Injury Prevention Leadington, MO

Injury Prevention in Leadington, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or you just retired and want to spend more time taking ski vacations, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our certified Leadington, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to recover from injury, we are experts in the entire musculoskeletal system who can evaluate your movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to teach out exercises that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location most convenient for you.

Physical activity is vitally important to many Leadington, MO residents. We love active endeavors like playing sports, biking, and more. Additionally, committing to an active lifestyle helps stave off significant health problems such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia, mental health issues, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Leadington, MO physical therapists allow you to come back and perform even better than before, but our injury prevention specialists can help you reduce the risk of further injury by improving your overall strength, flexibility, and posture. All of our treatment plans, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, are based on evidence-backed techniques and are developed uniquely for each client and the level of activity they want to reach.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a lingering injury that is not getting better with time, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Leadington, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To take preventative measures and protect your active lifestyle, keep reading or call to speak to a physical therapist today.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Leadington, MO

Injuries generally happen for one of two reasons:

Repetitive demand injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. They are common in overhead athletes such as baseball or basketball players and typically manifest themselves as joint pain.
Acute injuries are injuries that happen suddenly. Examples include falling or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some common injuries, for example 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 a sudden impact to the knee.

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

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

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally happen 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 crucial to maintaining healthy joints and staving off injury. Imbalance can result in dependency on one set of muscles, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. 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. Injuries can be caused by insufficient 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. Symptoms include:

Muscle weakness
Muscle inflexibility
Poor muscle recruitment
Coordination deficits

Tailored injury prevention with our knowledgeable physical therapists in Leadington, MO will ensure that your muscles are at optimal proportional strength.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and impede your body’s ability to naturally perform functional movements, increasing your risk of injury. Problems in your nervous system, inflammation, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. It can cause injury through:

Joint mobility limitations
Muscle imbalance
Coordination deficits
Lessened balance

When you first see our injury prevention professionals in Leadington, MO, we’ll evaluate your medical records and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, in concert with with your doctor or any other medical professionals treating you, we’ll develop a personalized treatment plan based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your body moving as it should.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people with slouched shoulders. People who play sports and others with active lifestyles can suffer from postural dysfunction when resting, sitting, or in certain poses necessary for a given activity. Correct posture means correct alignments 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 the strength and range of motion you need to achieve. Symptoms include:

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

Good posture is an important part of injury prevention because it ensures you are using your muscles equally, your flexibility is not jeopardized, and your spine is in its natural position.

Keys to Injury Prevention in Leadington, MO

All sports and physical activities carry an inherent risk of injury. 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 intended activity:

Take breaks — Your body needs time to rest and recover after any moderate to intense activity. If you’re heavily active, make sure to take one or two days off per week to 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 protective equipment — Helmets, chest guards, safety pads and guards, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities can help prevent injuries like rashes or head injuries. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Leadington, MO doctor or injury prevention specialist may suggest stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other techniques like tying your shoes 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 of heavy activity. In your tailored injury prevention program with our professional Leadington, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to build up your body to safely participate in the activities you want to participate in.
Increase flexibility — Increasing your flexibility contributes to injury prevention in three way:
1. It improves your range of motion, which lets for the tendons and ligaments connecting your muscles to your bones to adapt to more pronounced positions.
2. It boosts circulation, which allows for nutrient-rich blood to flow to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and rebuilding the muscles.
3. It encourages good posture, which, as you read earlier, is an important part of injury prevention.
According to research, sports like football that necessitate bouncing and jumping require muscles and tendons with sufficient flexibility to perform those movements. Also, it’s important to stretch and warm up before games or training to further reduce the risk of injury.
Use accepted technique — In every sport, there are accepted techniques to use. These techniques not only improve performance but help prevent injuries by not forcing your body into unnatural positions and movements. Football players are taught to tackle a certain way to reduce the risk of brain damage, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to use the appropriate muscles. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to slow down your movement and analyze how to improve it.
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, stop immediately and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body isn’t holing up well in an intense training session, save it for another day.
Don’t play through an injury — Even though gritting through pain is often seen as a courageous 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 much longer than if you had sat out at the time of the injury. Depending on what caused your injury and how severe it is, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, seeing an emergency room, and scheduling appointments with a physical therapist to ensure 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 to reduce the risk of injury. Penalties for helmet to helmet hits in football, rules against coming from behind in soccer, and even the existence of bike lanes are all rules that leagues enacted to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. Those were enacted for a reason, and there’s a reason that there are penalties for them.
Consult a licensed physical therapist — It’s always advisable to get a physical before another season begins or committing yourself to any strenuous activity or training regimen. During your visit, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a knowledgeable physical therapist in Leadington, MO is right for you. Every treatment plan we employ has been demonstrated to help athletes remain healthy, and we’ll personalize your program to how old you are, any previous injuries, and which activities you want to participate in.

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

Injury Prevention for The Elderly in Leadington, MO

Falls in senior citizens were responsible for more than 3 million urgent care admissions and over 34,000 fatalities. Studies show that being physical active can go a long way in reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions that limit mobility like arthritis that develop over the course of several years can be effectively managed 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 can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Leadington, MO include:

Leadington, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in something you love doing can create a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same happiness. The experienced Leadington, 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. 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 see what our Leadington, MO injury prevention experts can do for you.