Injury Prevention in Truesdale, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, or are entering your golden years 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 Truesdale, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others recover from injury, we are complete movement health specialists who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to teach out exercises that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or contact the location most convenient for you.

Being physically active is an essential part of many Truesdale, MO people’s lives. Many of us participate in active endeavors such as playing sports, biking, or other physical activities. Additionally, pursuing an active lifestyle helps stave off chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia, mental health issues, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Truesdale, MO physical therapists help you return to action and perform even better than before, but our injury prevention professionals can help you reduce the risk of further injury by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our methods, for both healing from and preventing injury, are proven to be effective and are customized for each client and the lifestyle they desire.

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 Truesdale, MO for a complimentary 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 call to speak to a physical therapist at your earliest convenience.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Truesdale, MO

Injuries generally happen for one of two reasons:

1. Repetitive motion injuries are injuries happen gradually as a body part degrades because of repetitive movements. In sports, we see them the most in in overhead athletes such as baseball or soccer goalies, 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, fractures, and dislocations.

Some common injuries, for example rotator cuff tears, can result from either overuse or acute trauma. Other injuries, like ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with a sudden impact to the knee.

Why Do Injuries Happen? | Injury Prevention in Truesdale, 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 essential to supporting joints and reducing injury. Imbalance can lead to an overreliance on one muscle group, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also prevents you from having ideal posture, 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 hamstring and weak quadriceps, or in the same muscle group, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff having different levels of strength. Symptoms include:

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

Tailored injury prevention with our professional physical therapists in Truesdale, MO will bring balance to your muscles.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and impede your body’s ability to naturally perform functional movements, causing injury. It can be caused by many different musculoskeletal issues. Symptoms include:

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

When you initially visit our injury prevention specialists in Truesdale, MO, we’ll go through your medical history and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, in tandem with with your doctor or any additional providers treating you, we’ll devise a personalized game plan 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 with slouched shoulders. People who play sports and others with active lifestyles can suffer from postural dysfunction when resting, driving, or in specific positions they need to be in for their sport. Optimal posture means correct alignments of your body from your head to your toes in a way that keeps the spine within its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the joints in the spine closer together, which has a negative affect on our body’s ability to communicate with itself and 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 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.

Keys to Injury Prevention in Truesdale, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything you could to reduce that risk. We cannot promise that our injury prevention program completely negates the risk of injury. However, there are things you can do to greatly reduce the risk of injury:

• Take breaks — Your body needs time to rest and recover after any moderate to intense activity. If you’re heavily active, one or two rest days a week will encourage your body to engage in its natural healing processes. If you have a more modest activity level, relax for the rest of the day after an activity so your body doesn’t become too fatigued.
• Use protective equipment — Helmets, chin straps, elbow pads, and other recommended equipment in many sports helps you avoid injuries like contusions or head injuries. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or muscle, tendon, or ligament, your Truesdale, MO physician or physical therapist may suggest stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other methods like tying your athletic footwear tightly offers further stabilization.
• 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. Our Truesdale, MO injury prevention professionals will work to achieve optimal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to safely participate in the activities you love.
• Boost flexibility — Stretching achieves three critical things for injury prevention:
  1. It enhances which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which allows for your soft tissue to handle more forceful movements.
  2. It increases circulation, which carries nourishing blood to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and reinvigorating the muscles.
  3. It encourages good 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 dynamic activities require muscles and tendons flexible enough to perform those movements. Stretching and warm up exercises before activities further helps prevent injuries.

• Use accepted 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 athlete you can be but help reduce the risk of injury. Football players are taught to tackle a certain way to avoid brain damage, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to make sure their muscles are moving unnaturally. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to slow down your movement and evaluate how to both be a better athlete and reduce your risk of injury.
• Listen to your body — If you feel pain in a muscle or joint, that means that body part is telling your brain that something isn’t right. If you feel a sudden crack or grinding sensation, stop immediately and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t feeling up to an intense workout, don’t force it.
• Don’t play through an injury — Even though gritting through pain is often viewed as a courageous act among competitors, playing with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could make that injury worse and put you out of commission for much longer than you would have been sitting out. 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 scheduling appointments with a physical therapist to ensure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
• 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 leading with the helmet in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the existence of special lanes on the street and sidewalk for bikers are all rules that leagues enacted to keep participants safe. Those were enacted for a reason, and there’s a reason that there are penalties for them.
• Speak a licensed physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to have a medical evaluation before a new season or committing yourself to any strenuous activity or training regimen. While there, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a licensed physical therapist in Truesdale, MO is something you should consider. All of our techniques have been demonstrated to prevent injury, and we’ll personalize your program to how old you are, any previous injuries, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Truesdale, MO

Falls in senior citizens were responsible for more than 3 million urgent care admissions and more than 34,000 deaths. Research demonstrates that being physical active is a great method for preventing falls. Other conditions that limit mobility 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 can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Truesdale, 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

Truesdale, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in one of your favorite activities can lead to a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same joy. The professional Truesdale, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to guide you through your own personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body strong and flexible, 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 that you do not want to lose. Schedule an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to learn more about what our Truesdale, MO injury prevention experts can do for you.