Injury Prevention in Pacific, MO. Whether you play a sport and are trying to get a shot at the next level, or you just retired and want to dedicate your time to hiking, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you deserve. While our professional Pacific, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to recover from injury, we are experts in the entire musculoskeletal system who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to teach out exercises that are proven to reduce the risk of injury by preparing your body for the stressors of your desired activity. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location nearest you.

Physical activity is an essential part of many Pacific, MO people’s lives. We love activities like playing sports, swimming, and more. Furthermore, pursuing an active lifestyle helps prevent chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, degenerative brain diseases, anxiety, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Pacific, MO physical therapists help you come back even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention professionals can help you reduce the risk of further injury by improving your overall strength, flexibility, and posture. All of our treatment plans, for both recovery and injury prevention, have been prove to work and are personalized to each client and the level of activity they want to reach.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a persistent injury that won’t heal on its own, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Pacific, MO for a free injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can continue with your active lifestyle, read on below or call to speak to a physical therapist at your earliest convenience.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Pacific, MO

Most injuries happen for one of two reasons:

1. Wear-and-tear injuries are injuries happen gradually as a body part degrades because of repetitive movements. In sports, we see them the most in in overhead athletes athletes who are required to repeat throwing or striking motions, with joint pain usually being the first indicator.
2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include landing on uneven ground or a sudden impact by an object or another person. 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, like ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Pacific, MO

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally happen because of dysfunction or instability and your body and between body parts. There are three common dysfunctions that lead to injury:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is essential to maintaining healthy joints and staving off injury. Imbalance can cause overemphasis for one muscle group, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also prevents you from having ideal posture, and the weaker muscles will become fatigued sooner, making them more susceptible to injuries. Injuries can be caused by insufficient muscle balance in relation to other muscle groups, such as having a strong hamstring and weak quadriceps, 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 deficiency

Tailored injury prevention with our professional physical therapists in Pacific, MO will bring balance to your muscles.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can result in poor balance and impede your body’s ability to naturally perform functional movements, increasing your risk of injury. It can be caused by many different musculoskeletal issues. It can lead to:

• Joint mobility restrictions
• Muscle imbalance
• Coordination deficiency
• Decreased balance

At our initial injury prevention appointment in Pacific, MO, we’ll go through your medical records and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, together with your physician or any other providers involved in your care, we’ll come up with a personalized plan of attack based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your body moving as it should.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people with desk jobs. Athletes and others with active lifestyles can be affected by postural dysfunction when at lest, sitting, or in specific stances related to their sport. Correct posture refers to proper positioning of the different joints and muscles of your body in a way that keeps the spine within its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the vertebrae closer together, which interferes with our body’s ability to communicate with itself and 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 teaching you correct posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring muscle balance, range of motion, and that your nervous system can communicate as its intended to.

Keys to Injury Prevention in Pacific, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything you could 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 strong and flexible enough for your desired activity level:

• 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 signal to your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. 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.
• Wear the right equipment — Helmets, shin guards, safety pads and guards, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities helps you avoid injuries like bruises or head injuries. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your Pacific, MO doctor or physical therapist may suggest braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the affected area. Other techniques like making sure all the equipment is snug can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
• Improve muscle strength — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them stand up to the force and torque your body is put through in sports and other activities. Our Pacific, MO injury prevention experts will work to build up your body to be able to stay healthy in the activities you love.
• Enhance 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 lets for your soft tissue to handle more drastic positions.
  2. It enhances blood flow, which carries nutrient-rich blood to your muscles, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to heal.
  3. It enhances your posture, which we already know is an is one of the most important factors of injury prevention.

  According to studies, sports like basketball that necessitate sudden twists and movements require soft tissue flexible enough to incorporate and expel the high amount of energy required. Stretching and warm up exercises before activities further helps prevent injuries.

• Use correct 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 prevent injuries by not forcing your body into unnatural positions and movements. Football players are taught to tackle a certain way to reduce the risk of brain damage, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to make sure their muscles are moving unnaturally. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to break down your movement and analyze how to improve it.
• 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 is wrong. If you feel sudden pain, immediately stop all physical activity and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body isn’t holing up well in a particularly rigorous training session, save it for another day.
• Don’t play through an injury — Even though gritting through pain is often seen as a valiant act among competitors, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could make that injury worse and leave you on the sidelines for much longer than you would have been sitting out. Depending on the severity of your injury, recommended actions may be using 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 — Most sports have special rules at different levels to help prevent injury. Penalties for targeting in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the presence of special lanes on the street and sidewalk for bikers are all rules put in place to keep players safe. Those are in place for a reason, and there’s a reason that there are penalties for them.
• Speak a licensed physical therapist — It’s always advisable to see a doctor before starting another season or starting up a new physical activity. During your visit, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a expert physical therapist in Pacific, MO is something you should consider. All of our techniques have been demonstrated to help athletes remain healthy, and we’ll personalize your program to how old you are, your injury history, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Pacific, MO

Falls in the elderly accounted for more than 3 million urgent care admissions and more than 34,000 fatalities. Studies show that being physical active is a great method for preventing falls. Other conditions that cause pain such as arthritis that develop over the course of several years can be more bearable and take longer to progress with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints strong. While older adults typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, healthy strength, stability, flexibility, and good posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Pacific, MO include:

• Soft Tissue Mobilization
• Post Surgical Rehabilitation
• Shin Splint Treatment
• Direct Access Physical Therapy
• Gait Analysis
• Pelvic Floor Therapy
• Dry Needling Near Me
• Tendonitis Treatment
• Manual Physical Therapy
• Orthopedic Rehab Near Me

Pacific, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in one of your favorite activities can create a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same exultation. The experienced Pacific, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to guide you through your own personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body prepared for the rigors of physical activity, and your mind confident that you do not have to fear going back to what 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 see what our Pacific, MO injury prevention specialists can do for you.