Injury Prevention in Valles Mines, MO. Whether you’re an athlete hoping for a shot at the next level, or a recent retiree who wants to spend more time camping, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you desire. While our licensed Valles Mines, 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 techniques that are proven to prevent injury. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or contact the location most convenient for you.

Physical activity is an essential part of many Valles Mines, MO people’s lives. We love activities such as playing sports, playing golf, and more. Additionally, keeping an active lifestyle reduces the risk of chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, degenerative brain diseases, mental health issues, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Valles Mines, MO physical therapists allow you to come back even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention professionals can help keep you active by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our methods, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, are based on evidence-backed techniques and are developed uniquely for each client and the level of activity they want to reach.

If you’ve recently sustained an injury, or have a nagging injury that is not getting better with time, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Valles Mines, 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 inquire about an appointment at your earliest convenience.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Valles Mines, MO

Injuries generally fall into two categories:

1. Overuse 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 such as tennis or volleyball players and commonly manifest themselves as joint pain.
2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen in an instant. Examples include landing on uneven ground or a sudden impact by an object or another person. These can result in bruises, twisting joints, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some of the injuries we see most frequently, like rotator cuff tears, can result from either overuse or acute trauma. Other injuries, such as ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with a sudden impact to the knee.

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Valles Mines, MO

While injuries occur for many different reasons, and some are unpreventable, they generally occur because of dysfunction or imbalance and your body and between body parts. There are three main causes of why your body cannot handle an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is crucial to maintaining healthy joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can result in overemphasis for one set of muscles, which may cause your body to force it to participate in an activity it shouldn’t. It also prevents you from having optimal posture, and the weaker set of muscles will be pushed past its limit, resulting in failure and a higher likelihood of injury. Muscle imbalance applies to insufficient muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong bicep and weak tricep, or in the same muscle group, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff not having proportionate strength. Symptoms include:

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

Tailored injury prevention with our knowledgeable physical therapists in Valles Mines, MO will ensure that your muscles are at optimal proportional strength.

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 a range of musculoskeletal issues. It can lead to:

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

When you initially visit our injury prevention experts in Valles Mines, MO, we’ll discuss your medical history and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, together with your physician or any additional providers treating you, we’ll come up with a customized 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 with desk jobs. People who play sports and other physically active people can have postural dysfunction when lying down, sitting, or in certain body positions necessary for their sport. Correct posture refers to correct positioning when both static and moving in a way that keeps the spine within its natural curves. Poor posture can compress the bones of the spine, which has a negative affect on our body’s ability to communicate with itself and reach ideal movement health. Symptoms include:

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

By guiding you to ideal posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring muscle balance, range of motion, and that your vertebrae remain in place.

Keys to Injury Prevention in Valles Mines, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything you could to reduce that risk. No one precaution is guaranteed to be effective in injury prevention. However, there are precautions to make sure your body is prepared for your intended activity:

• Take a rest — Injuries are more common in overworked bodies. If you’re heavily active, make sure to take one or two days off per week to encourage your body to engage in its natural healing and recovery processes. If you’re moderately active, relax for the rest of the day after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
• Wear protective equipment — Helmets, chin straps, safety pads and guards, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities helps you avoid injuries like bruises or concussions. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or muscle, tendon, or ligament, your Valles Mines, MO physician or injury prevention expert may fit you for stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other measures like tying your cleats tightly can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
• Strengthen muscles — Strengthening soft tissue helps it withstand the force and torque of heavy activity. In your personalized injury prevention program with our expert Valles Mines, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to build up your body to be able to avoid injury in the activities you want to participate in.
• Increase flexibility — Stretching contributes to injury prevention in three way:
  1. It improves 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 adapt to more drastic movements.
  2. It improves blood flow, which carries nourishing blood to your soft tissue, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to restore themselves.
  3. It encourages good posture, which, as you read earlier, is is one of the most important factors of injury prevention.

  According to research, sports like soccer that necessitate dynamic movements require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility 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 improve performance but help prevent injuries. Football players learn to tackle a certain way to reduce the risk of brain damage, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to make sure their muscles are moving unnaturally. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to break down your movement and analyze how to improve it.
• Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If a part of your body is sore, your body is trying to send you a message. If you feel a sudden crack or grinding sensation, immediately withdraw from the activity and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t feeling up to an intense workout, save it for another day.
• Don’t play through an injury — Even though teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate a player that plays through pain, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could aggravate a current injury and put you out of commission for longer than it originally would have. Depending on the nature of your injury, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, visiting an emergency room, and rehab with a physical therapist to make sure 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 targeting in football, rules against coming from behind in soccer, and even the presence of bike lanes are examples of rules that were adopted to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that there are penalties for them.
• Speak a licensed physical therapist — It’s always advisable to get a physical before starting another season or starting up a new physical activity. While there, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a expert physical therapist in Valles Mines, MO is something you should consider. Every treatment plan we employ has been demonstrated to reduce the risk of injury, and we’ll personalize your program to how old you are, any previous injuries, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention for Older Valles Mines, MO Adults

Falls in senior citizens were responsible for more than 3 million urgent care visits and over 34,000 deaths. Studies show that being physical active is a great method for reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions that cause pain such as arthritis that develop over the course of several years can be slowed down by 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, the same principles of strength, balance, flexibility, and correct posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Valles Mines, 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

Valles Mines, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in something you love doing causes a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same elation. The licensed Valles Mines, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to develop your 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. We will aid you in feeling the physical and mental health benefits of doing what you do best. Schedule an appointment online or reach out to the location nearest you to get started with one of our injury prevention professionals in Valles Mines, MO.