St. Genevieve, MO

St. Genevieve, MO

Don't let a mental block over reinjury prevent you from participating in the things what you do best.

Injury Prevention in St. Genevieve, MO. Whether you play a sport and are hoping for a shot at the next level, or you just retired and want to dedicate your time to hiking, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you desire. While our certified St. Genevieve, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others 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 methods that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Make an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or reach out to the location nearest you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many St. Genevieve, MO residents. We love activities like playing sports, hiking, and more. Additionally, keeping an active lifestyle reduces the risk of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, degenerative brain diseases, mental health issues, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed St. Genevieve, MO physical therapists help you return to action and perform even better than before, but our injury prevention professionals can help keep you active by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our treatment plans, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, are proven to be effective and are developed uniquely for each client and the lifestyle they desire.

If you’ve recently sustained an injury, or have a persistent injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in St. Genevieve, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can continue with your sport or hobby, read on below or inquire about an appointment at your earliest convenience.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in St. Genevieve, MO

Injuries generally fall into two categories:

  1. Repetitive demand injuries are injuries happen gradually as a body part degrades because of repetitive movements. They are common in overhead athletes such as softball or basketball players, with joint pain usually being the first symptom.
  2. Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include falling 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, for example rotator cuff tears, can result from either overuse or acute trauma. Other injuries, such as ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, with a sudden impact to the knee.

Injury Prevention St. Genevieve, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near St. Genevieve

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

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally happen because your soft tissue, bones, and joints cannot handle the force, torque, or stretching that they are subjected to in a given movement or collision. There are three main causes of why your body cannot adjust to an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is crucial to maintaining healthy joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can cause overemphasis for one set of muscles, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also prevents you from having optimal posture, and one set of muscles becoming tired sooner, increasing the risk of injury. Injuries can be caused by inadequate muscle balance in relation to other muscle groups, such as having a strong hamstring and weak quadriceps, or within muscle groups, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff having different levels of strength. Muscle imbalance can result in:

Personalized injury prevention with our professional physical therapists in St. Genevieve, 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, increasing your risk of injury. Problems in your nervous system, inflammation, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. It can lead to:

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

At our initial injury prevention appointment in St. Genevieve, MO, we’ll discuss your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, alongside with your physician or any other medical professionals treating you, we’ll create a personalized treatment plan been proven to work through research and studies to get your movement health to reach its potential.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture is not just an issue for people who sit a lot. People who play sports and other physically active people can be affected by postural dysfunction when resting, using the computer, or in certain poses related to a given activity. Good posture means proper positioning of the different joints and muscles of your body in a way that keeps the spine within its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the vertebrae closer together, which disrupts your nervous system and makes it harder to reach ideal motion health. Symptoms include:

  • 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 your muscles equally, your flexibility can be improved and maintained, and your spine is in its natural position.



How to Prevent Injury in St. Genevieve, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything possible to prevent one. No one safety tip is 100% foolproof in injury prevention. However, there are things you can do to make sure your body is strong and flexible enough 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, 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, relax for the rest of the day after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
  • Use protective equipment — Helmets, shin guards, protective eyewear, and other recommended equipment in sports and other activities can help prevent injuries such as contusions or brain injuries. If you’ve had a previous injury, your St. Genevieve, MO physician or physical therapist may fit you for braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the affected area. Other measures like making sure all the equipment is snug can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
  • Strengthen muscles — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them stand up to the rigors necessary for in sports and other activities. In your customized injury prevention program with our experienced St. Genevieve, 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.
  • Increase flexibility — Increasing your flexibility contributes to injury prevention in three way:
    1. It increases which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which lets for the tendons and ligaments connecting your muscles to your bones to adapt to more dramatic positions.
    2. It increases circulation, which carries nutrient-rich blood to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to heal.
    3. It improves 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 football that necessitate bouncing and jumping require muscles and tendons with sufficient flexibility to store and exert the high levels of energy required. Stretching and warm up exercises before games or training further helps prevent injuries.

  • Use accepted technique — In every physical activity, there is an accepted way to position and move your body. These techniques not only improve performance but help prevent injuries. Football players learn to tackle with the shoulder in order to reduce the risk of a head injury, 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 evaluate 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 sore, that means that body part is telling your brain that something isn’t right. If you feel something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, immediately withdraw from the activity and get the appropriate medical treatment. If your body isn’t feeling up to a particularly rigorous training session, save it for another day.
  • Don’t play through an injury — While gutting it out through pain is often viewed as commendable among competitors, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could make that injury worse and leave you on the sidelines for much longer than if you had sat out at the time of the injury. Depending on what caused your injury and how severe it is, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, visiting urgent care, 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 presence of bike lanes are all 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.
  • Speak a professional physical therapist — It’s a good idea to have a medical evaluation before a new season or starting up a new physical activity. During your visit, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a licensed physical therapist in St. Genevieve, MO is right for you. All of our techniques have been demonstrated 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 St. Genevieve, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near St. Genevieve

Injury Prevention for The Elderly in St. Genevieve, MO

Falls in adults over 65 accounted for more than 3 million urgent care admissions and more than 34,000 fatalities. Research demonstrates that being physical active is a great method for preventing falls. Other conditions that limit mobility like arthritis that are wear and tear injuries can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints strong. While the physical demands for seniors may not be as high as an athlete, the same principles of strength, balance, flexibility, and correct posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

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

St. Genevieve, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in something you love doing causes a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same elation. The licensed St. Genevieve, 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 doing most. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits that you do not want to lose. Request an appointment online or call the location nearest you to discover what our St. Genevieve, MO injury prevention specialists can do for you.

Services Offered

Services Offered
  • Physical Therapy
    • Pre/Post Surgical Rehabilitation
    • Acute Injury Management
    • Chronic Injury Management
  • Occupational Therapy
    • Certified Hand Therapy
  • Work Conditioning/Hardening
  • Functional Capacity Evaluations
  • Certified Hand Therapy
  • Sports Physical Therapy
  • Pediatric Orthopedic Physical Therapy
  • Geriatric Physical Therapy
  • Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization
  • Spine Specialty – Certified Manual Therapy
  • Vestibular Therapy and Post-Concussion Therapy
  • Free Injury Screenings
  • Kinesio Taping®
  • Blood Flow Restriction Therapy

Our Team

Stephen Brunjes
OTR/L, CEAS
Cassandra Wadlow
Front Office
Dena Rose
PT, CMPT, CHT
Anthony Meyer
PT, DPT, CMPT
Derrick Wolk
Partner, Clinic Director, MPT, CMPT
Kimberly Helm
Front Office Supervisor
Lisa Bell
Front Office

Locations

Begin Your Recovery Today

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