Injury Prevention Leadwood, MO

Injury Prevention in Leadwood, 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 taking ski vacations, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our licensed Leadwood, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to 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 exercises that are proven to prevent injury. Make an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location most convenient for you.

Physical activity is vitally important to many Leadwood, MO residents. Many of us participate in active endeavors such as playing sports, kayaking, or other physical activities. Additionally, keeping an active lifestyle reduces the risk of chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, degenerative brain diseases, depression, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Leadwood, MO physical therapists allow you to come back even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention professionals can help you reduce the risk of further injury 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 personalized to 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 Leadwood, MO for a free injury screening. To take preventative measures and protect your sport or hobby, keep reading or inquire about an appointment today.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Leadwood, MO

Injuries generally fall into two categories:

Repetitive motion injuries are injuries happen gradually as a body part degrades because of repetitive movements. They are common in overhead athletes such as softball or volleyball players, 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, twisting joints, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some common injuries, like rotator cuff tears, can result from either overuse or acute trauma. Other injuries, like ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, with an immediate impact to or twisting of the knee.

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

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

While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and some are unpreventable, 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 an overreliance on one set of muscles, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also causes posture dysfunction, and the weaker muscles will become tired sooner, making them more susceptible to injuries. Injuries can be caused by poor muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong hamstring and weak quadriceps, or within muscle groups, such as an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Muscle imbalance can lead to:

Muscle weakness
Muscle inflexibility
Poor muscle recruitment
Poor coordination

Customized injury prevention with our certified physical therapists in Leadwood, MO will ensure that different muscles and muscle groups are equally strong.

Movement Dysfunction

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

Joint mobility restrictions
Muscle imbalance
Poor coordination
Reduced balance

When you initially visit our injury prevention professionals in Leadwood, MO, we’ll go through your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, in concert with with your physician or any other medical professionals treating you, we’ll design a tailored 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. Athletes and other physically active people can be affected by postural dysfunction when resting, driving, or in specific body positions they need to be in for a given activity. Good posture refers to proper positioning when both static and moving in a way that encourages our spine to stay in its natural curves. Poor posture can compress the bones of the spine, which has a negative affect on our body’s ability to communicate with itself and attain ideal movement health. It causes injuries through:

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

Good posture is a necessary part of injury prevention because it ensures muscle balance, range of motion, and that your vertebrae remain in place.

How to Prevent Injury in Leadwood, 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 a rest — Injuries are more common in overworked bodies. If you’re heavily active, make sure to take one or two days off per week to allow your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. If you’re moderately active, take a break for the few hours after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
Use protective equipment — Helmets, chin straps, elbow pads, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities helps you avoid injuries like cuts or brain injuries. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or soft tissue, your Leadwood, MO doctor or physical therapist may advise stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other methods like making sure all the equipment is snug can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
Boost muscle strength — Strengthening soft tissue helps it stand up to the rigors your body is put through in sports and other activities. In your personalized injury prevention program with our licensed Leadwood, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to achieve ideal muscle balance and strengthen the often forgotten muscles needed to safely participate in the activities you love.
Enhance flexibility — Stretching accomplishes three important things for injury prevention:
1. It improves which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which allows for the tendons and ligaments connecting your muscles to your bones to handle more dramatic movements.
2. It boosts circulation, which carries nourishing blood to your muscles, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to restore themselves.
3. It encourages good posture, which we already know is an an important part of injury prevention.
According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like football that require dynamic movements require muscles and tendons flexible enough to incorporate and expel the high levels of energy required. Also, it’s important 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 techniques to use. These techniques not only improve performance but help reduce the risk of injury. Football players are taught to tackle a certain way to avoid brain damage, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to make sure their muscles are moving unnaturally. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and educate you on how to improve it.
Listen to your body — If you feel pain in a muscle or joint, that’s your body’s way of telling you something is wrong. If you feel sudden pain, immediately stop all physical activity and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t holing up well in a particularly rigorous training session, save it for another day.
Don’t play through an injury — Even though gritting through pain is often viewed as a courageous act among competitors, forcing your body to perform with soft tissue or structural damage could exacerbate a current 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 severity of your injury, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, visiting urgent care, and a series of physical therapy sessions to ensure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
Follow the rules — Many sports have special rules at different levels to reduce the risk of injury. Penalties for helmet to helmet hits in football, rules against coming from behind in soccer, and even the presence of bike lanes are all rules put in place to keep players safe. Those were enacted for a reason, and there’s a reason that there are penalties for them.
Speak a professional physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to have a medical evaluation before a new season or committing yourself to any strenuous activity or training regimen. While there, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a experienced physical therapist in Leadwood, MO is a good idea for you. Every treatment plan we employ has been proven to prevent injury, 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 Leadwood, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Leadwood

Injury Prevention for The Elderly in Leadwood, MO

Falls in the elderly accounted for over 3 million emergency room visits and more than 34,000 deaths. Studies show that physical activity is invaluable in preventing 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 muscles, tendons, ligaments, 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 Leadwood, MO include:

Leadwood, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in one of your favorite activities causes a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same euphoria. The knowledgeable Leadwood, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to develop your personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body strong and flexible, and your mind confident that you can safely return to the activities you love doing most. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits that you do not want to lose. Make an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to discover what our Leadwood, MO injury prevention professionals can do for you.