Injury Prevention Weingarten, MO

Injury Prevention in Weingarten, MO. Whether you’re an athlete trying to get a shot at the next stage, 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 Weingarten, 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 guide you through measures that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Make an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location most convenient for you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many Weingarten, MO residents. We love activities like playing sports, hiking, and more. Additionally, keeping an active lifestyle helps prevent future health problems like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia, depression, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Weingarten, MO physical therapists allow you to return to action even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention specialists can help preserve your active lifestyle by improving your overall strength, flexibility, and posture. All of our treatment plans, for both recovery and injury prevention, 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 nagging injury that won’t heal on its own, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Weingarten, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and ensure that you can continue with your active lifestyle, read on below or inquire about an appointment today.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Weingarten, MO

Injuries generally happen for one of two reasons:

Repetitive demand injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. In sports, we see them the most in in overhead athletes such as softball or lacrosse players, with joint pain usually being the first symptom.
Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. 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 common injuries, such as rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, for example ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with an immediate impact to or twisting of the knee.

Injury Prevention Weingarten, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Weingarten

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Weingarten, MO

While injuries occur for many different reasons, and some are unpreventable, they generally happen because your soft tissue, bones, and joints cannot handle 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 essential to supporting joints and reducing injury. Imbalance can cause overemphasis for 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 optimal posture, and the weaker muscles will become fatigued faster, making them more susceptible to injuries. Injuries can be caused by poor muscle balance in relation to other 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
Poor coordination

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

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. Neurological issues, swelling, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. It can lead to:

Joint mobility restrictions
Muscle imbalance
Poor coordination
Lessened balance

At our initial injury prevention appointment in Weingarten, MO, we’ll go over your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, alongside with your doctor or any additional medical professionals involved in your treatment, we’ll design a customized treatment plan been proven to work by research and studies to get your body moving as it should.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people who sit a lot. Athletes and others with active lifestyles can be affected by postural dysfunction when lying down, driving, or in certain poses related to a given activity. 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 compress the joints in the spine, which disrupts communication between your brain and body and makes it difficult to attain ideal movement health. It can also lead to:

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

By guiding you to good posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring muscle balance, range of motion, and that your spine is in its natural position.

How to Prevent Injury in Weingarten, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything possible to prevent one. We cannot promise that our injury prevention program completely negates the risk of injury. However, there are precautions to make sure your body is prepared for your intended activity:

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, one or two rest days a week will signal to 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 correct equipment — Helmets, chin straps, protective eyewear, and other recommended equipment in sports and other activities helps you avoid injuries such as lacerations or concussions. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your Weingarten, MO physician or physical therapist may advise braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the affected area. Other techniques like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further protection.
Strengthen muscles — Strengthening soft tissue helps it withstand the force and torque your body is put through in sports and other activities. In your tailored injury prevention program with our professional Weingarten, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to achieve ideal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to be able to avoid injury in the activities you want to participate in.
Increase flexibility — Increasing your flexibility achieves three important things for injury prevention:
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 adapt to more forceful positions.
2. It enhances blood flow, which carries nutrient-rich blood to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and re-energizing the muscles.
3. It encourages good posture, which, as you read earlier, is an important part of injury prevention.
According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like soccer that require bouncing and jumping require muscles and tendons 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 help you perform better but help reduce the risk of injury. Football players are taught to tackle a certain way to reduce the risk of a concussion, 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 improve it.
Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — 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 a sudden crack or grinding sensation, immediately withdraw from the activity and seek proportional medical care. If your body does not feel well enough for a particularly rigorous workout, don’t force it.
Don’t play through an injury — Even though gutting it out through pain is often viewed as a courageous act among competitors, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could exacerbate an existing injury 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 an emergency room, and a series of physical therapy sessions to make sure your body heals naturally and can handle the activity you want to return to.
Follow the rules — Many sports have special rules at different levels 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 keep players safe. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that violations of those rules are punished.
Speak a professional physical therapist — It’s always advisable to get a physical before starting another season or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. During your physical, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a knowledgeable physical therapist in Weingarten, MO is a good idea for you. Every treatment plan we employ has been proven to prevent injury, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to how old you are, your injury history, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention Weingarten, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Weingarten

Injury Prevention for Older Weingarten, MO Adults

Falls in adults over 65 accounted for over 3 million emergency room visits and more than 34,000 fatalities. Research demonstrates that being physical active is a great method for preventing falls. Other conditions 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 healthy. While the physical demands for seniors may not be as high as an athlete, healthy strength, stability, flexibility, and proper posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Weingarten, MO include:

Weingarten, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in one of your favorite activities can lead to a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same joy. The experienced Weingarten, 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 confident that you can safely return to the activities you love doing most. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits of doing what you do best. Request an appointment online or call the location nearest you to get started with one of our injury prevention specialists in Weingarten, MO.