Injury Prevention Park Hills, MO

Injury Prevention in Park Hills, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, or you just retired and want to spend more time hiking, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our certified Park Hills, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to heal after an injury, we are complete movement health specialists who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to guide you through exercises 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 Park Hills, MO residents. Many of us participate in active endeavors such as playing sports, playing golf, and more. Additionally, committing to an active lifestyle helps prevent chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia, mental health issues, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Park Hills, MO physical therapists allow you to return to action and perform even better than before, but our injury prevention professionals 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 level of activity they want to reach.

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 Park Hills, MO for a no-risk, no-obligation injury screening. To take preventative measures and protect your sport or hobby, read on below or call to speak to a physical therapist at your earliest convenience.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Park Hills, MO

Most injuries fall into two categories:

Chronic 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 such as tennis or quarterbacks, with joint pain usually being the first warning sign.
Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include landing on uneven ground or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, twisting joints, 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, for example ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.

Injury Prevention Park Hills, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Park Hills

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

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally occur 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 preventing injury. Imbalance can lead to overemphasis for one muscle group, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It can also lead to poor posture, and the weaker set of muscles will be pushed past its limit, resulting in failure and a higher probability of injury. Muscle imbalance can refer 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 an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Muscle imbalance can cause injury through:

Muscle weakness
Muscle inflexibility
Poor muscle recruitment
Coordination deficits

Personalized injury prevention with our licensed physical therapists in Park Hills, MO will ensure that different muscles and muscle groups are equally strong.

Movement Dysfunction

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

Joint mobility restrictions
Muscle imbalance
Coordination deficiency
Lessened balance

At our first injury prevention appointment in Park Hills, MO, we’ll discuss your medical history and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, in concert with with your doctor or any additional providers involved in your care, we’ll create a personalized plan of attack been proven to work through research and studies to get your body moving as it should.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture is not just an issue for people with desk jobs. People who play sports and other physically active people can suffer from postural dysfunction when at lest, sitting, or in certain stances they need to be in for a given activity. Good posture means correct positioning when both static and moving in a way that encourages our spine to stay in its natural curves. Poor posture can compress the joints in the spine, which disrupts our body’s internal communications and makes it challenging to attain optimal motion health. Symptoms include:

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

Good posture is an important part of injury prevention because it ensures muscle balance, flexibility, and that your vertebrae remain in place.

Injury Prevention Techniques in Park Hills, MO

All sports and physical activities carry an inherent risk of injury. We cannot promise that our injury prevention program completely negates the risk of injury. However, there are precautions 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 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.
Use protective equipment — Helmets, chest guards, safety pads and guards, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities can help prevent injuries like lacerations or head injuries. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your Park Hills, MO physician or injury prevention professional may advise braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the injured area. Other techniques like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further stabilization.
Increase muscle strength — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them stand up to the rigors of heavy activity. In your customized injury prevention program with our experienced Park Hills, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to achieve ideal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to be able to stay healthy in the activities you love.
Increase flexibility — Increasing your flexibility achieves three critical things for injury prevention:
1. It enhances your range of motion, which allows for your tendons and ligaments to adapt to more extreme movements.
2. It boosts blood flow, which carries nutrient-rich blood to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to recover.
3. It boosts your posture, which we already know is an an essential part of injury prevention.
According to research, sports like football that require dynamic movements require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility to incorporate and expel the high levels 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 perform better but help reduce the risk of injury. Football players learn to tackle with the shoulder in order to avoid brain damage, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best rotate their body. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to slow down your movement and evaluate how to both improve your performance and reduce your risk of injury.
Listen to your body — 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 a sudden pop or grinding sensation, immediately withdraw from the activity and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t feeling up to a particularly rigorous training session, save it for another day.
Don’t play through an injury — While playing through pain is often viewed as commendable among competitors, forcing your body to perform with soft tissue or structural damage could make that injury worse and put you out of commission for much longer than you would have been sitting out. Depending on what caused your injury and how severe it is, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, seeing urgent care, and rehab with a physical therapist to make sure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
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 coming from behind in soccer, and even the presence of bike lanes are examples of rules that were adopted to keep participants safe. Those were enacted for a reason, and there’s a reason that there are penalties for them.
Consult a licensed physical therapist — It’s always advisable to get a physical before starting another season or starting up a new activity or training regimen. While there, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a licensed physical therapist in Park Hills, MO is right for you. All of our techniques have been demonstrated to help athletes remain healthy, and we’ll personalize your program to how old you are, any previous injuries, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention Park Hills, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Park Hills

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Park Hills, MO

Falls in adults over 65 were responsible for over 3 million urgent care admissions and over 34,000 deaths. Studies show that being physical active is invaluable in reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions that limit mobility 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 soft tissue and joints strong. While older adults typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, healthy strength, stability, flexibility, and proper posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Park Hills, MO include:

Park Hills, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in one of your favorite activities causes a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same exultation. The professional Park Hills, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to develop your personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body strong and flexible, and your mind confident that you do not have to fear going back to what you love. We will aid you in feeling the physical and mental health benefits that you do not want to lose. Schedule an appointment online or call the location nearest you to start your program with one of our injury prevention specialists in Park Hills, MO.