Injury Prevention in Paulina Hills, MO. Whether you’re an athlete hoping for a shot at the next stage, or you just retired and want to spend more time being physical fit, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you deserve. While our licensed Paulina Hills, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others heal after an injury, we are complete movement health specialists who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to teach out methods that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location nearest you.

Physical activity is an essential part of many Paulina Hills, MO people’s lives. Many of us participate in activities such as playing sports, playing golf, and more. Furthermore, pursuing an active lifestyle reduces the risk of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, degenerative brain diseases, mental health issues, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Paulina Hills, MO physical therapists help you return to action even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention experts can help keep you active by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our treatment plans, for both healing from and preventing injury, have been prove to work and are developed uniquely for each client and the lifestyle they desire.

If you’ve recently sustained an injury, or have a nagging injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Paulina Hills, MO for a free injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can keep up with your active lifestyle, read on below or inquire about an appointment at your earliest convenience.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Paulina Hills, MO

Injuries typically fall into two categories:

1. Overuse injuries are injuries that occur when a part of the body repeats the same motion time and time again. In sports, we see them the most in in overhead athletes such as raquetball or soccer goalies and typically reveal themselves with joint pain.
2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen because of a specific and sudden trauma. Examples include landing on uneven ground or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some common injuries, like rotator cuff tears, can result from either overuse or acute trauma. Other injuries, such as ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with a sudden impact to the knee.

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Paulina Hills, MO

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally happen because your muscles, ligaments, tendons, bones, and joints cannot hold up under the force, torque, or stretching that are required or are possible in a given activity. There are three primary causes of why your body cannot handle an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is crucial to supporting joints and reducing injury. Imbalance can result in an overreliance on one set of muscles, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also prevents you from having ideal posture, and the weaker muscles will become tired sooner, increasing the risk of injury. Injuries can be caused by inadequate 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 not having proportionate strength. Muscle imbalance can cause injury through:

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

Customized injury prevention with our professional physical therapists in Paulina Hills, MO will ensure that different muscles and muscle groups are equally strong.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and impede your body’s ability to naturally perform functional movements, causing injury. Problems in your nervous system, inflammation, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. Symptoms include:

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

When you first see our injury prevention specialists in Paulina 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 movement back on track.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people with desk jobs. People who play sports and others with active lifestyles can be affected by postural dysfunction when at lest, sitting, or in certain stances they need to be in for their sport. Healthy posture means correct alignments when both static and moving in a way that encourages our spine to stay in its natural curves. Poor posture can compress the vertebrae, which disrupts communication between your brain and body and makes it difficult to achieve optimal movement health. It can also lead to:

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

By helping you understand 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 spine is in its natural position.

Keys to Injury Prevention in Paulina Hills, 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 prepared for your desired activity level:

• Take a rest — 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 allow your body to engage in its natural healing processes. If you’re moderately active, relax for the rest of the day after an activity so your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints become too fatigued.
• Use the appropriate equipment — Helmets, chin straps, safety pads and guards, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities helps you avoid injuries such as rashes or head injuries. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your Paulina Hills, MO doctor or injury prevention expert may fit you for braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the affected area. Other methods like tying your shoes tightly can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
• Increase muscle strength — Strengthening soft tissue helps it stand up to the force and torque of heavy activity. In your tailored injury prevention program with our experienced Paulina Hills, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to achieve ideal muscle balance and strengthen the often forgotten muscles needed to be able to avoid injury in the activities you love.
• Enhance flexibility — Increasing your flexibility contributes to injury prevention in three way:
  1. It boosts your range of motion, which lets for your tendons and ligaments to adjust to more drastic movements.
  2. It enhances blood flow, which allows for protein-rich blood to flow to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and reinvigorating the muscles.
  3. It enhances your posture, which we already know is an is one of the most important aspects of injury prevention.

  According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like basketball that require dynamic motions require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility to perform those movements. Also, remember to stretch and warm up before games or training to further reduce the risk of injury.

• Use accepted 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 improve performance but help reduce the risk of injury. Football players learn to tackle with the shoulder in order to avoid a head injury, 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 improve it.
• 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, stop immediately and seek proportional medical care. If your body does not feel well enough for an intense workout, don’t force it.
• Don’t play through an injury — While teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate an athlete that plays through pain, forcing your body to perform with soft tissue or structural damage could aggravate an existing injury 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 an emergency room, and a series of physical therapy sessions to ensure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
• 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 existence of bike lanes are all rules that were adopted to keep participants safe. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that there are penalties for them.
• Consult a licensed physical therapist — It’s a good idea to get a physical before starting another season or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. During your physical, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a knowledgeable physical therapist in Paulina Hills, MO is right for you. Every treatment plan we employ has been demonstrated to prevent injury, and we’ll personalize your program to your age, your injury history, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention for Older Paulina Hills, MO Adults

Falls in the elderly were responsible for more than 3 million urgent care visits and more than 34,000 fatalities. Studies show that being physical active is invaluable in reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions that limit mobility like arthritis that accumulate over time can be slowed down by 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, the same principles of strength, stability, flexibility, and ideal posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Paulina 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

Paulina Hills, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in something you love doing causes a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same exhilaration. The knowledgeable Paulina Hills, 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 can safely return to the activities 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 reach out to the location nearest you to get started with one of our injury prevention professionals in Paulina Hills, MO.