Meacham Park, MO

Meacham Park, MO

Don't let a mental block over reinjury keep you from the activities you love.

Injury Prevention in Meacham Park, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or a recent retiree who wants to spend more time bike riding, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our licensed Meacham Park, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others heal after an injury, we are complete movement health specialists who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to teach out methods that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location nearest you.

Physical activity is vitally important to many Meacham Park, MO residents. We love active endeavors such as playing sports, hiking, and more. Additionally, pursuing an active lifestyle reduces the risk of chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, eurodegenerative disease, depression, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Meacham Park, MO physical therapists help you return to action and perform even better than before, but our injury prevention experts can help preserve your active lifestyle by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our methods, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, are based on evidence-backed techniques and are developed uniquely for each client and the lifestyle they desire.

If you’ve recently sustained an injury, or have a nagging injury that won’t heal on its own, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Meacham Park, MO for a no-risk, no-obligation injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and ensure that you can continue with your active lifestyle, read on below or inquire about an appointment at your earliest convenience.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Meacham Park, MO

Most injuries fall into two categories:

  1. Overuse 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 athletes who are required to repeat throwing or striking motions, with joint pain usually being the first warning sign.
  2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen in an instant. Examples include falling or a sudden impact by an object or another person. 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 result from either overuse or acute trauma. Other injuries, such as ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with an immediate impact to or twisting of the knee.

Injury Prevention Meacham Park, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Meacham Park

What Causes Injuries? | 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 common dysfunctions that lead to injury:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is crucial to maintaining healthy joints and reducing injury. Imbalance can cause an overreliance on one set of muscles, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also prevents you from having optimal posture, and the weaker muscles will become tired sooner, making them more susceptible to injuries. Muscle imbalance applies to insufficient muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong chest and weak back, or in the same muscle group, such as an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Symptoms include:

Personalized injury prevention with our experienced physical therapists in Meacham Park, MO will ensure that different muscles and muscle groups are equally strong.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can result in poor balance and impede your body’s ability to naturally perform functional movements, causing injury. It can be caused by a range of musculoskeletal issues. It can cause injury through:

  • Joint mobility limitations
  • Muscle imbalance
  • Poor coordination
  • Reduced balance

When you first see our injury prevention specialists in Meacham Park, MO, we’ll evaluate your medical history and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, together with your doctor or any other providers treating you, we’ll develop a tailored treatment plan been proven to work through research and studies to get your movement back on track.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture is not just an issue for people with slouched shoulders. People who play sports and others with active lifestyles can suffer from postural dysfunction when at lest, using the computer, or in specific stances necessary for a given activity. Healthy posture means correct 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 reach ideal movement health. It can also lead to:

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

Good posture is an important part of injury prevention because it ensures you are using the right muscles for the right movements, your flexibility can be improved and maintained, and your nervous system can communicate as its intended to.



How to Prevent Injury in Meacham Park, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything possible to reduce that risk. 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 in overworked bodies. If you’re heavily active, 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, relax for the rest of the day after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
  • Use the correct equipment — Helmets, shin guards, safety pads and guards, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities can help prevent injuries like lacerations or head injuries. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Meacham Park, MO physician or physical therapist may advise braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize a joint. Other methods like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further protection.
  • Increase muscle strength — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them stand up to the force and torque necessary for in sports and other activities. Our Meacham Park, MO injury prevention professionals will work to build up your body to safely participate in the activities you love.
  • Boost flexibility — Increasing your flexibility accomplishes three critical things for injury prevention:
    1. It boosts which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which lets for your soft tissue to handle more drastic positions.
    2. It boosts circulation, which carries nourishing blood to your muscles, removing waste byproduct and revitalizing the muscles.
    3. It encourages good posture, which, as we’ve discussed, is an important part of injury prevention.

    According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like basketball that necessitate dynamic activities require muscles and tendons with sufficient flexibility to perform those movements. Also, it’s important to stretch and warm up before games or training to further reduce the risk of injury.

  • Use correct technique — In every physical activity, there are accepted techniques to use. These techniques not only help you perform better but help prevent injuries by not forcing your body into unnatural positions and movements. Football players learn to tackle with the shoulder in order to avoid a head injury, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best apply torque to your body. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to break down your movement and evaluate how to both improve your performance and prevent injury.
  • Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If you feel pain in a muscle or joint, that means that body part is telling your brain that something is wrong. If you feel something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, stop immediately and seek proportional medical care. If your body does not feel well enough for an intense workout, save it for another day.
  • Don’t play through an injury — While gritting through pain is often seen as a heroic act among competitors, playing with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could make that injury worse and put you out of commission for much longer than you would have been sitting out. Depending on what caused your injury and how severe it is, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, seeing urgent care, and scheduling appointments with a physical therapist to ensure your body heals naturally and can withstand a return to physical activity.
  • 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 coming from behind in soccer, and even the presence of special lanes on the street and sidewalk for bikers are all rules put in place to keep participants safe. Those are in place 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 get a physical before a new season or starting up a new activity or training regimen. While there, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a experienced physical therapist in Meacham Park, MO is a good idea for you. Every treatment plan we employ has been proven to help athletes remain healthy, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to your age, your injury history, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention Meacham Park, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Meacham Park

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Meacham Park, MO

Falls in adults over 65 accounted for over 3 million emergency room admissions and more than 34,000 fatalities. Studies show that being physical active is invaluable in preventing falls. Other conditions such as arthritis that accumulate over time can be more bearable and take longer to progress with physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints healthy. While older adults typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, healthy strength, balance, flexibility, and proper posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Meacham Park, MO include:

Meacham Park, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in one of your favorite activities causes a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same euphoria. The experienced Meacham Park, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to design for you a 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. We will aid you in feeling the physical and mental health benefits that you do not want to lose. Request an appointment online or reach out to the location nearest you to start your program with one of our injury prevention professionals in Meacham Park, MO.

Services Offered

Services Offered
  • Physical Therapy
  • Pre/Post Surgical Rehabilitation
  • Acute Injury Management
  • Chronic Injury Management
  • Work Conditioning/Hardening
  • Functional Capacity Evaluations
  • Sports Physical Therapy
  • Pediatric Orthopedic Physical Therapy
  • Geriatric Physical Therapy
  • Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization
  • DorsaVi Video Motion Analysis
  • Vestibular Therapy and Post-Concussion Rehabilitation
  • Trigger Point Dry Needling
  • Free Injury Screenings
  • Kinesio Taping®
  • Blood Flow Restriction Therapy

Locations

Begin Your Recovery Today

Injuries and pain shouldn’t keep you from moving and doing the things you love.