Injury Prevention in Mapaville, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or a recent retiree who wants to dedicate your time to camping, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you desire. While our professional Mapaville, 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 body’s current condition and how you move to guide you through methods that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Make an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or reach out to the location nearest you.
Being physically active is vitally important to many Mapaville, MO residents. Many of us participate in activities like playing sports, kayaking, and more. Additionally, committing to an active lifestyle reduces the risk of chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, degenerative brain diseases, mental health issues, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Mapaville, MO physical therapists help you return to action even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention professionals can help keep you active 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 developed uniquely for each client and the activities they want to return to.
If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a nagging injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Mapaville, MO for a free injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can continue with your sport or hobby, keep reading or inquire about an appointment today.
Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Mapaville, MO
Most injuries fall into two categories:
- Repetitive demand injuries are injuries that occur when a part of the body repeats the same motion time and time again. They are common in overhead athletes such as tennis or lacrosse players, with joint pain usually being the first warning sign.
- Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include landing on uneven ground or a sudden impact by an object or another person. These can result in bruises, twisting joints, fractures, and dislocations.
Some of the injuries we see most frequently, such as rotator cuff tears, can result from either overuse or acute trauma. Other injuries, like ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with a sudden impact to the knee.
What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Mapaville, MO
While injuries occur for many different reasons, and some are inescapable, they generally happen 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 common dysfunctions that lead to injury:
Muscle Imbalance
Muscle balance is crucial to supporting joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can lead to an overreliance on one muscle group, 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 poor muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong chest and weak back, or within muscle groups, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff not having proportionate strength. Symptoms include:
- Muscle weakness
- Muscle inflexibility
- Poor muscle recruitment
- Coordination deficits
Customized injury prevention with our certified physical therapists in Mapaville, 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. Neurological issues, swelling, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. Symptoms include:
- Joint mobility limitations
- Muscle imbalance
- Poor coordination
- Decreased balance
At our first injury prevention appointment in Mapaville, MO, we’ll evaluate your medical history and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, alongside with your doctor or any additional medical professionals involved in your care, we’ll come up with a tailored game plan based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your movement back on track.
Posture Dysfunction
Bad posture doesn’t just affect people with slouched shoulders. Athletes and others with active lifestyles can suffer from postural dysfunction when at lest, using the computer, or in certain poses they need to be in for a given activity. Optimal posture means correct alignments of the neck, torso, pelvis, and extremities in a way that does not remove the spine from its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the bones of the spine closer together, which interferes with our body’s ability to communicate with itself and attain ideal motion health. Symptoms include:
- Muscle weakness
- Muscle imbalance
- Poor positioning
- Joint mobility limitations
- Poor muscle recruitment
By guiding you to correct posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring muscle balance, range of motion, and that your vertebrae remain in place.
Injury Prevention Best Practices in Mapaville, MO
All sports and physical activities carry an inherent risk of injury. No one technique is guaranteed to be effective in injury prevention. 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 have a very high activity level, 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 a break for the few hours after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
- Wear the appropriate equipment — Helmets, chest guards, protective eyewear, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities helps you avoid injuries like contusions or concussions. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your Mapaville, MO physician or injury prevention professional may fit you for stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other measures like tying your athletic footwear tightly can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
- Strengthen muscles — Strengthening soft tissue helps it stand up to the force and torque of heavy activity. In your tailored injury prevention program with our certified Mapaville, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to build up your body to safely participate in the activities you want to participate in.
- Enhance flexibility — Increasing your flexibility contributes to injury prevention in three way:
- It boosts which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which lets for your tendons and ligaments to handle more extreme movements.
- It enhances blood flow, which carries nourishing blood to your soft tissue, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to restore themselves.
- It enhances your posture, which, as you read earlier, is an important part of injury prevention.
According to research, sports like soccer that require bouncing and jumping require muscles and tendons with sufficient flexibility to store and exert the high amount of energy required. Stretching and warm up exercises before activities further helps prevent injuries.
- Use correct technique — In every sport, there are accepted 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 reduce the risk of a head injury, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best rotate their body. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and evaluate how to improve it.
- Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If a part of your body is sore, that means that body part is telling your brain that something isn’t right. If you feel something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, immediately stop all physical activity and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t holing up well in an intense workout, save it for another day.
- Don’t play through an injury — While teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate a player that plays through pain, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could exacerbate an existing injury and put you out of commission for longer than it originally would have. Depending on what caused your injury and how severe it is, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, visiting urgent care, and scheduling appointments with a physical therapist to make sure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
- Play by the rules — Most sports have special rules at different levels in the interest of safety. Penalties for targeting 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. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that violations of those rules are punished.
- Consult a professional physical therapist — It’s a good idea to see a doctor before a new season or starting up a new physical activity. While there, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a knowledgeable physical therapist in Mapaville, MO is a good idea for you. Every treatment plan we employ has been demonstrated to prevent injury, and we’ll personalize your program to your age, any previous injuries, and how physically active you wish to be.
Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Mapaville, MO
Falls in adults over 65 were responsible for more than 3 million emergency room visits and more than 34,000 deaths. Studies show that being physical active can go a long way in preventing falls. Other conditions that limit mobility such as arthritis that are wear and tear injuries can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints strong. While the physical demands for seniors may not be as high as an athlete, appropriate strength, balance, flexibility, and correct posture are great agents in injury prevention.
Other services we offer in Mapaville, MO include:
- Total Knee Replacement Physical Therapy
- Vestibular Therapy
- Concussion Treatment
- Soft Tissue Mobilization
- Post Surgical Rehabilitation
- Shin Splint Treatment
- Direct Access Physical Therapy
- Gait Analysis
- Pelvic Floor Therapy
- Dry Needling Near Me
Mapaville, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy
Suffering in injury in in an activity you prepare and train for and love causes a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same joy. The experienced Mapaville, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to design for you a personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body as safe and healthy as can be, 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 of doing what you do best. Request an appointment online or call the location nearest you to start your program with one of our injury prevention experts in Mapaville, MO.