Injury Prevention in Meacham Park, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, or a recent retiree who wants to spend more time camping, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our certified Meacham Park, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others heal after an injury, we are experts in the entire musculoskeletal system who can evaluate your movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to guide you through methods 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 call the location nearest you.

Physical activity is an essential part of many Meacham Park, MO people’s lives. We love active endeavors such as playing sports, hiking, or other physical activities. Additionally, keeping an active lifestyle helps stave off future health problems including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, anxiety, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Meacham Park, MO physical therapists allow you to come back as fierce as ever, but our injury prevention experts can help you reduce the risk of further injury by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our methods, for both recovery and injury prevention, 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 lingering injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Meacham Park, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can keep up with your active lifestyle, read on below or inquire about an appointment today.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Meacham Park, MO

Injuries typically happen for one of two reasons:

1. Repetitive motion injuries are injuries happen gradually as a body part degrades because of repetitive movements. In sports, we see them the most in in overhead athletes such as tennis or shotput and pole-vaulters and typically manifest themselves as joint pain.
2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen because of a specific and sudden trauma. Examples include falling or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, twisting joints, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some common injuries, for example rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, like 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 Meacham Park, 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 key to maintaining healthy joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can cause 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 muscles will become fatigued faster, 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 the four muscles in the rotator cuff not having proportionate strength. Symptoms include:

• Muscle weakness
• Muscle inflexibility
• Poor muscle recruitment
• Poor coordination

Personalized injury prevention with our professional physical therapists in Meacham Park, MO will bring balance to your muscles.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and lead to your body moving in ways it is not designed to, increasing your risk of injury. It can be caused by a range of musculoskeletal issues. Symptoms include:

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

When you initially see our injury prevention professionals in Meacham Park, MO, we’ll discuss your medical records and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, together with your doctor or any other medical professionals 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 is not just an issue for people who spend a lot of time doing the same activity. Athletes and others with active lifestyles can have postural dysfunction when lying down, driving, or in specific poses related to their sport. Healthy posture refers to 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 communication between your brain and body and makes it harder to reach ideal movement health. It can also lead to:

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

By guiding you to the best practices for posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring muscle balance, flexibility, and that your spine is in its natural position.

How to Prevent Injury in Meacham Park, MO

All sports and physical activities can potentially lead to an injury. No one safety tip is 100% foolproof in injury prevention. However, there are several steps you can take to greatly reduce the risk of injury:

• Take breaks — 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 allow your body to engage in its natural healing processes. If you’re moderately active, take a break for the few hours after an activity so your body doesn’t become too fatigued.
• Use protective equipment — Helmets, chest guards, elbow pads, and other required equipment in many sports can help prevent injuries such as cuts or concussions. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Meacham Park, MO physician or physical therapist may fit you for braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the affected area. Other methods 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. In your personalized injury prevention program with our expert Meacham Park, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to build up your body to be able to avoid injury in the activities you want to participate in.
• Boost flexibility — Increasing your flexibility accomplishes three important things for injury prevention:
  1. It improves your range of motion, which lets for your soft tissue to adjust to more extreme positions.
  2. It enhances blood flow, which carries nourishing blood to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and fortifying the muscles.
  3. It encourages good posture, which we already know is an an important part of injury prevention.

  According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like basketball that necessitate dynamic motions require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility to perform those movements. Also, remember to stretch and warm up before games or training to further reduce the risk of injury.

• Use correct 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 help you perform better but help prevent injuries. Football players are taught to tackle with the shoulder in order to avoid brain damage, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best apply torque to your body. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to slow down your movement and evaluate how to both improve your performance and prevent injury.
• Listen to your body — If a part of your body is sore, that’s your body’s way of telling you something is wrong. If you feel a sudden pop or grinding sensation, immediately stop all physical activity 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 — While gutting it out through pain is often viewed as a valiant act among competitors, playing with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could make that injury worse 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 what caused your injury and how severe it is, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, visiting urgent care, and a series of physical therapy sessions to ensure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
• Follow the rules — Most sports have special rules at different levels to reduce the risk of injury. Penalties for leading with the helmet in football, rules against coming from behind in soccer, 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 get a physical before another season begins or starting up a new physical activity. While there, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a expert physical therapist in Meacham Park, MO is a good idea for you. All of our techniques have been demonstrated to reduce the risk of injury, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to your age, any previous injuries, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Meacham Park, MO

Falls in the elderly accounted for over 3 million urgent care admissions and over 34,000 deaths. Studies show that physical activity is a great method for preventing falls. Other conditions that limit mobility like arthritis that develop over the course of several years can be more bearable and take longer to progress with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints healthy. While the physical demands for older adults may not be as high as an athlete, appropriate strength, stability, flexibility, and optimal posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Meacham Park, 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

Meacham Park, 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 exhilaration. The professional Meacham Park, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to develop your 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. 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 get started with one of our injury prevention professionals in Meacham Park, MO.