Parkway, MO

Parkway, MO

Don't let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love.

Injury Prevention in Parkway, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, or a recent retiree who wants to dedicate your time to bike riding, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our certified Parkway, 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 movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to teach out methods 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 reach out to the location most convenient for you.

Physical activity is an essential part of many Parkway, MO people’s lives. We love activities like playing sports, hiking, or other physical activities. Furthermore, committing to an active lifestyle helps stave off significant health problems including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Parkway, MO physical therapists help you come back and perform even better than before, but our injury prevention specialists can help preserve your active lifestyle by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our treatment plans, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, have been prove to work and are developed uniquely for each client and the level of activity they want to reach.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a nagging injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Parkway, MO for a no-risk, no-obligation injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and ensure that you can keep up with your sport or hobby, keep reading or inquire about an appointment at your earliest convenience.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Parkway, MO

Injuries generally happen for one of two reasons:

  1. Repetitive demand injuries are injuries happen gradually as a body part degrades because of repetitive movements. They are common in overhead athletes such as water polo or shotput and pole-vaulters and typically are accompanied by joint pain.
  2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include falling or a sudden impact by an object or another person. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, broken bones, 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, such as ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with an immediate impact to or twisting of the knee.

Injury Prevention Parkway, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Parkway

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Parkway, MO

While injuries occur for many different reasons, and some are inescapable, they generally occur because your soft tissue, 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 crucial to supporting joints and reducing injury. Imbalance can cause dependency on 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 ideal posture, and the weaker set of muscles will be pushed past its limit, resulting in failure and a higher likelihood of injury. Muscle imbalance can refer to insufficient muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong hamstring and weak quadriceps, or within muscle groups, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff having different levels of strength. Muscle imbalance can result in:

Personalized injury prevention with our experienced physical therapists in Parkway, 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, causing injury. It can be caused by numerous musculoskeletal issues. It can cause injury through:

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

At our first injury prevention appointment in Parkway, MO, we’ll evaluate your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, in tandem with with your doctor or any other providers treating you, we’ll design a tailored game plan been proven to work through 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 resting, driving, or in specific positions they need to be in for a given activity. Good posture means proper alignments of the neck, torso, pelvis, and extremities in a way that encourages our spine to stay in its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the joints in the spine closer together, which disrupts our body’s internal communications and makes it difficult to attain optimal movement health. It causes injuries through:

  • 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, range of motion, and that your vertebrae remain in place.



How to Prevent Injury in Parkway, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything you could to reduce that risk. No one precaution is guaranteed to be effective in injury prevention. However, there are precautions 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 and recovery processes. If you’re moderately active, rest for the rest of the day after an activity so your body doesn’t become too fatigued.
  • Wear protective equipment — Helmets, chin straps, elbow pads, and other equipment necessary in many sports helps you avoid injuries such as lacerations or brain injuries. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or muscle, tendon, or ligament, your Parkway, MO physician or injury prevention specialist may advise braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize a joint. Other techniques like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further protection.
  • Strengthen muscles — Strengthening soft tissue helps it withstand the rigors your body is put through in sports and other activities. Our Parkway, MO injury prevention experts will work to achieve ideal muscle balance and strengthen the often forgotten muscles needed to be able to stay healthy in the activities you love.
  • Improve flexibility — Stretching contributes to injury prevention in three way:
    1. It increases your range of motion, which allows for your tendons and ligaments to adapt to more pronounced positions.
    2. It increases circulation, which allows for nutrient-rich blood to flow to your muscles, eliminating waste byproduct and revitalizing the muscles.
    3. It improves your posture, which, as we’ve discussed, is is one of the most important factors of injury prevention.

    According to studies, sports like football that necessitate dynamic movements require muscles and tendons compliant enough to perform those movements. Stretching and warm up exercises before games or training further helps prevent injuries.

  • Use proper technique — Through the years, each sport and physical activity develops a consensus of the best ways to position and move your body. These techniques not only help you perform better but help prevent injuries by not forcing your body into unnatural positions and movements. Football players are taught 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 utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and evaluate how to both improve your performance and prevent injury.
  • Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If a part of your body is bothering you, your body is trying to send you a message. If you feel sudden pain, immediately withdraw from the activity and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body isn’t holing up well in an intense workout, don’t force it.
  • Don’t play through an injury — Even though gritting through pain is often viewed as a valiant act 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 what caused your injury and how severe it is, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, visiting urgent care, and a series of physical therapy sessions to ensure 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 to reduce the risk of injury. Penalties for helmet to helmet hits in football, rules against coming from behind in soccer, and even the existence of bike lanes are all rules put in place to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that violations of those rules are punished.
  • Speak a professional physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to get a physical before a new season or starting up a new physical activity. During your physical, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a licensed physical therapist in Parkway, MO is a good idea for you. All of our techniques have been demonstrated to help athletes remain healthy, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to your age, your injury history, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention Parkway, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Parkway

Injury Prevention for Older Parkway, MO Adults

Falls in the elderly were responsible for more than 3 million emergency room visits and more than 34,000 deaths. Studies show that being physical active is invaluable in reducing the risk of 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 soft tissue and joints healthy. While older adults typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, appropriate strength, stability, flexibility, and correct posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Parkway, MO include:

Parkway, 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 keeps us from experiencing the same euphoria. The experienced Parkway, 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. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits that you once valued so much. Request an appointment online or call the location nearest you to see what our Parkway, MO injury prevention experts can do for you.

Services Offered

Services Offered
  • Physical Therapy
    • Pre/Post Surgical Rehabilitation
    • Acute Injury Management
    • Chronic Injury Management
  • Certified Hand Therapy
  • Advanced Work Rehabilitation
  • Functional Capacity Evaluations
  • Sports Physical Therapy
  • Pediatric Orthopedic Physical Therapy
  • Geriatric Physical Therapy
  • Vestibular Therapy
  • Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization
  • Spine Specialty – Certified Manual Therapy
  • Free Injury Screenings
  • Kinesio Taping®
  • Blood Flow Restriction Therapy (BFR)

Our Team

Stephen Brunjes
OTR/L, CEAS
Danielle O’Rando
Front Office
Sharon Titter
Clinic Director, MPT

Locations

Begin Your Recovery Today

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