Injury Prevention in South County, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or are entering your golden years and want to spend more time taking ski vacations, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our certified South County, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to heal after an injury, we are complete movement health specialists who can evaluate your movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to guide you through techniques that are proven to reduce the risk of injury by preparing your body for the stressors of your desired activity. Make an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or reach out to the location most convenient for you.
Being physically active is an essential part of many South County, MO people’s lives. We love active endeavors like playing sports, kayaking, and more. Furthermore, keeping an active lifestyle helps prevent serious health problems like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, eurodegenerative disease, depression, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed South County, MO physical therapists help you come back and perform even better than before, 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 methods, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, are proven to be effective and are customized for each client and the lifestyle they desire.
If you’ve recently sustained an injury, or have a nagging injury that won’t heal on its own, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in South County, MO for a no-risk, no-obligation injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and protect your active lifestyle, keep reading or inquire about an appointment today.
Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in South County, MO
Injuries typically happen for one of two reasons:
- Repetitive demand 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 athletes who are required to repeat throwing or striking motions and typically manifest themselves as joint pain.
- 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, fractures, and dislocations.
Some common injuries, for example rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, for example ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.
Why Do Injuries Happen? | Injury Prevention in South County, 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 primary causes of why your body cannot adjust to an activity:
Muscle Imbalance
Muscle balance is crucial to maintaining healthy joints and staving off injury. Imbalance can lead to overemphasis for 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 fatigued more quickly, making them more susceptible to injuries. Muscle imbalance can refer to poor muscle balance in relation to other muscle groups, such as having a strong chest and weak back, or in the same muscle group, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff not having proportionate strength. Muscle imbalance can lead to:
- Muscle weakness
- Muscle inflexibility
- Poor muscle recruitment
- Poor coordination
Customized injury prevention with our experienced physical therapists in South County, 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. Neurological issues, inflammation, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. It can lead to:
- Joint mobility limitations
- Muscle imbalance
- Poor coordination
- Reduced balance
When you first visit our injury prevention specialists in South County, MO, we’ll evaluate your medical history and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, together with your doctor or any other providers involved in your treatment, we’ll design a personalized plan of attack based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your movement health to reach its potential.
Posture Dysfunction
Bad posture is not just an issue for people who spend a lot of time doing the same activity. Athletes and other physically active people can have postural dysfunction when resting, driving, or in certain stances they need to be in for their sport. Optimal 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 vertebrae closer together, which disrupts communication between your brain and body and makes it harder to achieve optimal movement health. It causes injuries through:
- 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, flexibility, and that your nervous system can communicate as its intended to.
How to Prevent Injury in South County, MO
All sports and physical activities can potentially lead to an injury. No one precaution is 100% foolproof in injury prevention. However, there are things you can do 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 have a very high activity level, make sure to take one or two days off per week to allow your body to engage in its natural healing and recovery processes. If you’re moderately active, take a break for the few hours after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
- Wear the appropriate equipment — Helmets, chin straps, protective eyewear, and other recommended equipment in many sports helps you avoid injuries like bruises or brain injuries. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or soft tissue, your South County, MO physician or physical therapist may recommend stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other methods like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further stabilization.
- Improve muscle strength — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them withstand the force and torque necessary for in sports and other activities. Our South County, MO injury prevention experts will 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.
- Increase flexibility — Increasing your flexibility contributes to injury prevention in three way:
- It increases which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which allows for the tendons and ligaments connecting your muscles to your bones to adapt to more pronounced positions.
- It increases blood flow, which carries protein-rich blood to your muscles, removing waste byproduct and rebuilding the muscles.
- It improves your posture, which, as we’ve discussed, is an important part of injury prevention.
According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like basketball that include dynamic activities require muscles and tendons with sufficient flexibility to perform those movements. Stretching and warm up exercises before games or training further helps prevent injuries.
- 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 prevent injuries by not forcing your body into unnatural positions and movements. Football players learn to tackle a certain way to reduce the risk of brain damage, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best apply torque to your body. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to break down your movement and analyze how to improve it.
- Listen to your body — If a part of your body is bothering you, that’s your body’s way of telling you something is wrong. 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 a particularly rigorous workout, save it for another day.
- Don’t play through an injury — Even though teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate an athlete that guts it out through pain, forcing your body to perform with soft tissue or structural damage could make that injury worse and put you out of commission 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 your doctor, and a series of physical therapy sessions to ensure your body heals properly and can withstand the activity you want to return to.
- 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 targeting in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the presence of bike lanes are examples of rules that leagues enacted to keep players safe. Those are in place for a reason, and there’s a reason that violations of those rules are punished.
- Speak a licensed physical therapist — It’s always advisable to get a physical before starting another season or starting up a new physical activity. During your appointment, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a professional physical therapist in South County, MO is something you should consider. Every treatment plan we employ has been demonstrated to help athletes remain healthy, and we’ll personalize your program to your age, your injury history, and how physically active you wish to be.
Injury Prevention for The Elderly in South County, MO
Falls in the elderly accounted for more than 3 million urgent care admissions and more than 34,000 deaths. Studies show that being physical active is a great method for reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions like arthritis that accumulate over time can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints active. While the physical demands for older adults may not be as high as an athlete, the same principles of strength, stability, flexibility, and optimal posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.
Other services we offer in South County, MO include:
- Total Knee Replacement Physical Therapy
- Vestibular Therapy
- Concussion Treatment
- Soft Tissue Mobilization
- Post Surgical Rehabilitation
- Shin Splint Treatment
- Direct Access Physical Therapy
- Gait Analysis
- Pelvic Floor Therapy
- Dry Needling Near Me
South County, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy
Being injured in one of your favorite activities can create a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same euphoria. The experienced South County, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to guide you through your own personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body as safe and healthy as can be, 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. Request an appointment online or reach out to the location nearest you to see what our South County, MO injury prevention specialists can do for you.