Injury Prevention in Lake St. Louis, 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 being physical fit, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you desire. While our professional Lake St. Louis, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to recover from injury, we are complete movement health specialists who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to guide you through exercises that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or contact the location most convenient for you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many Lake St. Louis, MO residents. We love active endeavors such as playing sports, playing golf, and more. Furthermore, keeping an active lifestyle helps stave off significant health problems including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, eurodegenerative disease, mental health issues, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Lake St. Louis, MO physical therapists allow you to come back even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention experts can help keep you active by improving your overall strength, flexibility, and posture. All of our treatment plans, for both recovery and injury prevention, 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 just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Lake St. Louis, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and protect your sport or hobby, keep reading or inquire about an appointment at your earliest convenience.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Lake St. Louis, MO

Most injuries happen for one of two reasons:

1. Repetitive motion 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 athletes who use throwing or striking motions, with joint pain usually being the first warning sign.
2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include falling or a sudden impact by an object or another person. These can result in bruises, twisting joints, broken bones, 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, such as ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, with an immediate impact to or twisting of the knee.

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Lake St. Louis, MO

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

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is essential to supporting joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can lead to an overreliance on one muscle group, which may cause your body to use it in a way it shouldn’t. It also prevents you from having optimal posture, and the weaker set of muscles will be pushed past its limit, resulting in failure and a higher probability of injury. Muscle imbalance can refer to insufficient muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong bicep and weak tricep, or within muscle groups, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff not having proportionate strength. Muscle imbalance can lead to:

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

Personalized injury prevention with our professional physical therapists in Lake St. Louis, 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. It can be caused by numerous musculoskeletal issues. It can lead to:

• Joint mobility restrictions
• Muscle imbalance
• Coordination deficiency
• Lessened balance

At our initial injury prevention appointment in Lake St. Louis, 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 physician or any additional medical professionals treating you, we’ll come up with a tailored plan of attack based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your body moving as it should.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture is not just an issue for 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 positions they need to be in for their sport. Good posture means proper positioning when both static and moving in a way that encourages our spine to stay in its natural curves. Poor posture can compact the bones of the spine, 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. It causes injuries through:

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

Good posture is a necessary part of injury prevention because it ensures you are using your muscles equally, your flexibility can be improved and maintained, and your vertebrae remain in place.

Injury Prevention Best Practices in Lake St. Louis, 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 several steps you can take to greatly reduce the risk of injury:

• Take a rest — 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’re moderately active, take it easy for the few hours after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
• Use the correct equipment — Helmets, chin straps, safety pads and guards, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities helps you avoid injuries such as rashes or brain injuries. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or muscle, tendon, or ligament, your Lake St. Louis, MO physician or physical therapist may suggest braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the affected area. Other techniques like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further stabilization.
• Boost muscle strength — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them withstand the rigors of heavy activity. Our Lake St. Louis, MO injury prevention experts will 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 — Increasing your flexibility achieves three critical things for injury prevention:
  1. It enhances your range of motion, which lets for the tendons and ligaments connecting your muscles to your bones to adapt to more drastic positions.
  2. It enhances blood flow, which carries protein-rich blood to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and reinvigorating the muscles.
  3. It encourages good posture, which, as you read earlier, is an essential part of injury prevention.

  According to studies, sports like soccer that include bouncing and jumping require soft tissue flexible enough to perform those movements. Stretching and warm up exercises before activities further helps prevent injuries.

• Use accepted 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 a certain way to avoid brain damage, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best rotate their body. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and educate you on how to improve it.
• Listen to your body — If a part of your body is bothering you, that means that body part is telling your brain that something is wrong. If you feel a sudden pop or grinding sensation, immediately withdraw from the activity and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body does not feel well enough for a particularly rigorous training session, save it for another day.
• Don’t play through an injury — While gutting it out through pain is often viewed as a courageous act among competitors, playing with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could aggravate an existing injury and put you out of commission 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, seeing an emergency room, and a series of physical therapy sessions to make sure your body heals naturally 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 help prevent injury. Penalties for targeting in football, rules against head-first sliding in baseball, and even the existence of bike lanes are all rules that were adopted to keep participants safe. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that there are penalties for them.
• Consult a licensed physical therapist — It’s always advisable 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 professional physical therapist in Lake St. Louis, MO is a good idea for you. All of our techniques have been proven to help athletes remain healthy, and we’ll personalize your program to your age, any previous injuries, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention for Older Lake St. Louis, MO Adults

Falls in adults over 65 accounted for more than 3 million emergency room visits and over 34,000 deaths. Research demonstrates that being physical active is invaluable in preventing falls. Other conditions that limit mobility such as arthritis that accumulate over time can be more bearable and take longer to progress with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints healthy. While older adults typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, healthy strength, balance, flexibility, and ideal posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Lake St. Louis, 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

Lake St. Louis, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in one of your favorite activities can lead to a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same euphoria. The experienced Lake St. Louis, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to design for you a personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body as safe and healthy as can be, and your mind confident that you can safely return to the activities you love. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits of doing what you do best. Schedule an appointment online or call the location nearest you to learn more about what our Lake St. Louis, MO injury prevention experts can do for you.