Injury Prevention in New Town, MO. Whether you play a sport and are hoping for an opportunity at the next level, or you just retired and want to dedicate your time to camping, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you desire. While our licensed New Town, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others recover from injury, we are complete movement health specialists who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to show you exercises that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location most convenient for you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many New Town, MO residents. We love activities such as playing sports, playing golf, or other physical activities. Furthermore, committing to an active lifestyle reduces the risk of chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, mental health issues, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed New Town, MO physical therapists allow you to return to action even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention experts can help keep you active by improving your overall strength, flexibility, and posture. 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 level of activity they want to reach.

If you’ve recently sustained an injury, or have a persistent injury that is not getting better with time, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in New Town, 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 call to speak to a physical therapist at your earliest convenience.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in New Town, MO

Injuries typically fall into two categories:

1. Wear-and-tear 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, with joint pain usually being the first symptom.
2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. 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 common injuries, such as rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, such as ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in New Town, MO

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally happen because your soft tissue, 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 chief causes of why your body cannot adjust to an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is key to maintaining healthy joints and reducing injury. Imbalance can result in overemphasis for one muscle group, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also causes posture dysfunction, 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 insufficient muscle balance in relation to other muscle groups, such as having a strong chest and weak back, 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

Customized injury prevention with our professional physical therapists in New Town, 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. Neurological issues, swelling, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. Symptoms include:

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

At our first injury prevention appointment in New Town, MO, we’ll evaluate 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 medical professionals involved in your care, we’ll develop a personalized treatment plan based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your movement back on track.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture is not just an issue for people with desk jobs. Athletes and others with active lifestyles can have postural dysfunction when at lest, using the computer, or in certain positions they need to be in for their sport. Correct posture means 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 compact the bones of the spine, which has a negative affect on our body’s ability to communicate with itself and reach ideal movement health. Symptoms include:

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

Good posture is a vital part of injury prevention because it ensures you are using your muscles equally, your flexibility can be improved and maintained, and your spine is in its natural position.

Keys to Injury Prevention in New Town, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything you could to prevent one. No one technique is 100% foolproof in injury prevention. However, there are precautions to greatly reduce the risk of injury:

• Take breaks — Your body needs time to rest and recover after any moderate to intense activity. If you have a very high activity level, one or two rest days a week will allow your body to engage in its natural healing and recovery processes. If you have a more modest activity level, rest for the rest of the day after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
• Use the correct equipment — Helmets, mouth guards, safety pads and guards, and other required equipment in sports and other activities helps you avoid injuries such as rashes or concussions. If you’ve had a previous injury, your New Town, MO physician or injury prevention expert may fit you for braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize a joint. 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 stand up to the force and torque necessary for in sports and other activities. Our New Town, MO injury prevention experts 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:
  1. It boosts which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which lets for the tendons and ligaments connecting your muscles to your bones to adapt to more drastic movements.
  2. It enhances blood flow, which carries protein-rich blood to your muscles, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to restore themselves.
  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 include dynamic motions require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility to store and release 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 — 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 get be the best player you can be but help prevent injuries. Football players are taught to tackle with the shoulder in order to reduce the risk of brain damage, 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 educate you on how to both be a better athlete and reduce your risk of injury.
• Listen to your body — If you feel pain in a muscle or joint, that’s your body’s way of telling you something isn’t right. If you feel something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, stop immediately and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body isn’t holing up well in a particularly rigorous training session, don’t force it.
• Don’t play through an injury — Even though gutting it out through pain is often seen as a courageous act among competitors, forcing your body to perform with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could make that injury worse and leave you on the sidelines for longer than it originally would have. 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 make sure 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 in the interest of safety. 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 all rules that leagues enacted to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. Those were enacted for a reason, and there’s a reason that there are penalties for them.
• Consult a licensed physical therapist — It’s always advisable to get a physical before starting another season or committing yourself to any strenuous activity or training regimen. While there, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a knowledgeable physical therapist in New Town, MO is a good idea for you. 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, any previous injuries, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in New Town, MO

Falls in the elderly were responsible for over 3 million emergency room visits and over 34,000 deaths. Research demonstrates that physical activity is invaluable in preventing falls. Other conditions such as arthritis that are wear and tear injuries can be more bearable and take longer to progress with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints strong. While seniors typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, healthy strength, stability, flexibility, and correct posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in New Town, 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

New Town, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in something you love doing causes a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same elation. The professional New Town, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to guide you through your own personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body as safe and healthy as can be, 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. Schedule an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to discover what our New Town, MO injury prevention specialists can do for you.