Weldon Spring Heights, MO

Weldon Spring Heights, MO

Don't let the fear of reinjury prevent you from participating in the activities you love.

Injury Prevention in Weldon Spring Heights, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, or are entering your golden years and want to spend more time camping, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you deserve. While our certified Weldon Spring Heights, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to recover from injury, we are experts in the entire musculoskeletal system who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to show you methods that are proven to prevent injury. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or reach out to the location nearest you.

Being physically active is an essential part of many Weldon Spring Heights, MO people’s lives. Many of us participate in activities like playing sports, biking, or other physical activities. Additionally, committing to an active lifestyle reduces the risk of future health problems including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, degenerative brain diseases, mental health issues, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Weldon Spring Heights, MO physical therapists allow you to return to action even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention professionals 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 personalized to each client and the activities they want to return to.

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 most convenient for you in Weldon Spring Heights, MO for a free injury screening. To take preventative measures and protect your sport or hobby, keep reading or inquire about an appointment today.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Weldon Spring Heights, MO

Most injuries happen for one of two reasons:

  1. Repetitive demand injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. They are common in overhead athletes athletes who are required to repeat throwing or striking motions and typically reveal themselves with joint pain.
  2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen suddenly. 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 either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, for example ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, with an immediate impact to or twisting of the knee.

Injury Prevention Weldon Spring Heights, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Weldon Spring Heights

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Weldon Spring Heights, MO

While injuries occur for many different reasons, and some are inescapable, they generally occur because your soft tissue, 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 chief causes of why your body cannot adjust to an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is key to maintaining healthy joints and staving off injury. Imbalance can lead to dependency on one set of muscles, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also prevents you from having good posture, and one set of muscles becoming tired sooner, increasing the risk of injury. Injuries can be caused by insufficient muscle balance in relation to other muscle groups, such as having a strong chest and weak back, or in the same muscle group, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff not having proportionate strength. Muscle imbalance can cause injury through:

Tailored injury prevention with our knowledgeable physical therapists in Weldon Spring Heights, MO will bring balance to your muscles.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and lead to your body bending in unnatural ways, causing injury. It can be caused by many different musculoskeletal issues. It can cause injury through:

  • Joint mobility limitations
  • Muscle imbalance
  • Poor coordination
  • Reduced balance

At our initial injury prevention appointment in Weldon Spring Heights, MO, we’ll go over your medical records and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, alongside with your doctor or any other providers involved in your treatment, we’ll develop a customized plan of attack been proven to work by research and studies to get your movement back on track.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people who sit a lot. People who play sports and others with active lifestyles can suffer from postural dysfunction when resting, sitting, or in specific stances necessary for their sport. Good posture refers to proper alignments of the neck, torso, pelvis, and extremities in a way that encourages our spine to stay in 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 attain the strength and range of motion you need to achieve. It can also lead to:

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

By teaching you good posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring you are using the right muscles for the right movements, your flexibility is not jeopardized, and your spine is in its natural position.



Keys to Injury Prevention in Weldon Spring Heights, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything you could to reduce that risk. No one technique is 100% foolproof in injury prevention. However, there are precautions to greatly reduce the risk of injury:

  • Take a rest — Injuries are more common when you do not give your body time to restore itself. 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 have a more modest activity level, take a break for the few hours after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
  • Use the appropriate equipment — Helmets, shin guards, elbow pads, and other equipment necessary in many sports can help prevent injuries such as cuts or brain injuries. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Weldon Spring Heights, MO doctor or injury prevention expert may advise stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other techniques like making sure all the equipment is snug can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
  • Improve muscle strength — Strengthening soft tissue helps it stand up to the rigors necessary for in sports and other activities. In your personalized injury prevention program with our professional Weldon Spring Heights, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to achieve optimal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to safely participate in the activities you want to participate in.
  • Increase flexibility — Stretching achieves three critical things for injury prevention:
    1. It boosts which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which allows for your soft tissue to adjust to more pronounced movements.
    2. It boosts blood flow, which carries nourishing blood to your soft tissue, eliminating waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to recover.
    3. It encourages good posture, which we already know is an is one of the most important factors of injury prevention.

    According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like football that necessitate sudden twists and movements require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility to perform those movements. Stretching and warm up exercises before games or training further helps prevent injuries.

  • Use accepted technique — In every physical activity, there are accepted techniques to use. These techniques not only improve performance but help reduce the risk of injury. Football players are taught to tackle a certain way to avoid a head injury, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best rotate their body. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to slow down your movement and analyze how to improve it.
  • Listen to your body — If a part of your body is sore, that’s your body’s way of telling you something is wrong. If you feel sudden pain, stop immediately and seek proportional medical care. If your body does not feel well enough for an intense workout, save it for another day.
  • Don’t play through an injury — Even though teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate an athlete that plays through pain, playing with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could aggravate an existing injury and put you out of commission for much longer than if you had sat out at the time of the injury. Depending on the severity of your injury, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, seeing an emergency room, and a series of physical therapy sessions 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 slide-tackling in soccer, and even the presence of special lanes on the street and sidewalk for bikers are examples of rules that leagues enacted to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. Those are in place for a reason, and there’s a reason that there are penalties for them.
  • Consult a professional physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to get a physical before a new season or committing yourself to any strenuous activity or training regimen. During your physical, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a expert physical therapist in Weldon Spring Heights, MO is something you should consider. All of our techniques have been demonstrated to reduce the risk of injury, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to your age, your injury history, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention Weldon Spring Heights, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Weldon Spring Heights

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Weldon Spring Heights, MO

Falls in senior citizens were responsible for more than 3 million emergency room visits and more than 34,000 fatalities. Studies show that being physical active can go a long way in reducing the risk of falls. Other conditions that limit mobility such as arthritis that develop over the course of several years can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints healthy. While seniors typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, appropriate strength, stability, flexibility, and proper posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Weldon Spring Heights, MO include:

Weldon Spring Heights, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in something you love doing causes a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same happiness. The knowledgeable Weldon Spring Heights, 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 do not have to fear going back to what you love doing most. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits that you once valued so much. Request an appointment online or call the location nearest you to get started with one of our injury prevention specialists in Weldon Spring Heights, MO.

Services Offered

Services Offered
  • Physical Therapy
    • Pre/Post Surgical Rehabilitation
    • Acute Injury Management
    • Chronic Injury Management
  • Work Conditioning/Hardening
  • Functional Capacity Evaluations
  • Certified Hand Therapy Coming Soon
  • Sports Physical Therapy
  • Pediatric Orthopedic Physical Therapy
  • Geriatric Physical Therapy
  • Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization
  • Vestibular Therapy and Post-Concussion Rehabilitation
  • Trigger Point Dry Needling
  • Free Injury Screenings
  • Kinesio Taping®
  • Blood Flow Restriction Therapy

Our Team

Sara Crain
PT, CEAS, Astym Cert.
Julie Freiner
OTR/L, CHT
Matt Williams
MS, OTR/L, ATC/L, CHT
Brian Freund
Partner, DPT, CMPT, TPS, MBA
Kaysie Cope
Front Office
Lauren Vaughn
PT, DPT, CMPT, Astym Cert.
Kelly Thornton
Clinic Director, PT, DPT
Justin Bridwell
Front Office

Locations

Begin Your Recovery Today

Injuries and pain shouldn’t keep you from moving and doing the things you love.