Oakville, MO

Oakville, MO

Don't let the fear of reinjury prevent you from participating in the things what you do best.

Injury Prevention in Oakville, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or you just retired and want to spend more time hiking, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you deserve. While our licensed Oakville, 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 show you measures that are proven to prevent injury. Make an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or contact the location most convenient for you.

Physical activity is an essential part of many Oakville, MO people’s lives. Many of us participate in activities like playing sports, hiking, and more. Furthermore, committing to an active lifestyle reduces the risk of chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, eurodegenerative disease, anxiety, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Oakville, MO physical therapists allow you to come back as fierce as ever, but our injury prevention professionals 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 personalized to each client and the activities they want to return to.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a lingering injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Oakville, MO for a free injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can keep up with your sport or hobby, keep reading or call to speak to a physical therapist today.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Oakville, MO

Most injuries fall into two categories:

  1. Wear-and-tear injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. They are common in overhead athletes such as softball or quarterbacks and commonly reveal themselves with joint pain.
  2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen suddenly. Examples include landing on uneven ground or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, twisting joints, fractures, and dislocations.

Some of the injuries we see most frequently, for example rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, such as ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, with an immediate impact to or twisting of the knee.

Injury Prevention Oakville, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Oakville

Why Do Injuries Happen? | Injury Prevention in Oakville, MO

While injuries occur for many different reasons, 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 primary causes of why your body cannot adjust to an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is essential to maintaining healthy joints and reducing injury. Imbalance can lead to an overreliance on one muscle group, which may cause your body to force it to participate in an activity it shouldn’t. It also prevents you from having optimal posture, and the weaker set of muscles will be pushed past its limit, resulting in failure and a higher probability of injury. Injuries can be caused by poor 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. Symptoms include:

Customized injury prevention with our knowledgeable physical therapists in Oakville, MO will bring balance to your muscles.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and lead to your body moving in unnatural ways, causing injury. Neurological issues, inflammation, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. It can lead to:

  • Joint mobility restrictions
  • Muscle imbalance
  • Coordination deficits
  • Reduced balance

At our first injury prevention appointment in Oakville, MO, we’ll discuss 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 additional medical professionals treating you, we’ll devise 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 who spend a lot of time in the same position. Athletes and other physically active people can have postural dysfunction when lying down, sitting, or in specific stances related to a given activity. Good posture means correct positioning when both static and moving in a way that does not remove the spine from its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the bones of the spine closer together, which disrupts communication between your brain and body and makes it harder to reach the strength and range of motion you need to achieve. Symptoms include:

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

By helping you understand correct posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring you are using your muscles equally, your flexibility is not jeopardized, and your nervous system can communicate as its intended to.



Injury Prevention Techniques in Oakville, 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 things you can do to make sure your body is strong and flexible enough for your intended activity:

  • Take a rest — Your body needs time to rest and recover after any moderate to intense activity. 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 have a more modest activity level, take it easy for the few hours after an activity so your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints become too fatigued.
  • Wear protective equipment — Helmets, mouth guards, elbow pads, and other equipment necessary in many sports can help prevent injuries like cuts or concussions. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or muscle, tendon, or ligament, your Oakville, MO physician or injury prevention specialist may fit you for stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other techniques like making sure all the equipment is snug can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
  • Strengthen muscles — Strengthening soft tissue helps it stand up to the rigors of heavy activity. In your customized injury prevention program with our professional Oakville, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to achieve ideal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to be able to avoid injury in the activities you want to participate in.
  • Boost flexibility — Increasing your flexibility achieves three important things for injury prevention:
    1. It boosts your range of motion, which allows for the tendons and ligaments connecting your muscles to your bones to handle more dramatic movements.
    2. It improves circulation, which carries nourishing blood to your muscles, eliminating waste byproduct and reinvigorating the muscles.
    3. It encourages good posture, which we already know is an an important part of injury prevention.

    According to studies, sports like football that require dynamic movements require soft tissue flexible enough to perform those movements. Also, don’t forget to stretch and warm up before any physical activity 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 reduce the risk of injury. Football players are taught to tackle a certain way to reduce the risk of brain damage, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best rotate their body. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to break down your movement and educate you on how to improve it.
  • Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — 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 sudden pain, stop immediately and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body does not feel well enough for a particularly rigorous training session, save it for another day.
  • Don’t play through an injury — Even though gritting through pain is often viewed as commendable among competitors, forcing your body to perform with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could make that injury worse and put you out of commission 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, visiting your doctor, and scheduling appointments with a physical therapist to ensure your body heals properly 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 in the interest of safety. Penalties for targeting in football, rules against head-first sliding in baseball, and even the existence of special lanes on the street and sidewalk for bikers are all rules that were adopted to keep participants 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 in your best interest to have a medical evaluation 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 Oakville, MO is a good idea for you. Every treatment plan we employ has been proven to prevent injury, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to how old you are, your injury history, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention Oakville, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Oakville

Injury Prevention for The Elderly in Oakville, MO

Falls in adults over 65 were responsible for over 3 million urgent care visits and over 34,000 deaths. Research demonstrates that physical activity is a great method for preventing falls. Other conditions that cause pain such as arthritis that accumulate over time can be more bearable and take longer to progress with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints active. 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 Oakville, MO include:

Oakville, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in something you love doing can lead to a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same happiness. The experienced Oakville, 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 doing most. We will aid you in feeling the physical and mental health benefits that you do not want to lose. Make an appointment online or call the location nearest you to start your program with one of our injury prevention professionals in Oakville, 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
  • Spine Specialty – Certified Manual Therapy
  • Free Injury Screenings
  • Kinesio Taping®
  • Blood Flow Restriction Therapy

Our Team

Stephen Brunjes
OTR/L, CEAS
Greg Nicholas
Clinic Director, MPT, CMPT
Jamie Davis
Front Office
Grace Gualtieri
Physical Therapist

Locations

Begin Your Recovery Today

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