Injury Prevention in St. Charles, MO. Whether you play a sport and are trying to get an opportunity at the next stage, or are entering your golden years and want to spend more time hiking, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you deserve. While our professional St. Charles, 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 body’s current condition and how you move to guide you through techniques that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location nearest you.

Being physically active is an essential part of many St. Charles, MO people’s lives. We love active endeavors like playing sports, biking, and more. Furthermore, keeping an active lifestyle helps stave off chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, eurodegenerative disease, depression, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed St. Charles, MO physical therapists allow you to 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, for both recovery and injury prevention, are proven to be effective and are personalized to each client and the lifestyle they desire.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a nagging injury that won’t heal on its own, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in St. Charles, MO for a no-risk, no-obligation injury screening. To take preventative measures and protect your sport or hobby, keep reading or call to speak to a physical therapist at your earliest convenience.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in St. Charles, MO

Injuries typically fall into two categories:

1. Chronic injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. They are common in overhead athletes athletes who are required to repeat throwing or striking motions and typically reveal themselves with joint pain.
2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include landing on uneven ground or a sudden impact by an object or another person. These can result in bruises, twisting joints, fractures, and dislocations.

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

Why Do Injuries Happen? | Injury Prevention in St. Charles, MO

While injuries can happen in a variety of circumstances, and some are inescapable, they generally occur because of dysfunction or imbalance and your body and between body parts. There are three main causes of why your body cannot adjust to an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is key to maintaining healthy joints and staving off injury. Imbalance can lead to an overreliance on one muscle group, which may cause your body to force it to participate in an activity it shouldn’t. It also causes posture dysfunction, and the weaker set of muscles will be pushed past its limit, resulting in failure and a higher probability of injury. Muscle imbalance applies to poor muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong bicep and weak tricep, 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
• Poor coordination

Personalized injury prevention with our experienced physical therapists in St. Charles, MO will bring balance to your muscles.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and lead to your body moving in unnatural ways, 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
• Coordination deficits
• Decreased balance

At our first injury prevention appointment in St. Charles, MO, we’ll go over your medical history and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, in tandem with with your physician or any other medical professionals involved in your care, we’ll come up with a customized plan of attack been proven to work by research and studies to get your movement health to the level you need it to to do what you love.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people who spend a lot of time in the same position. People who play sports and others with active lifestyles can be affected by postural dysfunction when at lest, sitting, or in certain poses they need to be in for their sport. Good posture refers to proper alignments of the different joints and muscles of your body in a way that keeps the spine within its natural curves. Poor posture can compact the bones of the spine, which disrupts communication between your brain and body and makes it challenging to attain 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

Good posture is an important part of injury prevention because it ensures you are using the right muscles for the right movements, your flexibility is not jeopardized, and your nervous system can communicate as its intended to.

How to Prevent Injury in St. Charles, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything possible to prevent one. We cannot promise that our injury prevention program completely negates the risk of injury. However, there are precautions to make sure your body is strong and flexible enough for your desired activity level:

• Take breaks — Injuries are more common when you do not give your body time to restore itself. If you’re heavily active, make sure to take one or two days off per week to signal to your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. If you have a more moderate activity level, take it easy after activity so your body doesn’t become too fatigued.
• Use protective equipment — Helmets, chin straps, elbow pads, and other required equipment in many sports helps you avoid injuries such as rashes or concussions. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or muscle, tendon, or ligament, your St. Charles, MO physician or physical therapist may suggest stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other techniques like tying your athletic footwear tightly can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
• Increase muscle strength — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them withstand the rigors of heavy activity. Our St. Charles, MO injury prevention specialists will work to build up your body to be able to avoid injury in the activities you want to participate in.
• Enhance flexibility — Stretching 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 soft tissue to adjust to more forceful movements.
  2. It increases circulation, which allows for nourishing blood to flow to your muscles, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to restore themselves.
  3. It increases your posture, which we already know is an an important part of injury prevention.

  According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like soccer that require dynamic activities require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility to incorporate and release 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 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 help you perform better but help reduce the risk of injury. Football players are taught to tackle a certain way to reduce the risk of brain damage, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to use the appropriate muscles. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and educate you on how to improve it.
• Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — 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 sudden pain, immediately stop all physical activity and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body isn’t holing up well in a particularly rigorous training session, don’t force it.
• Don’t play through an injury — Even though gutting it out through pain is often viewed as a valiant act among competitors, forcing your body to perform with soft tissue or structural damage could exacerbate a current injury and put you out of commission for longer than it originally would have. Depending on the nature of your injury, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, seeing an emergency room, and a series of physical therapy sessions to make sure 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 in the interest of safety. Penalties for leading with the helmet in football, rules against head-first sliding in baseball, and even the presence of special lanes on the street and sidewalk for bikers are examples of rules that leagues enacted to keep players safe. Those are in place for a reason, and there’s a reason that there are penalties for them.
• Speak a professional physical therapist — It’s a good idea to have a medical evaluation before a new season or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. While there, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a experienced physical therapist in St. Charles, MO is something you should consider. All of our techniques have been proven to help athletes remain healthy, and we’ll personalize your program to your age, your injury history, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention for The Elderly in St. Charles, MO

Falls in senior citizens accounted for over 3 million emergency room visits and over 34,000 fatalities. Research demonstrates that being physical active can go a long way in reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions 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, appropriate strength, stability, flexibility, and ideal posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in St. Charles, 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

St. Charles, 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 won’t allow us to experience the same exultation. The professional St. Charles, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to design for you a 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 see what our St. Charles, MO injury prevention professionals can do for you.