Olympian Village, MO

Olympian Village, MO

Don't let a mental block over reinjury keep you from the things what you do best.

Injury Prevention in Olympian Village, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or a recent retiree who wants to dedicate your time to bike riding, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you deserve. While our professional Olympian Village, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others recover from injury, we are experts in the entire musculoskeletal system 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. Make an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location most convenient for you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many Olympian Village, MO residents. Many of us participate in activities such as playing sports, hiking, and more. Furthermore, keeping an active lifestyle helps prevent chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, eurodegenerative disease, anxiety, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Olympian Village, MO physical therapists help you come back as fierce as ever, but our injury prevention experts can help preserve your active lifestyle by improving your overall strength, flexibility, and posture. All of our treatment plans, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, have been prove to work and are customized for 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 nearest you in Olympian Village, 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 today.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Olympian Village, MO

Injuries generally 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 athletes who use throwing or striking motions and typically reveal themselves with joint pain.
  2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. 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, like rotator cuff tears, can result from either overuse or acute trauma. Other injuries, like ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with a sudden impact to the knee.

Injury Prevention Olympian Village, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Olympian Village

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Olympian Village, MO

While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and are sometimes inescapable, they generally occur 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 crucial to supporting joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can result in 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. Injuries can be caused by inadequate 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 the four muscles in the rotator cuff not having proportionate strength. Muscle imbalance can result in:

Personalized injury prevention with our knowledgeable physical therapists in Olympian Village, MO will ensure that your muscles are at optimal proportional strength.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and impede your body’s ability to naturally perform functional movements, increasing your risk of injury. It can be caused by a range of musculoskeletal issues. It can lead to:

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

When you initially see our injury prevention specialists in Olympian Village, MO, we’ll go over your medical history and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, together with your physician or any other medical professionals involved in your care, we’ll develop a personalized game plan been proven to work by research and studies to get your movement health to reach its potential.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture is not just an issue for people with desk jobs. People who play sports and others with active lifestyles can be affected by postural dysfunction when lying down, sitting, or in certain stances they need to be in for their sport. Optimal posture means correct alignments of the neck, torso, pelvis, and extremities in a way that encourages our spine to stay in its natural curves. Poor posture can compress the joints in the spine, which disrupts your nervous system and makes it challenging to reach the strength and range of motion you need to achieve. It causes injuries through:

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

By guiding you to the best practices for posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring you are using the right muscles for the right movements, your flexibility is not jeopardized, and your vertebrae remain in place.



How to Prevent Injury in Olympian Village, 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 several steps you can take 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’re heavily active, make sure to take one or two days off per week to signal to your body to engage in its natural healing processes. If you’re moderately active, take it easy for the few hours after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
  • Wear protective equipment — Helmets, shin guards, protective eyewear, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities can help prevent injuries such as lacerations or brain injuries. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or muscle, tendon, or ligament, your Olympian Village, MO doctor or physical therapist may recommend stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other measures like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further stabilization.
  • Improve muscle strength — Strengthening soft tissue helps it withstand the rigors of heavy activity. In your customized injury prevention program with our licensed Olympian Village, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to achieve ideal muscle balance and strengthen the often forgotten muscles needed to be able to stay healthy in the activities you want to participate in.
  • Increase flexibility — Increasing your flexibility accomplishes three important things for injury prevention:
    1. It enhances 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 handle more forceful movements.
    2. It boosts blood flow, which allows for protein-rich blood to flow to your muscles, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to recover.
    3. It encourages good posture, which, as we’ve discussed, is an essential part of injury prevention.

    According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like soccer that require sudden twists and movements 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 sport, there is an accepted way to position and move your body. These techniques not only help you get be the best athlete you can be but help prevent injuries. Football players learn to tackle a certain way to avoid brain damage, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to make sure their muscles are moving unnaturally. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to slow down your movement and analyze how to both be a better athlete and prevent injury.
  • Listen to your body — If a part of your body is bothering you, that’s your body’s way of telling you something isn’t right. If you feel a sudden pop or grinding sensation, immediately stop all physical activity and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body isn’t holing up well in an intense training session, don’t force it.
  • Don’t play through an injury — Even though playing through pain is often seen as commendable among competitors, forcing your body to perform with soft tissue or structural damage could make that injury worse and leave you off the field or court for longer than it originally would have. Depending on the nature of your injury, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, seeing your doctor, and a series of physical therapy sessions to make sure your body heals naturally and can handle 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 targeting in football, rules against head-first sliding in baseball, and even the existence of bike lanes are examples of rules that leagues enacted to keep players safe. Those are in place for a reason, and there’s a reason that violations of those rules are punished.
  • Speak a licensed physical therapist — It’s a good idea to get a physical before starting another season or committing yourself to any strenuous activity or training regimen. During your appointment, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a licensed physical therapist in Olympian Village, MO is a good idea for you. All of our techniques have been proven to reduce the risk of injury, and we’ll personalize your program to how old you are, any previous injuries, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention Olympian Village, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Olympian Village

Injury Prevention for The Elderly in Olympian Village, MO

Falls in adults over 65 were responsible for more than 3 million emergency room visits and more than 34,000 deaths. Research demonstrates that being physical active is invaluable in preventing falls. Other conditions that cause pain such as arthritis that develop over the course of several years can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints active. While the physical demands for seniors may not be as high as an athlete, appropriate strength, stability, flexibility, and proper posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Olympian Village, MO include:

Olympian Village, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in something you love doing can lead to a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same exhilaration. The experienced Olympian Village, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to develop your 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 once valued so much. Request an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to find out more about what our Olympian Village, MO injury prevention experts can do for you.

Services Offered

Services Offered
  • Physical Therapy
    • Pre/Post Surgical Rehabilitation
    • Acute Injury Management
    • Chronic Injury Management
  • Occupational Therapy
  • Advanced Work Rehabilitation
  • Work Conditioning/Hardening
  • Functional Capacity Evaluations
  • Certified Hand Therapy
  • Vestibular Therapy/Concussion Management
  • Trigger Point Dry Needling
  • Sports Physical Therapy
  • Pediatric Orthopedic 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
Mary McKinney
Front Office
Kaila Mikesch
Clinic Director, PT, DPT, CMPT
Eric Meyer
Assistant Clinic Director, PT, DPT, CMPT
Ernie Goddard
Partner, PT
Natalie Carter
PT, DPT, Astym. Cert.
Emma Witte
PTA, ASTYM Cert.
Kelly Barnes
Physical Therapist
Jennifer Zweigart
Front Office
Shannon Blum
PTA, ATC

Locations

Begin Your Recovery Today

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