Injury Prevention in Maryknoll, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, 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 deserve. While our certified Maryknoll, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to 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. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location most convenient for you.
Physical activity is an essential part of many Maryknoll, MO people’s lives. Many of us participate in active endeavors like playing sports, playing golf, and more. Additionally, keeping an active lifestyle helps prevent future health problems including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia, depression, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Maryknoll, MO physical therapists allow you to 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 methods, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, are proven to be effective and are customized for each client and the level of activity they want to reach.
If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a persistent injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Maryknoll, MO for a no-risk, no-obligation injury screening. To take preventative measures and protect your sport or hobby, keep reading or inquire about an appointment at your earliest convenience.
Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Maryknoll, MO
Most injuries fall into two categories:
- Repetitive motion injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. In sports, we see them the most in in overhead athletes athletes who use throwing or striking motions and commonly manifest themselves as joint pain.
- Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include falling or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, fractures, and dislocations.
Some of the injuries we see most frequently, such as rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, for example ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, with an immediate impact to or twisting of the knee.
Why Do Injuries Happen? | Injury Prevention in Maryknoll, MO
While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally occur because your muscles, ligaments, tendons, bones, and joints cannot hold up under the force, torque, or stretching that are required or are possible in a given activity. There are three main causes of why your body cannot handle an activity:
Muscle Imbalance
Muscle balance is crucial to supporting joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can result in dependency on one muscle group, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also prevents you from having good posture, and the weaker set of muscles will be pushed past its limit, resulting in failure and a higher likelihood of injury. Muscle imbalance applies to inadequate muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong bicep and weak tricep, or in the same muscle group, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff not having proportionate strength. Muscle imbalance can result in:
- Muscle weakness
- Muscle inflexibility
- Poor muscle recruitment
- Poor coordination
Tailored injury prevention with our licensed physical therapists in Maryknoll, MO will ensure that different muscles and muscle groups are equally strong.
Movement Dysfunction
Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and impede your body’s ability to naturally perform functional movements, increasing your risk of injury. It can be caused by a range of musculoskeletal issues. Symptoms include:
- Joint mobility restrictions
- Muscle imbalance
- Poor coordination
- Decreased balance
When you initially visit our injury prevention specialists in Maryknoll, MO, we’ll discuss your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, alongside with your doctor or any other medical professionals treating you, we’ll devise a personalized game plan based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your movement health to reach its potential.
Posture Dysfunction
Bad posture is not just an issue for people who sit a lot. Athletes and other physically active people can suffer from postural dysfunction when lying down, using the computer, or in specific positions they need to be in for a given activity. Good posture means proper positioning 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 vertebrae closer together, which disrupts your nervous system and makes it difficult to attain optimal motion health. It causes injuries through:
- Muscle weakness
- Muscle imbalance
- Poor positioning
- Joint mobility restrictions
- Poor muscle recruitment
By teaching you ideal posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring muscle balance, flexibility, and that your nervous system can communicate as its intended to.
Keys to Injury Prevention in Maryknoll, MO
You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything you could to reduce that risk. We cannot promise that our injury prevention program completely negates the risk of injury. However, there are precautions to make sure your body is strong and flexible enough for your desired activity level:
- Take a rest — Injuries are more common when you do not give your body time to restore itself. If you’re heavily active, one or two rest days a week will encourage your body to engage in its natural healing and recovery processes. If you have a more moderate activity level, relax for the rest of the day after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
- Wear protective equipment — Helmets, mouth guards, safety pads and guards, and other equipment necessary in many sports can help prevent injuries like contusions or brain injuries. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your Maryknoll, MO physician or physical therapist may recommend braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the injured area. Other techniques like making sure all the equipment is snug 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. Our Maryknoll, MO injury prevention professionals will work to build up your body to safely participate in the activities you want to participate in.
- Boost flexibility — Increasing your flexibility achieves three important things for injury prevention:
- It enhances which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which allows for your soft tissue to adapt to more forceful movements.
- It improves blood flow, which carries nourishing blood to your muscles, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to heal.
- It boosts your posture, which, as you read earlier, is an essential part of injury prevention.
According to research, sports like soccer that necessitate dynamic motions require soft tissue flexible enough to incorporate and expel the high amount of energy required. Also, don’t forget to stretch and warm up before games or training to further reduce the risk of injury.
- Use proper technique — Through the years, each sport and physical activity develops a consensus of the best ways to position and move your body. 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 utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to break down your movement and evaluate how to both improve your performance and reduce your risk of injury.
- Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If a part of your body is bothering you, that’s your body’s way of telling you something is wrong. If you feel sudden pain, immediately stop all physical activity and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body does not feel well enough for a particularly rigorous workout, don’t force it.
- Don’t play through an injury — While gutting it out through pain is often seen as a heroic act among competitors, forcing your body to perform with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could aggravate an existing injury and leave you off the field or court for much longer than if you had sat out at the time of the injury. Depending on the severity of your injury, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, visiting your doctor, and scheduling appointments with a physical therapist to ensure your body heals properly and can handle a return to physical activity.
- Play by 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 head-first sliding in baseball, and even the existence of bike lanes are all rules that leagues enacted to keep participants safe. Those were enacted for a reason, and there’s a reason that there are penalties for them.
- Consult a licensed physical therapist — It’s a good idea to see a doctor before starting another season or starting up a new physical activity. While there, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a licensed physical therapist in Maryknoll, MO is right for you. All of our techniques have been demonstrated to reduce the risk of injury, and we’ll personalize your program to your age, your injury history, and which activities you want to participate in.
Injury Prevention for Older Maryknoll, MO Adults
Falls in the elderly were responsible for more than 3 million urgent care admissions and over 34,000 deaths. Studies show that physical activity is invaluable in reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions such as arthritis that develop over the course of several years can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints strong. While older adults typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, appropriate strength, stability, flexibility, and good posture are great agents in injury prevention.
Other services we offer in Maryknoll, 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
Maryknoll, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy
Suffering in injury in something you love doing can lead to a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same euphoria. The professional Maryknoll, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to develop your personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body as safe and healthy as can be, and your mind confident 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. Schedule an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to find out more about what our Maryknoll, MO injury prevention specialists can do for you.