Moscow Mills, MO

Moscow Mills, MO

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

Injury Prevention in Moscow Mills, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or you just retired and want to dedicate your time to being physical fit, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our certified Moscow Mills, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to heal after an 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. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location nearest you.

Being physically active is an essential part of many Moscow Mills, MO people’s lives. We love activities like playing sports, hiking, or other physical activities. Furthermore, pursuing an active lifestyle helps prevent chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, eurodegenerative disease, mental health issues, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Moscow Mills, MO physical therapists allow you to return to action and perform even better than before, but our injury prevention specialists can help preserve your active lifestyle by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our treatment plans, for both healing from and preventing injury, are proven to be effective and are customized for each client and the lifestyle they desire.

If you’ve recently sustained an injury, or have a nagging injury that is not getting better with time, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Moscow Mills, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To take preventative measures and protect your sport or hobby, read on below or call to speak to a physical therapist today.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Moscow Mills, MO

Injuries typically fall into two categories:

  1. Repetitive demand injuries are injuries that occur when a part of the body repeats the same motion time and time again. In sports, we see them the most in in overhead athletes athletes who use throwing or striking motions and typically are accompanied by joint pain.
  2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen suddenly. Examples include falling or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, broken bones, 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, almost always occur spontaneously, with an immediate impact to or twisting of the knee.

Injury Prevention Moscow Mills, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Moscow Mills

Why Do Injuries Happen? | Injury Prevention in Moscow Mills, MO

While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and some are inescapable, they generally happen because your soft tissue, bones, and joints cannot handle the force, torque, or stretching that they are subjected to in a given movement or collision. There are three common dysfunctions that lead to injury:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is essential to supporting joints and reducing injury. Imbalance can lead to an overreliance on one set of muscles, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also prevents you from having good posture, and one set of muscles becoming tired more quickly, increasing the risk of injury. Injuries can be caused by poor muscle balance in relation to other muscle groups, such as having a strong bicep and weak tricep, or in the same muscle group, such as an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Muscle imbalance can cause injury through:

Tailored injury prevention with our professional physical therapists in Moscow Mills, 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. Problems in your nervous system, swelling, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. It can cause injury through:

  • Joint mobility limitations
  • Muscle imbalance
  • Coordination deficiency
  • Lessened balance

At our first injury prevention appointment in Moscow Mills, MO, we’ll go over your medical records 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 treating you, we’ll develop a tailored 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 with slouched shoulders. Athletes and others with active lifestyles can be affected by postural dysfunction when resting, driving, or in certain stances necessary for their sport. Optimal posture refers to correct alignments of your body from your head to your toes in a way that encourages our spine to stay in its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the bones of the spine closer together, which disrupts our body’s internal communications and makes it harder to attain the strength and range of motion you need to achieve. Symptoms include:

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

Good posture is a necessary part of injury prevention because it ensures you are using the right muscles for the right movements, your flexibility is not jeopardized, and your nervous system can communicate as its intended to.



Keys to Injury Prevention in Moscow Mills, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything possible 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 prepared for your intended activity:

  • 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 engage in its natural healing processes. If you have a more modest activity level, take a break after activity so your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints become too fatigued.
  • Wear protective equipment — Helmets, chest guards, elbow pads, and other recommended equipment in many sports can help prevent injuries like bruises or brain injuries. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Moscow Mills, MO doctor or injury prevention expert may fit you for braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the affected area. Other methods like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further stabilization.
  • Strengthen muscles — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them stand up to the force and torque your body is put through in sports and other activities. In your tailored injury prevention program with our licensed Moscow Mills, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to build up your body to safely participate in the activities you love.
  • Improve flexibility — Stretching accomplishes three critical things for injury prevention:
    1. It improves which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which allows for your soft tissue to handle more pronounced movements.
    2. It boosts blood flow, which allows for nutrient-rich blood to flow to your muscles, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to recover.
    3. It improves your posture, which, as you read earlier, is is one of the most important aspects of injury prevention.

    According to studies, sports like basketball that require sudden twists and movements require muscles and tendons compliant enough to perform those movements. Also, remember to stretch and warm up before games or training to further reduce the risk of injury.

  • Use accepted technique — In every sport, there are accepted techniques to use. These techniques not only improve performance but help prevent injuries by not forcing your body into unnatural positions and movements. Football players are taught to tackle a certain way to avoid 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 slow down your movement and analyze how to improve it.
  • Listen to your body — 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, immediately withdraw from the activity and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body isn’t feeling up to 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, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could aggravate an existing injury and put you out of commission 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 your doctor, and scheduling appointments with a physical therapist to make sure 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 targeting in football, rules against head-first sliding in baseball, and even the presence of special lanes on the street and sidewalk for bikers are examples of rules that leagues enacted to keep players safe. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that violations of those rules are punished.
  • Speak a professional physical therapist — It’s always advisable to get a physical before starting another season or starting up a new physical activity. While there, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a professional physical therapist in Moscow Mills, MO is something you should consider. All of our techniques have been demonstrated to help athletes remain healthy, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to your age, your injury history, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention Moscow Mills, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Moscow Mills

Injury Prevention for Older Moscow Mills, MO Adults

Falls in the elderly accounted for over 3 million emergency room admissions and over 34,000 deaths. Studies show that being physical active is a great method for preventing falls. Other conditions that limit mobility like arthritis that accumulate over time can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints strong. While seniors 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 Moscow Mills, MO include:

Moscow Mills, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in one of your favorite activities can create a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same euphoria. The licensed Moscow Mills, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to design for you a personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body prepared for the rigors of physical activity, and your mind confident that you can safely return to the activities you love doing most. We will aid you in feeling the physical and mental health benefits that you once valued so much. Make an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to learn more about what our Moscow Mills, MO injury prevention professionals can do for you.

Services Offered

Services Offered
  • Physical Therapy
    • Pre/Post Surgical Rehabilitation
    • Acute Injury Management
    • Chronic Injury Management
  • Work Conditioning/Hardening
  • Functional Capacity Evaluations
  • Certified Hand Therapy
  • Sports Physical Therapy
  • Pediatric Orthopedic Physical Therapy
  • Geriatric Physical Therapy
  • Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization
  • DorsaVi Video Motion Analysis
  • Spine Specialty – Certified Manual Therapy, McKenzie
  • Free Injury Screenings
  • Kinesio Taping®
  • Blood Flow Restriction Therapy

Our Team

Sara Crain
PT, CEAS, Astym Cert.
Julie Freiner
OTR/L, CHT
Samantha Bixby
PT, DPT, Astym Cert.
Farren Holman
PT, DPT, Astym Cert.
Matt Williams
MS, OTR/L, ATC/L, CHT
Jeff Hunter
Clinic Director, PT, Cert. MDT, MBA
Bailey Zimmermann
Front Office Supervisor
Amanda Reynolds
Front Office

Locations

Begin Your Recovery Today

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