Portage Des Sioux, MO

Portage Des Sioux, MO

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

Injury Prevention in Portage Des Sioux, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, 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 Portage Des Sioux, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others heal after an injury, we are experts in the entire musculoskeletal system who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to teach out measures that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Make an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location nearest you.

Being physically active is an essential part of many Portage Des Sioux, MO people’s lives. We love active endeavors such as playing sports, biking, or other physical activities. Furthermore, pursuing an active lifestyle reduces the risk of serious health problems like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Portage Des Sioux, MO physical therapists allow you to return to action even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention specialists can help keep you active by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our treatment plans, for both recovery and injury prevention, have been prove to work and are developed uniquely for each client and the activities they want to return to.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a nagging injury that is not getting better with time, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Portage Des Sioux, MO for a free injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can continue with your active lifestyle, keep reading or inquire about an appointment at your earliest convenience.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Portage Des Sioux, MO

Most injuries happen for one of two reasons:

  1. Overuse 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 such as water polo or shotput and pole-vaulters and commonly reveal themselves with joint pain.
  2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include falling or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, twisting joints, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some of the injuries we see most frequently, such as rotator cuff tears, can result from either overuse or acute trauma. Other injuries, like ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.

Injury Prevention Portage Des Sioux, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Portage Des Sioux

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Portage Des Sioux, MO

While injuries occur for many different reasons, and are sometimes inescapable, they generally occur because your soft tissue, bones, and joints cannot handle 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 adjust to an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is essential to maintaining healthy joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can lead to dependency on one set of muscles, 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. Injuries can be caused by poor muscle balance between 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 lead to:

Personalized injury prevention with our experienced physical therapists in Portage Des Sioux, MO will ensure that different muscles and muscle groups are equally strong.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can result in poor balance and lead to your body bending in ways it is not designed to, causing injury. It can be caused by numerous musculoskeletal issues. It can cause injury through:

  • Joint mobility limitations
  • Muscle imbalance
  • Coordination deficits
  • Lessened balance

When you first see our injury prevention specialists in Portage Des Sioux, MO, we’ll go through your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, together with your doctor or any other medical professionals involved in your treatment, we’ll devise a tailored plan of attack based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your movement back on track.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture is not just an issue for people who spend a lot of time in the same position. Athletes and other physically active people can have postural dysfunction when lying down, driving, or in certain poses related to their sport. Good posture means correct alignments of the neck, torso, pelvis, and extremities in a way that does not remove the spine from its natural curves. Poor posture can compress the joints in the spine, which disrupts your nervous system and makes it harder 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 helping you understand good 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.



How to Prevent Injury in Portage Des Sioux, MO

All sports and physical activities carry an inherent risk of injury. No one precaution is 100% foolproof in injury prevention. However, there are precautions to make sure your body is prepared for your intended activity:

  • Take breaks — Injuries are more common in overworked bodies. If you have a very high activity level, make sure to take one or two days off per week to allow your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. If you’re moderately active, take a break for the few hours after an activity so your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints become too fatigued.
  • Wear protective equipment — Helmets, chin straps, protective eyewear, and other equipment necessary in many sports can help prevent injuries like contusions or concussions. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or muscle, tendon, or ligament, your Portage Des Sioux, MO physician or physical therapist may advise braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the affected area. Other measures like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further protection.
  • Strengthen muscles — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them stand up to the force and torque necessary for in sports and other activities. In your customized injury prevention program with our professional Portage Des Sioux, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to achieve optimal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to be able to stay healthy in the activities you want to participate in.
  • Enhance flexibility — Increasing your flexibility contributes to injury prevention in three way:
    1. It boosts which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which allows for your tendons and ligaments to handle more pronounced movements.
    2. It boosts circulation, which carries nourishing blood to your soft tissue, eliminating waste byproduct and reinvigorating the muscles.
    3. It increases your posture, which, as we’ve discussed, is is one of the most important factors of injury prevention.

    According to research, sports like football that require bouncing and jumping require soft tissue flexible enough to incorporate and exert the high amount of energy required. Also, remember to stretch and warm up before any physical activity to further reduce the risk of injury.

  • 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 get be the best athlete you can be 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 a head injury, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best rotate their body. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to slow down your movement and evaluate how to both improve your performance and prevent injury.
  • 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 seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t feeling up to an intense training session, save it for another day.
  • Don’t play through an injury — While playing through pain is often seen as a valiant act among competitors, forcing your body to perform with soft tissue or structural damage could aggravate a current injury and leave you off the field or court for much longer than you would have been sitting out. Depending on the severity of your injury, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, seeing your doctor, and rehab with a physical therapist 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 reduce the risk of injury. Penalties for helmet to helmet hits in football, rules against head-first sliding in baseball, and even the presence of bike lanes are all rules that were adopted to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that there are penalties for them.
  • Consult a professional physical therapist — It’s always advisable to get a physical before another season begins or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. During your visit, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a licensed physical therapist in Portage Des Sioux, MO is right for you. All of our techniques have been proven to help athletes remain healthy, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to your age, your injury history, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention Portage Des Sioux, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Portage Des Sioux

Injury Prevention for Older Portage Des Sioux, MO Adults

Falls in adults over 65 accounted for more than 3 million emergency room 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 such as arthritis that accumulate over time can be more bearable and take longer to progress with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints healthy. While the physical demands for older adults may not be as high as an athlete, healthy strength, balance, flexibility, and optimal posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Portage Des Sioux, MO include:

Portage Des Sioux, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury 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 euphoria. The knowledgeable Portage Des Sioux, 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 confident that you can safely return to the activities you love doing most. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits of doing what you do best. Make an appointment online or reach out to the location nearest you to start your program with one of our injury prevention experts in Portage Des Sioux, MO.

Services Offered

Services Offered
  • Physical Therapy
    • Pre/Post Surgical Rehabilitation
    • Acute Injury Management
    • Chronic Injury Management
  • Work Conditioning/Hardening
  • Functional Capacity Evaluations
  • Sports Physical Therapy
  • Pediatric Orthopedic Physical Therapy
  • Geriatric Physical Therapy
  • Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization (Astym)
  • Spine Specialty – Certified Manual Therapy
  • Free Injury Screenings
  • Trigger Point Dry Needling
  • Kinesio Taping®
  • Video Motion Analysis
  • Blood Flow Restriction Therapy

Our Team

Sara Crain
PT, CEAS, Astym Cert.
Candace Cunningham
Clinic Director, PT, DPT
Abigail Alsmeyer
Front Office
Justin Bridwell
Front Office

Locations

Begin Your Recovery Today

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