Injury Prevention in O’Fallon, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or are entering your golden years and want to dedicate your time to hiking, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you desire. While our licensed O’Fallon, 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 movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to guide you through measures 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 reach out to the location nearest you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many O’Fallon, MO residents. Many of us participate in active endeavors such as playing sports, swimming, and more. Additionally, pursuing an active lifestyle helps prevent future health problems including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, eurodegenerative disease, depression, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed O’Fallon, MO physical therapists allow you to come back as fierce as ever, but our injury prevention specialists 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 personalized to each client and the activities they want to return to.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a nagging injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in O’Fallon, MO for a free injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and protect your sport or hobby, read on below or call to speak to a physical therapist at your earliest convenience.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in O’Fallon, MO

Most injuries happen for one of two reasons:

1. Repetitive motion injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. They are common in overhead athletes such as tennis or basketball players and commonly are accompanied by joint pain.
2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include falling or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, fractures, and dislocations.

Some of the injuries we see most frequently, like 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.

Why Do Injuries Happen? | Injury Prevention in O’Fallon, MO

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally happen because of dysfunction or imbalance and your body and between body parts. There are three main causes of why your body cannot adjust to an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is key to supporting joints and staving off injury. Imbalance can cause overemphasis for one muscle group, which may cause your body to force it to participate in an activity it shouldn’t. 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 hamstring and weak quadriceps, or in the same muscle group, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff having different levels of strength. Symptoms include:

• Muscle weakness
• Muscle inflexibility
• Poor muscle recruitment
• Coordination deficiency

Personalized injury prevention with our licensed physical therapists in O’Fallon, MO will bring balance to your muscles.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can result in poor balance and lead to your body moving in unnatural ways, increasing your risk of injury. Neurological issues, inflammation, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. It can cause injury through:

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

At our first injury prevention appointment in O’Fallon, MO, we’ll go over your medical history and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, in tandem with with your physician or any other providers involved in your treatment, we’ll design a personalized game plan been proven to work by research and studies to get your movement health to the level you need it to to do what you love.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people who spend a lot of time in the same position. Athletes and others with active lifestyles can suffer from postural dysfunction when resting, driving, or in certain stances related to their sport. Correct posture means correct alignments of the different joints and muscles of your body 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. Symptoms include:

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

By teaching you correct posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring you are using your muscles equally, your flexibility is not jeopardized, and your spine is in its natural position.

Injury Prevention Methods in O’Fallon, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything possible to prevent one. No one safety tip is guaranteed to be effective in injury prevention. However, there are several steps you can take to make sure your body is strong and flexible enough for your intended activity:

• 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 encourage your body to engage in its natural healing and recovery processes. If you have a more moderate activity level, relax for the rest of the day after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
• Use the appropriate equipment — Helmets, mouth guards, safety pads and guards, and other required equipment in many sports can help prevent injuries such as bruises or concussions. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your O’Fallon, MO physician or injury prevention professional may advise braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the injured area. Other methods like tying your athletic footwear tightly offers further protection.
• Strengthen muscles — Strengthening soft tissue helps it stand up to the rigors of heavy activity. Our O’Fallon, MO injury prevention specialists will work to build up your body to safely participate in the activities you want to participate in.
• Increase flexibility — Increasing your flexibility contributes to injury prevention in three way:
  1. It increases which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which allows for your tendons and ligaments to handle more drastic positions.
  2. It increases circulation, which allows for nourishing blood to flow to your muscles, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to heal.
  3. It encourages good posture, which, as you read earlier, is is one of the most important aspects of injury prevention.

  According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like basketball that necessitate bouncing and jumping require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility to store and release the high amount of energy required. Also, don’t forget to stretch and warm up before any physical activity to further reduce the risk of injury.

• Use accepted technique — Through the years, each sport and physical activity develops a consensus of the best techniques to use. These techniques not only improve performance but help reduce the risk of injury. Football players are taught to tackle with the shoulder in order to avoid a concussion, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best apply torque to your body. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and analyze 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 isn’t right. If you feel a sudden pop or grinding sensation, stop immediately and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t feeling up to an intense workout, don’t force it.
• Don’t play through an injury — While teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate an athlete that guts it out through pain, 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 you would have been sitting out. Depending on the nature of your injury, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, visiting your doctor, and a series of physical therapy sessions to make sure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
• 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 helmet to helmet hits in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the presence of bike lanes are all rules put in place to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. Those are in place for a reason, and there’s a reason that there are penalties for them.
• Speak a professional physical therapist — It’s a good idea to get a physical before another season begins or starting up a new physical activity. While there, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a professional physical therapist in O’Fallon, MO is something you should consider. 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 Older O’Fallon, MO Adults

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 reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions like arthritis that develop over the course of several years can be slowed down by physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints strong. While the physical demands for older adults may not be as high as an athlete, healthy strength, stability, flexibility, and good posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in O’Fallon, 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

O’Fallon, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in in an activity you prepare and train for and love can lead to a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same joy. The professional O’Fallon, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to design for you a personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body as safe and healthy as can be, and your mind confident that you do not have to fear going back to what you love. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits that you do not want to lose. Make an appointment online or call the location nearest you to discover what our O’Fallon, MO injury prevention specialists can do for you.