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

Injury Prevention in Leadwood, MO. Whether you’re an athlete hoping for a shot at the next stage, 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 licensed Leadwood, 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 movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to show you measures that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or reach out to the location nearest you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many Leadwood, MO residents. We love activities like playing sports, biking, or other physical activities. Additionally, committing to an active lifestyle helps prevent chronic conditions including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, eurodegenerative disease, depression, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Leadwood, MO physical therapists allow you to return to action 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, are proven to be effective 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 persistent injury that won’t heal on its own, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Leadwood, MO for a free injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and protect your sport or hobby, keep reading or call to speak to a physical therapist at your earliest convenience.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Leadwood, MO

Injuries generally happen for one of two reasons:

Wear-and-tear injuries are injuries happen gradually as a body part degrades because of repetitive movements. They are common in overhead athletes athletes who are required to repeat throwing or striking motions, 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, such as ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with an immediate impact to or twisting of the knee.

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

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Leadwood, MO

While injuries occur for many different reasons, and are sometimes unpreventable, they generally occur because of dysfunction or instability and your body and between body parts. There are three chief causes of why your body cannot adjust to an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is crucial to supporting joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can cause dependency 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 in relation to other muscle groups, such as having a strong bicep and weak tricep, 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
Coordination deficiency

Customized injury prevention with our knowledgeable physical therapists in Leadwood, 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. Problems in your nervous system, swelling, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. Symptoms include:

Joint mobility limitations
Muscle imbalance
Coordination deficits
Lessened balance

When you first see our injury prevention professionals in Leadwood, MO, we’ll go through your medical history and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, together with your physician or any additional medical professionals treating you, we’ll devise a personalized treatment plan 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 sit a lot. Athletes and others with active lifestyles can be affected by postural dysfunction when at lest, sitting, or in specific stances necessary for their sport. Optimal posture means correct alignments of the neck, torso, pelvis, and extremities in a way that keeps the spine within its natural curves. Poor posture can compact the bones of the spine, which interferes with 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

By teaching you correct posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring muscle balance, flexibility, and that your spine is in its natural position.

Keys to Injury Prevention in Leadwood, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything you could to reduce that risk. No one technique is 100% foolproof in injury prevention. However, there are several steps you can take to greatly reduce the risk of injury:

Take a rest — Injuries are more common when you do not give your body time to restore itself. If you have a very high activity level, make sure to take one or two days off per week to allow your body to engage in its natural healing and recovery processes. If you have a more moderate activity level, take it easy for the few hours after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
Wear protective equipment — Helmets, shin guards, protective eyewear, and other recommended equipment in many sports helps you avoid injuries such as lacerations or brain injuries. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Leadwood, MO physician or injury prevention expert may recommend braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize a joint. Other methods like making sure all the equipment is snug can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
Boost muscle strength — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them stand up to the rigors of heavy activity. Our Leadwood, MO injury prevention specialists will work to build up your body to be able to stay healthy in the activities you love.
Boost flexibility — Increasing your flexibility achieves three important things for injury prevention:
1. It boosts which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which allows for your tendons and ligaments to handle more dramatic positions.
2. It increases blood flow, which allows for nourishing blood to flow to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to heal.
3. It encourages good posture, which we already know is an an essential part of injury prevention.
According to studies, sports like soccer that require sudden twists and movements require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility to incorporate and release the high amount 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 — In every sport, there are accepted techniques to use. These techniques not only help you perform better but help prevent injuries by not forcing your body into unnatural positions and movements. Football players are taught to tackle with the shoulder in order to avoid a concussion, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best rotate their body. We utilize 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 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 withdraw from the activity and seek proportional medical care. 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 teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate a player that plays through pain, forcing your body to perform with soft tissue or structural damage 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, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, seeing your doctor, and scheduling appointments with a physical therapist to ensure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
Play by 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 head-first sliding in baseball, and even the presence of bike lanes are examples of rules that leagues enacted 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 get a physical before starting another season or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. During your physical, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a expert physical therapist in Leadwood, MO is something you should consider. All of our techniques have been proven to prevent injury, and we’ll personalize your program 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 Older Leadwood, MO Adults

Falls in the elderly were responsible for over 3 million emergency room admissions and over 34,000 fatalities. Research demonstrates that being physical active can go a long way in reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions like arthritis that are wear and tear injuries can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints healthy. While older adults typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, appropriate strength, balance, flexibility, and good posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Leadwood, MO include:

Leadwood, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in one of your favorite activities can create a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same freedom. The licensed Leadwood, 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 do not have to fear going back to what you love doing most. 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 get started with one of our injury prevention experts in Leadwood, MO.