Lake Tekawitha, MO

Lake Tekawitha, MO

Don't let the fear of reinjury keep you from the things what you do best.

Injury Prevention in Lake Tekawitha, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or a recent retiree who wants to dedicate your time to bike riding, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our licensed Lake Tekawitha, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others heal after an injury, we are experts in the entire musculoskeletal system who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to show you methods that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or reach out to the location most convenient for you.

Physical activity is vitally important to many Lake Tekawitha, MO residents. Many of us participate in active endeavors such as playing sports, hiking, or other physical activities. Furthermore, committing to an active lifestyle helps prevent chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, eurodegenerative disease, anxiety, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Lake Tekawitha, MO physical therapists help you come back and perform even better than before, but our injury prevention professionals can help keep you active by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our methods, for both recovery and injury prevention, have been prove to work and are customized for each client and the activities they want to return to.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a nagging injury that is not getting better with time, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Lake Tekawitha, MO for a free injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and protect your active lifestyle, keep reading or inquire about an appointment today.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Lake Tekawitha, MO

Injuries typically 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 tennis or lacrosse players and typically manifest themselves as joint pain.
  2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen in an instant. Examples include landing on uneven ground or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, 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 a sudden impact to the knee.

Injury Prevention Lake Tekawitha, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Lake Tekawitha

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Lake Tekawitha, MO

While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and are sometimes unpreventable, they generally occur because your muscles, ligaments, tendons, bones, and joints cannot hold up under the force, torque, or stretching that they are subjected to in a given movement or collision. There are three common dysfunctions that lead to injury:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is essential to maintaining healthy joints and reducing 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 prevents you from having ideal 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 poor muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong chest and weak back, or in the same muscle group, such as an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Symptoms include:

Personalized injury prevention with our knowledgeable physical therapists in Lake Tekawitha, MO will bring balance to your muscles.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can result in poor balance and impede your body’s ability to naturally perform functional movements, causing injury. Neurological issues, inflammation, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. Symptoms include:

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

When you initially visit our injury prevention experts in Lake Tekawitha, MO, we’ll go through your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, in concert with with your doctor or any other medical professionals treating you, we’ll devise a personalized plan of attack based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your movement health to the level you need it to to do what you love.

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 have postural dysfunction when lying down, sitting, or in certain stances they need to be in for their sport. Healthy posture means proper alignments when both static and moving in a way that does not remove the spine from its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the vertebrae closer together, which disrupts our body’s internal communications and makes it difficult to attain ideal motion health. Symptoms include:

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

Good posture is a vital part of injury prevention because it ensures 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 Lake Tekawitha, 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 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 modest activity level, take a break for the few hours after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
  • Use the correct equipment — Helmets, chest guards, safety pads and guards, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities can help prevent injuries such as cuts or concussions. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or soft tissue, your Lake Tekawitha, MO physician or physical therapist may recommend braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the injured area. Other methods like tying your shoes tightly offers further protection.
  • 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. In your customized injury prevention program with our knowledgeable Lake Tekawitha, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to achieve ideal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to safely participate in the activities you want to participate in.
  • Improve flexibility — Increasing your flexibility achieves three critical things for injury prevention:
    1. It improves your range of motion, which allows for your tendons and ligaments to adapt to more dramatic movements.
    2. It enhances blood flow, which allows for nourishing blood to flow to your soft tissue, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to recover.
    3. It encourages good posture, which we already know is an an important part of injury prevention.

    According to research, sports like football that include sudden twists and movements require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility to perform those movements. Also, don’t forget to stretch and warm up before any physical activity to further reduce the risk of injury.

  • Use correct technique — In every sport, there is an accepted way to position and move your body. These techniques not only help you get be the best athlete you can be but help prevent injuries. Football players learn to tackle with the shoulder in order to reduce the risk of a concussion, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to use the appropriate muscles. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to slow down your movement and educate you on how to improve it.
  • Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If a part of your body is sore, that’s your body’s way of telling you something isn’t right. If you feel a sudden crack or grinding sensation, stop immediately and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body isn’t feeling up to a particularly rigorous training session, save it for another day.
  • Don’t play through an injury — While teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate an athlete that guts it out through pain, playing with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could make that injury worse and leave you on the sidelines 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, seeing urgent care, 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 to help prevent injury. Penalties for targeting in football, rules against coming from behind in soccer, and even the presence of bike lanes are examples of rules that leagues enacted 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 a new season or starting up a new physical activity. During your physical, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a licensed physical therapist in Lake Tekawitha, MO is a good idea for you. Every treatment plan we employ has 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 Lake Tekawitha, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Lake Tekawitha

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Lake Tekawitha, MO

Falls in the elderly accounted for more than 3 million emergency room visits and over 34,000 fatalities. Studies show that being physical active is a great method for preventing falls. Other conditions that limit mobility like arthritis that accumulate over time can be more bearable and take longer to progress with physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints active. While older adults typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, appropriate strength, balance, flexibility, and optimal posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Lake Tekawitha, MO include:

Lake Tekawitha, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in in an activity you prepare and train for and love causes a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same exultation. The professional Lake Tekawitha, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to design for you a 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. We will aid you in feeling the physical and mental health benefits of doing what you do best. Make an appointment online or reach out to the location nearest you to start your program with one of our injury prevention professionals in Lake Tekawitha, MO.

Services Offered

Services Offered
  • Physical Therapy
  • Pre/Post Surgical Rehabilitation
  • Acute Injury Management
  • Chronic Injury Management
  • Work Conditioning/Hardening
  • Functional Capacity Evaluations
  • Sports Physical Therapy
  • Pediatric Orthopedic Physical Therapy
  • Geriatric Physical Therapy
  • Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization
  • DorsaVi Video Motion Analysis
  • Vestibular Therapy and Post-Concussion Rehabilitation
  • Trigger Point Dry Needling
  • Free Injury Screenings
  • Kinesio Taping®
  • Blood Flow Restriction Therapy

Our Team

Stephen Brunjes
OTR/L, CEAS
Lauren Huckstep
Clinic Director, PT, DPT, CSCS, Astym Cert.
Annmarie Koenen
Front Office

Locations

Begin Your Recovery Today

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