Injury Prevention in St. George, 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 activities you love. While our licensed St. George, 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 guide you through exercises that are proven to prevent injury. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location most convenient for you.

Physical activity is an essential part of many St. George, MO people’s lives. We love activities like playing sports, biking, and more. Furthermore, keeping an active lifestyle helps stave off future health problems including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, eurodegenerative disease, depression, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed St. George, MO physical therapists allow you to come back even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention professionals can help preserve your active lifestyle by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our treatment plans, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, have been prove to work and are customized for each client and the level of activity they want to reach.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a persistent injury that is not getting better with time, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in St. George, MO for a no-risk, no-obligation injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can keep up with your sport or hobby, keep reading or call to speak to a physical therapist today.

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

Most injuries happen for one of two reasons:

1. Repetitive demand injuries are injuries that occur when a part of the body repeats the same motion time and time again. In sports, we see them the most in in overhead athletes such as baseball or lacrosse players, with joint pain usually being the first symptom.
2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen suddenly. Examples include falling or a sudden impact by an object or another person. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some of the injuries we see most frequently, like rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, for example ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with a sudden impact to the knee.

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

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally occur because of dysfunction or instability 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 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 prevents you from having good posture, 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 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 lead to:

• Muscle weakness
• Muscle inflexibility
• Poor muscle recruitment
• Poor coordination

Customized injury prevention with our certified physical therapists in St. George, MO will bring balance to your muscles.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can result in poor balance and lead to your body bending in unnatural ways, causing injury. Problems in your nervous system, inflammation, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. It can lead to:

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

When you first see our injury prevention professionals in St. George, MO, we’ll discuss your medical records and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, alongside with your physician or any other medical professionals involved in your care, we’ll devise a personalized plan of attack based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your body moving as it should.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people who spend a lot of time in the same position. Athletes and other physically active people can suffer from postural dysfunction when at lest, driving, or in specific poses necessary for their sport. Good posture means proper positioning of your body from your head to your toes in a way that encourages our spine to stay in its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the bones of the spine closer together, which disrupts your nervous system 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 a vital part of injury prevention because it ensures muscle balance, range of motion, and that your spine is in its natural position.

How to Prevent Injury in St. George, MO

All sports and physical activities can potentially lead to an injury. No one technique is 100% foolproof in injury prevention. However, there are several steps you can take to make sure your body is prepared for your intended activity:

• Take breaks — Injuries are more common when you do not give your body time to restore itself. If you’re heavily active, one or two rest days a week will allow your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. If you have a more modest activity level, relax for the rest of the day after an activity so your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints become too fatigued.
• Use the right equipment — Helmets, chest guards, safety pads and guards, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities helps you avoid injuries such as lacerations or head injuries. If you’ve had a previous injury, your St. George, MO doctor or physical therapist may suggest braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the affected area. Other methods like tying your cleats tightly offers further stabilization.
• Strengthen muscles — Strengthening soft tissue helps it stand up to the force and torque your body is put through in sports and other activities. In your personalized injury prevention program with our certified St. George, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to achieve optimal muscle balance and strengthen the often forgotten muscles needed to be able to avoid injury in the activities you want to participate in.
• Increase flexibility — Increasing your flexibility accomplishes three critical things for injury prevention:
  1. It boosts 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 adjust to more extreme movements.
  2. It increases blood flow, which carries protein-rich blood to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and revitalizing the muscles.
  3. It encourages good posture, which we already know is an an essential part of injury prevention.

  According to research, sports like soccer that include bouncing and jumping require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility 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 ways to position and move your body. These techniques not only help you perform better 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 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 slow down your movement and analyze how to both improve your performance and prevent injury.
• Listen to your body — If you feel pain in a muscle or joint, your body is trying to send you a message. If you feel sudden pain, immediately withdraw from the activity and seek proportional medical care. If your body does not feel well enough for an intense training session, don’t force it.
• Don’t play through an injury — While gutting it out through pain is often viewed as a courageous act among competitors, playing 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, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, seeing an emergency room, and scheduling appointments with a physical therapist to make sure 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 help prevent injury. Penalties for targeting in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, 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.
• Consult a licensed physical therapist — It’s a good idea to have a medical evaluation before a new season or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. During your appointment, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a experienced physical therapist in St. George, MO is right for you. All of our techniques have been proven to reduce the risk of injury, 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 for Senior Citizens in St. George, MO

Falls in adults over 65 were responsible for more than 3 million urgent care admissions and over 34,000 fatalities. Research demonstrates that physical activity is a great method for preventing falls. Other conditions like arthritis that are wear and tear injuries can be slowed down by physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints active. While the physical demands for seniors may not be as high as an athlete, healthy strength, balance, flexibility, and good posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in St. George, 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. George, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in something you love doing can lead to a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same joy. The knowledgeable St. George, 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 at ease that you do not have to fear going back to what you love. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits that you do not want to lose. Make an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to see what our St. George, MO injury prevention specialists can do for you.