Injury Prevention in Osage Hills, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or a recent retiree who wants to dedicate your time to taking ski vacations, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our professional Osage Hills, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to recover from injury, we are complete movement health specialists who can evaluate your movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to teach out techniques that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or reach out to the location nearest you.

Physical activity is an essential part of many Osage Hills, MO people’s lives. We love activities like playing sports, biking, and more. Furthermore, keeping an active lifestyle reduces the risk of chronic conditions including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, degenerative brain diseases, anxiety, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Osage Hills, MO physical therapists help you return to action even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention experts can help you reduce the risk of further injury by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our methods, 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 sustained an injury, or have a persistent injury that is not getting better with time, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Osage Hills, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can continue with 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 Osage Hills, MO

Injuries generally 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. They are common in overhead athletes athletes who are required to repeat throwing or striking motions and typically reveal themselves with joint pain.
2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. 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, for example ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, with a sudden impact to the knee.

Why Do Injuries Happen? | Injury Prevention in Osage Hills, MO

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally occur because your muscles, ligaments, tendons, bones, and joints cannot hold up under 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 staving off injury. Imbalance can lead to overemphasis for 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 one set of muscles becoming fatigued more quickly, increasing the risk of injury. Injuries can be caused by insufficient muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong bicep and weak tricep, or within muscle groups, such as an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Symptoms include:

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

Personalized injury prevention with our certified physical therapists in Osage Hills, MO will ensure that your muscles are at optimal proportional strength.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can result in poor balance and lead to your body moving in unnatural ways, increasing your risk of injury. It can be caused by many different musculoskeletal issues. It can cause injury through:

• Joint mobility restrictions
• Muscle imbalance
• Poor coordination
• Reduced balance

When you first see our injury prevention experts in Osage Hills, MO, we’ll go over your medical history and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, in concert with with your physician or any other providers involved in your treatment, we’ll come up with a customized treatment plan been proven to work by research and studies to get your movement back on track.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture is not just an issue for people with slouched shoulders. Athletes and other physically active people can have postural dysfunction when lying down, driving, or in specific body positions necessary for a given activity. Healthy posture means correct positioning 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 bring the bones of the spine closer together, which disrupts our body’s internal communications and makes it challenging to achieve 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 teaching you good posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring muscle balance, range of motion, and that your spine is in its natural position.

Keys to Injury Prevention in Osage Hills, 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 things you can do to make sure your body is prepared 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’re moderately active, take it easy for the few hours after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
• Wear the right equipment — Helmets, chest guards, safety pads and guards, and other recommended equipment in many sports can help prevent injuries such as contusions or head injuries. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your Osage Hills, MO doctor or physical therapist may recommend stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other techniques like tying your athletic footwear tightly can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
• Strengthen muscles — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them withstand the rigors your body is put through in sports and other activities. Our Osage Hills, MO injury prevention specialists will work to build up your body to be able to stay healthy in the activities you want to participate in.
• Improve flexibility — Stretching contributes to injury prevention in three way:
  1. It increases 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 adjust to more dramatic positions.
  2. It improves circulation, which carries nutrient-rich blood to your muscles, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to recover.
  3. It increases your posture, which we already know is an is one of the most important aspects of injury prevention.

  According to studies, sports like soccer that necessitate sudden twists and movements require soft tissue compliant enough to incorporate and exert the high amount of energy required. Stretching and warm up exercises before games or training further helps prevent injuries.

• Use correct technique — In every sport, there are accepted techniques to use. These techniques not only help you get be the best athlete you can be but help reduce the risk of injury. Football players learn to tackle a certain way to reduce the risk of a concussion, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best rotate their body. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and analyze how to both be a better athlete and prevent injury.
• 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 is wrong. If you feel a sudden crack or grinding sensation, stop immediately and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t holing up well in an intense workout, save it for another day.
• Don’t play through an injury — While gutting it out 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 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, visiting urgent care, and a series of physical therapy sessions 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 to help prevent injury. Penalties for leading with the helmet in football, rules against head-first sliding in baseball, and even the presence of bike lanes are examples of rules that leagues enacted to keep participants safe. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that there are penalties for them.
• Consult a professional physical therapist — It’s a good idea to get a physical before starting another season or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. While there, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a professional physical therapist in Osage Hills, 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 how old you are, your injury history, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Osage Hills, MO

Falls in adults over 65 accounted for more than 3 million urgent care admissions and more than 34,000 deaths. Research demonstrates that physical activity 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 muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints healthy. While seniors typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, healthy strength, stability, flexibility, and correct posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Osage Hills, 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

Osage Hills, 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 experienced Osage Hills, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to develop your personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body prepared for the rigors of physical activity, 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. Make an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to learn more about what our Osage Hills, MO injury prevention experts can do for you.