Injury Prevention in St. Peters, 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 happy, healthy lifestyle you deserve. While our certified St. Peters, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to recover from injury, we are complete movement health specialists who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to guide you through techniques that are proven to prevent injury. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or reach out to the location most convenient for you.

Physical activity is an essential part of many St. Peters, MO people’s lives. Many of us participate in activities such as playing sports, kayaking, or other physical activities. Additionally, pursuing an active lifestyle helps prevent chronic diseases including 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. Peters, MO physical therapists help you come back as fierce as ever, but our injury prevention experts can help you reduce the risk of further injury by improving your overall strength, flexibility, and posture. All of our methods, for both recovery and injury prevention, are based on evidence-backed techniques and are personalized to each client and the lifestyle they desire.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a lingering injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in St. Peters, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can keep up with your active lifestyle, read on below or inquire about an appointment at your earliest convenience.

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

Injuries typically happen for one of two reasons:

1. Repetitive motion 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, with joint pain usually being the first symptom.
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 of the injuries we see most frequently, such as rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, like ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with a sudden impact to the knee.

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

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally happen because your muscles, ligaments, tendons, bones, and joints cannot hold up under the force, torque, or stretching that are required or are possible in a given activity. There are three common dysfunctions that lead to injury:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is key to maintaining healthy joints and staving off injury. Imbalance can cause overemphasis for one set of muscles, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It can also lead to poor posture, and the weaker muscles will become tired faster, making them more susceptible to injuries. Injuries can be caused by poor muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong bicep and weak tricep, or within muscle groups, such as an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Muscle imbalance can lead to:

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

Personalized injury prevention with our licensed physical therapists in St. Peters, MO will ensure that different muscles and muscle groups are equally strong.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and lead to your body moving in ways it is not designed to, causing injury. It can be caused by a variety of musculoskeletal issues. Symptoms include:

• Joint mobility limitations
• Muscle imbalance
• Coordination deficiency
• Decreased balance

When you first visit our injury prevention experts in St. Peters, MO, we’ll go through your medical history and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, in tandem with with your physician or any additional providers treating you, we’ll design a personalized game 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 with slouched shoulders. Athletes and others with active lifestyles can be affected by postural dysfunction when lying down, sitting, or in certain poses necessary for their sport. Optimal posture means correct positioning when both static and moving in a way that encourages our spine to stay in its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the joints in the spine closer together, which disrupts our body’s internal communications and makes it difficult to reach optimal movement health. It causes injuries through:

• Muscle weakness
• Muscle imbalance
• Poor positioning
• Joint mobility limitations
• Poor muscle recruitment

By guiding you to correct 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 nervous system can communicate as its intended to.

Injury Prevention Methods in St. Peters, MO

All sports and physical activities can potentially lead to an injury. No one technique is guaranteed to be effective in injury prevention. However, there are things you can do to greatly reduce the risk of injury:

• 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 encourage your body to engage in its natural healing processes. If you’re moderately active, 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, chin straps, safety pads and guards, and other equipment necessary in many sports can help prevent injuries like rashes or concussions. If you’ve had a previous injury, your St. Peters, MO doctor or physical therapist may suggest stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other measures like tying your athletic footwear tightly offers further stabilization.
• Improve muscle strength — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them withstand the force and torque of heavy activity. In your tailored injury prevention program with our certified St. Peters, 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.
• Boost flexibility — Increasing your flexibility contributes to injury prevention in three way:
  1. It enhances 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 adjust to more dramatic movements.
  2. It boosts circulation, which carries nutrient-rich blood to your muscles, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to heal.
  3. It encourages good posture, which, as you read earlier, is an important part of injury prevention.

  According to research, sports like soccer that necessitate bouncing and jumping require muscles and tendons compliant enough to perform those movements. Also, remember to stretch and warm up before games or training to further reduce the risk of injury.

• Use accepted technique — In every sport, there is an accepted way to position and move your body. These techniques not only improve performance but help reduce the risk of injury. Football players are taught to tackle with the shoulder in order to reduce the risk of a concussion, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to use the appropriate muscles. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and evaluate how to improve it.
• Listen to your body — 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 something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, immediately stop all physical activity and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t holing up well in a particularly rigorous workout, don’t force it.
• Don’t play through an injury — While playing through pain is often viewed as a valiant act among competitors, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could exacerbate a current injury and leave you on the sidelines 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, seeing urgent care, and scheduling appointments with a physical therapist to ensure your body heals naturally and can withstand the activity you want to return to.
• Follow 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 helmet to helmet hits in football, rules against head-first sliding in baseball, and even the presence of bike lanes are all rules that leagues enacted to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that there are penalties for them.
• Consult a licensed physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to get a physical before a new season or starting up a new physical activity. During your physical, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a experienced physical therapist in St. Peters, MO is right for you. Every treatment plan we employ has been demonstrated to reduce the risk of injury, 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 Older St. Peters, MO Adults

Falls in senior citizens accounted for over 3 million urgent care visits and more than 34,000 fatalities. Research demonstrates that physical activity is invaluable in reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions that limit mobility like arthritis that are wear and tear injuries can be slowed down by 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, stability, flexibility, and good posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

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

• Soft Tissue Mobilization
• Post Surgical Rehabilitation
• Shin Splint Treatment
• Direct Access Physical Therapy
• Gait Analysis
• Pelvic Floor Therapy
• Dry Needling Near Me
• Tendonitis Treatment
• Manual Physical Therapy
• Orthopedic Rehab Near Me

St. Peters, 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 keeps us from experiencing the same happiness. The professional St. Peters, 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 of doing what you do best. Schedule an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to find out more about what our St. Peters, MO injury prevention experts can do for you.