis for one set of muscles, which may cause your body to use it in a way it shouldn’t. It can also lead to poor posture, and the weaker set of muscles will be pushed past its limit, resulting in failure and a higher probability of injury. Muscle imbalance applies to inadequate muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong chest and weak back, or within muscle groups, such as an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Symptoms include:

Muscle weakness
Muscle inflexibility
Poor muscle recruitment
Poor coordination

Tailored injury prevention with our experienced physical therapists in Knob Lick, MO will bring balance to your muscles.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and lead to your body moving in unnatural ways, 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
Coordination deficits
Reduced balance

At our first injury prevention appointment in Knob Lick, MO, we’ll evaluate your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, together with your doctor or any other medical professionals involved in your treatment, we’ll create a personalized plan of attack been proven to work through research and studies to get your movement health to reach its potential.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people who sit a lot. People who play sports and others with active lifestyles can be affected by postural dysfunction when lying down, driving, or in specific stances necessary for their sport. Optimal posture means proper positioning of your body from your head to your toes in a way that does not remove the spine from 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 teaching you good 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 vertebrae remain in place.

Keys to Injury Prevention in Knob Lick, MO

All sports and physical activities carry an inherent risk of injury. No one safety tip is guaranteed to be effective in injury prevention. However, there are precautions to make sure your body is strong and flexible enough for your intended activity:

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 encourage your body to engage in its natural healing processes. If you’re moderately active, take a break after activity so your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints become too fatigued.
Use the right equipment — Helmets, mouth guards, protective eyewear, and other equipment necessary in many sports can help prevent injuries such as lacerations or brain injuries. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your Knob Lick, MO physician or physical therapist may fit you for stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other methods like tying your shoes tightly offers further stabilization.
Increase muscle strength — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them stand up to the force and torque your body is put through in sports and other activities. Our Knob Lick, MO injury prevention experts will work to build up your body to be able to stay healthy in the activities you love.
Improve flexibility — Increasing your flexibility contributes to injury prevention in three way:
1. It boosts your range of motion, which allows for your tendons and ligaments to adjust to more drastic movements.
2. It improves circulation, which allows for nourishing blood to flow to your muscles, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to recover.
3. It encourages good posture, which, as you read earlier, is an important part of injury prevention.
According to studies, sports like football that require bouncing and jumping 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 correct 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 get be the best player you can be but help prevent injuries. Football players learn to tackle with the shoulder in order to avoid a head injury, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to make sure their muscles are moving unnaturally. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to slow down your movement and evaluate how to both improve your performance and reduce your risk of 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 something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, stop immediately and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body isn’t feeling up to an intense training session, save it for another day.
Don’t play through an injury — While playing 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 leave you off the field or court 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 an emergency room, and rehab with a physical therapist to ensure your body heals properly and can handle the activity you want to return to.
Play by the rules — Depending on the sport or activity and age level of the participants, it likely has special rules to reduce the risk of injury. Penalties for leading with the helmet in football, rules against head-first sliding in baseball, and even the presence of bike lanes are all 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.
Consult a professional physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to have a medical evaluation before starting another season or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. While there, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a expert physical therapist in Knob Lick, MO is something you should consider. Every treatment plan we employ has been proven to reduce the risk of injury, 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 Knob Lick, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Knob Lick

Injury Prevention for The Elderly in Knob Lick, MO

Falls in senior citizens were responsible for more than 3 million urgent care visits and over 34,000 fatalities. Research demonstrates that being physical active is a great method for reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions that cause pain like arthritis that accumulate over time can be slowed down by physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints healthy. While the physical demands for seniors may not be as high as an athlete, the same principles of strength, stability, flexibility, and ideal posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Knob Lick, MO include:

Knob Lick, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in something you love doing can lead to a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same happiness. The professional Knob Lick, 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. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits that you once valued so much. Request an appointment online or call the location nearest you to find out more about what our Knob Lick, MO injury prevention specialists can do for you.