Injury Prevention in Liguori, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or are entering your golden years and want to spend more time hiking, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you deserve. While our certified Liguori, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others 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. Make an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or contact the location most convenient for you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many Liguori, MO residents. Many of us participate in active endeavors like playing sports, swimming, and more. Furthermore, committing to an active lifestyle helps prevent serious health problems such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, mental health issues, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Liguori, MO physical therapists help you come back as fierce as ever, but our injury prevention professionals can help keep you active 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, have been prove to work and are personalized to each client and the activities they want to return to.

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 Liguori, MO for a no-risk, no-obligation injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can continue with your active lifestyle, keep reading or call to speak to a physical therapist at your earliest convenience.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Liguori, MO

Injuries generally happen for one of two reasons:

1. Repetitive motion injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. In sports, we see them the most in in overhead athletes such as baseball or lacrosse players and commonly are accompanied by joint pain.
2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen suddenly. Examples include landing on uneven ground or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, twisting joints, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some of the injuries we see most frequently, like rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, such as ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Liguori, MO

While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and are sometimes unpreventable, they generally occur because your soft tissue, bones, and joints cannot handle the force, torque, or stretching that are required or are possible in a given activity. There are three primary causes of why your body cannot adjust to an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is key to supporting joints and reducing injury. Imbalance can result in overemphasis for one set of muscles, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also prevents you from having ideal posture, and one set of muscles becoming fatigued more quickly, increasing the risk of injury. Injuries can be caused by insufficient muscle balance in relation to other 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. Symptoms include:

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

Customized injury prevention with our knowledgeable physical therapists in Liguori, 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, causing injury. Neurological issues, swelling, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. Symptoms include:

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

When you first visit our injury prevention experts in Liguori, MO, we’ll evaluate your medical history and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, in tandem with with your physician or any additional providers treating you, we’ll come up with a customized plan of attack based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your body moving as it should.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect 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 poses necessary for a given activity. 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 bring the joints in the spine closer together, which has a negative affect on our body’s ability to communicate with itself and achieve the strength and range of motion you need to achieve. Symptoms include:

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

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

How to Prevent Injury in Liguori, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything possible to prevent one. No one technique is guaranteed to be effective in injury prevention. However, there are precautions to greatly reduce the risk of injury:

• Take breaks — Injuries are more common in overworked bodies. If you have a very high activity level, make sure to take one or two days off per week to encourage your body to engage in its natural healing processes. If you’re moderately active, rest for the rest of the day after an activity so your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints become too fatigued.
• Wear protective equipment — Helmets, chest guards, protective eyewear, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities can help prevent injuries such as lacerations or brain injuries. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Liguori, MO physician or physical therapist may advise braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the affected area. Other measures like making sure all the equipment is snug can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
• Strengthen muscles — Strengthening soft tissue helps it withstand the rigors of heavy activity. Our Liguori, MO injury prevention experts will work to build up your body to safely participate in the activities you love.
• Improve flexibility — Stretching contributes to injury prevention in three way:
  1. It enhances your range of motion, which allows for your soft tissue to adapt to more forceful movements.
  2. It enhances circulation, which carries protein-rich blood to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and reinvigorating the muscles.
  3. It encourages good posture, which, as we’ve discussed, is an important part of injury prevention.

  According to research, sports like basketball that require dynamic motions require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility 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 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 head injury, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to use the appropriate muscles. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and evaluate how to both be a better athlete and reduce your risk of injury.
• Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If a part of your body is bothering you, your body is trying to send you a message. If you feel something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, stop immediately 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 teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate an athlete that guts it out through pain, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could make that injury worse and leave you off the field or court for longer than it originally would have. Depending on what caused your injury and how severe it is, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, visiting your doctor, 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 leading with the helmet in football, rules against head-first sliding in baseball, and even the presence of special lanes on the street and sidewalk for bikers are examples of rules that were adopted to keep participants safe. Those were enacted for a reason, and there’s a reason that there are penalties for them.
• Speak a licensed physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to see a doctor before a new season or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. During your appointment, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a licensed physical therapist in Liguori, MO is a good idea for you. All of our techniques have been proven to help athletes remain healthy, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to how old you are, any previous injuries, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Liguori, MO

Falls in senior citizens were responsible for over 3 million urgent care visits and more than 34,000 fatalities. Studies show that being physical active is invaluable in preventing falls. Other conditions that limit mobility like arthritis that develop over the course of several years can be slowed down by physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints strong. While the physical demands for older adults may not be as high as an athlete, healthy strength, stability, flexibility, and optimal posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Liguori, MO include:

• 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
• Hip Replacement Physical Therapy

Liguori, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in in an activity you prepare and train for and love can lead to a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same exhilaration. The experienced Liguori, 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 doing most. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits that you once valued so much. Request an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to learn more about what our Liguori, MO injury prevention professionals can do for you.