Injury Prevention in St. Clair, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, or a recent retiree who wants to spend more time bike riding, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you desire. While our certified St. Clair, 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 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. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location nearest you.

Physical activity is vitally important to many St. Clair, MO residents. Many of us participate in active endeavors such as playing sports, hiking, or other physical activities. Additionally, committing to an active lifestyle helps prevent chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, degenerative brain diseases, anxiety, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed St. Clair, MO physical therapists help you come back and perform even better than before, but our injury prevention specialists 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 based on evidence-backed techniques and are personalized to each client and the activities they want to return to.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a nagging injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in St. Clair, MO for a free injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and ensure that you can keep up with your sport or hobby, read on below or inquire about an appointment today.

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

Most injuries happen for one of two reasons:

1. Repetitive demand injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. They are common in overhead athletes such as tennis or soccer goalies and typically reveal themselves with joint pain.
2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include landing on uneven ground or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, twisting joints, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some common injuries, such as rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, like ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with an immediate impact to or twisting of the knee.

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in St. Clair, MO

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally occur because of dysfunction or imbalance and your body and between body parts. There are three common dysfunctions that lead to injury:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is crucial to maintaining healthy joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can result in dependency 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 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 an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Symptoms include:

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

Customized injury prevention with our experienced physical therapists in St. Clair, 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 moving in unnatural ways, causing injury. Neurological issues, inflammation, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. It can lead to:

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

At our first injury prevention appointment in St. Clair, MO, we’ll go through your medical records and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, in tandem with with your physician or any other providers involved in your treatment, we’ll design a customized treatment plan based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your body moving as it should.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture is not just an issue for people who spend a lot of time doing the same activity. Athletes and others with active lifestyles can suffer from postural dysfunction when resting, using the computer, or in certain stances related to a given activity. Correct posture means correct alignments of the different joints and muscles of your body in a way that does not remove the spine from its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the vertebrae closer together, which disrupts our body’s internal communications and makes it challenging to attain ideal movement health. It can also lead to:

• Muscle weakness
• Muscle imbalance
• Poor positioning
• Joint mobility limitations
• 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 can be improved and maintained, and your spine is in its natural position.

Keys to Injury Prevention in St. Clair, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything you could to prevent one. No one precaution is guaranteed to be effective in injury prevention. However, there are precautions 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’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’re moderately active, rest for the rest of the day after an activity so your body doesn’t become too fatigued.
• Use the correct equipment — Helmets, chest guards, protective eyewear, and other recommended equipment in sports and other activities helps you avoid injuries like contusions or concussions. If you’ve had a previous injury, your St. Clair, MO doctor or physical therapist may fit you for stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other measures like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further protection.
• Improve muscle strength — Strengthening soft tissue helps it stand up to the force and torque your body is put through in sports and other activities. In your tailored injury prevention program with our expert St. Clair, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to build up your body to safely participate in the activities you love.
• 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 soft tissue to adapt to more drastic positions.
  2. It boosts circulation, which carries nourishing blood to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and re-energizing the muscles.
  3. It encourages good posture, which we already know is an an essential part of injury prevention.

  According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like football that require dynamic motions require muscles and tendons flexible enough to perform those movements. Stretching and warm up exercises before activities further helps prevent injuries.

• Use proper technique — Through the years, each sport and physical activity develops a consensus of the best techniques to use. These techniques not only help you get be the best player 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 concussion, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best apply torque to your body. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and analyze how to both improve your performance and reduce your risk of injury.
• Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If a part of your body is bothering you, that’s your body’s way of telling you something isn’t right. If you feel something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, stop immediately and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body isn’t feeling up to an intense training session, don’t force it.
• Don’t play through an injury — Even though teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate a player that guts it out through pain, forcing your body to perform with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could make that injury worse and leave you on the sidelines for longer than it originally would have. Depending on the severity of your injury, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, visiting urgent care, and scheduling appointments with a physical therapist to ensure your body heals naturally and can handle a return to physical activity.
• Follow the rules — Many sports have special rules at different levels in the interest of safety. Penalties for targeting in football, rules against head-first sliding in baseball, and even the existence of special lanes on the street and sidewalk for bikers are examples of 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.
• Consult a licensed physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to get a physical before another season begins or starting up a new activity or training regimen. While there, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a experienced physical therapist in St. Clair, MO is a good idea for you. Every treatment plan we employ has been demonstrated to help athletes remain healthy, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to your age, any previous injuries, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention for The Elderly in St. Clair, MO

Falls in the elderly were responsible for more than 3 million urgent care admissions and over 34,000 fatalities. Studies show that being physical active can go a long way in preventing falls. Other conditions such as arthritis that are wear and tear injuries can be more bearable and take longer to progress with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints active. While the physical demands for older adults may not be as high as an athlete, appropriate strength, balance, flexibility, and ideal posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in St. Clair, MO include:

• Neck Pain Treatment
• 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

St. Clair, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in in an activity you prepare and train for and love can create a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same freedom. The knowledgeable St. Clair, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to design for you a 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 once valued so much. Make an appointment online or reach out to the location nearest you to start your program with one of our injury prevention professionals in St. Clair, MO.