Injury Prevention in Maryland Heights, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or a recent retiree who wants to dedicate your time to being physical fit, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our licensed Maryland Heights, 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 body’s current condition and how you move to teach out exercises that are proven to reduce the risk of injury by preparing your body for the stressors of your desired activity. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or contact the location most convenient for you.

Physical activity is vitally important to many Maryland Heights, MO residents. We love active endeavors like playing sports, playing golf, and more. Furthermore, keeping an active lifestyle reduces the risk of chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, eurodegenerative disease, anxiety, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Maryland Heights, MO physical therapists allow you to return to action even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention specialists can help you reduce the risk of further injury by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our treatment plans, for both recovery and injury prevention, are proven to be effective and are personalized to each client and the level of activity they want to reach.

If you’ve recently sustained an injury, or have a lingering injury that won’t heal on its own, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Maryland Heights, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and ensure that you can keep up with your active lifestyle, keep reading or inquire about an appointment today.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Maryland Heights, MO

Injuries typically happen for one of two reasons:

1. Repetitive demand injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. In sports, we see them the most in in overhead athletes such as raquetball or soccer goalies, with joint pain usually being the first warning sign.
2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include landing on uneven ground or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some common injuries, for example rotator cuff tears, can result from either overuse or acute trauma. Other injuries, for example ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.

Why Do Injuries Happen? | Injury Prevention in Maryland Heights, MO

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally occur because of dysfunction or instability and your body and between body parts. There are three common dysfunctions that lead to injury:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is essential to maintaining healthy joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can cause an overreliance on one muscle group, which may cause your body to use it in a way it shouldn’t. It can also lead to poor posture, and the weaker muscles will become fatigued more quickly, increasing the risk of injury. Muscle imbalance can refer to inadequate muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong chest and weak back, 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
• Coordination deficiency

Personalized injury prevention with our certified physical therapists in Maryland Heights, 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. It can lead to:

• Joint mobility limitations
• Muscle imbalance
• Coordination deficits
• Decreased balance

When you first visit our injury prevention specialists in Maryland Heights, MO, we’ll go over your medical history and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, in tandem with with your doctor or any other providers involved in your treatment, we’ll devise a personalized game plan been proven to work by research and studies to get your movement health to reach its potential.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people who sit a lot. Athletes and others with active lifestyles can be affected by postural dysfunction when lying down, using the computer, or in certain positions necessary for a given activity. Optimal posture refers to proper alignments of your body from your head to your toes in a way that does not remove the spine from its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the vertebrae closer together, which disrupts our body’s internal communications and makes it difficult to achieve ideal motion health. It causes injuries through:

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

Good posture is a necessary part of injury prevention because it ensures muscle balance, range of motion, and that your spine is in its natural position.

Keys to Injury Prevention in Maryland Heights, 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 several steps you can take to make sure your body is strong and flexible enough for your intended activity:

• Take a rest — Injuries are more common in overworked bodies. If you’re heavily active, one or two rest days a week will signal to your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. If you have a more modest 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, shin guards, safety pads and guards, and other equipment necessary in many sports can help prevent injuries such as cuts or concussions. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your Maryland Heights, MO physician or physical therapist may fit you for stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other methods like tying your athletic footwear tightly offers further protection.
• Strengthen muscles — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them withstand the rigors of heavy activity. Our Maryland Heights, MO injury prevention professionals will work to achieve optimal muscle balance and strengthen the often forgotten muscles needed to safely participate in the activities you want to participate in.
• Enhance flexibility — Stretching achieves three critical things for injury prevention:
  1. It enhances which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which allows for your tendons and ligaments to adjust to more forceful movements.
  2. It increases blood flow, which carries nourishing blood to your soft tissue, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to recover.
  3. It increases your posture, which, as we’ve discussed, is is one of the most important aspects of injury prevention.

  According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like soccer that necessitate dynamic motions require muscles and tendons with sufficient flexibility to incorporate and exert the high amount of energy required. Also, it’s important to stretch and warm up before games or training to further reduce the risk of injury.

• Use accepted technique — In every physical activity, there are accepted techniques to use. These techniques not only help you get be the best athlete you can be but help prevent injuries. Football players learn to tackle a certain way 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 capture how you move and analyze how to both improve your performance and prevent 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 sudden pain, stop immediately and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body isn’t holing up well in an intense workout, don’t force it.
• Don’t play through an injury — While gutting it out through pain is often seen as commendable among competitors, forcing your body to perform with soft tissue or structural damage could exacerbate an existing injury and put you out of commission for much longer than you would have been sitting out. Depending on the severity of your injury, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, visiting an emergency room, 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 — Depending on the sport or activity and age level of the participants, it likely has special rules in the interest of safety. Penalties for leading with the helmet in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the existence 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 violations of those rules are punished.
• Speak a licensed physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to get a physical before starting another season or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. While there, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a experienced physical therapist in Maryland Heights, MO is a good idea for you. All of our techniques have been demonstrated to prevent injury, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to your age, any previous injuries, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention for The Elderly in Maryland Heights, MO

Falls in adults over 65 accounted for more than 3 million emergency room visits and over 34,000 deaths. Research demonstrates that physical activity can go a long way in reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions like arthritis that develop over the course of several years can be slowed down by physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints active. While the physical demands for older adults may not be as high as an athlete, the same principles of strength, stability, flexibility, and optimal posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Maryland Heights, 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

Maryland Heights, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in something you love doing causes a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same elation. The licensed Maryland Heights, 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 do not have to fear going back to what you love. You deserve to feel 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 discover what our Maryland Heights, MO injury prevention professionals can do for you.