Injury Prevention in Weldon Spring, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, or you just retired and want to spend more time hiking, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you desire. While our licensed Weldon Spring, MO physical therapists spend much of their time helping athletes and others heal after an injury, we are experts in the entire musculoskeletal system who can evaluate your body’s current condition and how you move to teach out methods that are proven to reduce the risk of 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 Weldon Spring, MO people’s lives. Many of us participate in activities like playing sports, swimming, and more. Furthermore, keeping an active lifestyle helps prevent future health problems including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, degenerative brain diseases, depression, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Weldon Spring, MO physical therapists help you come back even stronger after an injury, but our injury prevention experts can help you reduce the risk of further injury by optimizing your overall movement health. All of our treatment plans, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, are proven to be effective and are customized for each client and the activities they want to return to.
If you’ve recently sustained an injury, or have a nagging injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Weldon Spring, MO for a free 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 Weldon Spring, MO
Injuries generally fall into two categories:
- Overuse 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, with joint pain usually being the first symptom.
- Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include landing on uneven ground or a sudden impact by an object or another person. These can result in bruises, twisting joints, fractures, and dislocations.
Some of the injuries we see most frequently, 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 Weldon Spring, MO
While injuries occur for many different reasons, and are sometimes unpreventable, they generally happen 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 preventing injury. Imbalance can cause an overreliance on one muscle group, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. 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 probability of injury. Injuries can be caused by poor muscle balance in relation to other muscle groups, such as having a strong bicep and weak tricep, or in the same muscle group, such as an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Muscle imbalance can cause injury through:
- Muscle weakness
- Muscle inflexibility
- Poor muscle recruitment
- Coordination deficits
Customized injury prevention with our licensed physical therapists in Weldon Spring, 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, increasing your risk of injury. It can be caused by a range of musculoskeletal issues. It can cause injury through:
- Joint mobility restrictions
- Muscle imbalance
- Coordination deficiency
- Decreased balance
When you first visit our injury prevention professionals in Weldon Spring, MO, we’ll evaluate your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, in tandem with with your doctor or any other providers involved in your treatment, we’ll design a customized plan of attack been proven to work through research and studies to get your movement back on track.
Posture Dysfunction
Bad posture is not just an issue for people who spend a lot of time in the same position. People who play sports and other physically active people can suffer from postural dysfunction when resting, sitting, or in specific positions necessary for a given activity. Good posture means correct positioning when both static and moving in a way that keeps the spine within its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the joints in the spine closer together, which disrupts our body’s internal communications and makes it challenging to reach ideal movement health. 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 muscle balance, range of motion, and that your spine is in its natural position.
Keys to Injury Prevention in Weldon Spring, MO
All sports and physical activities can potentially lead to an injury. We cannot promise that our injury prevention program completely negates the risk of injury. However, there are several steps you can take to make sure your body is strong and flexible enough for your desired activity level:
- 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 and recovery processes. If you have a more moderate activity level, take it easy after activity so your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints become too fatigued.
- Use the correct equipment — Helmets, shin guards, safety pads and guards, and other recommended equipment in many sports can help prevent injuries like bruises or concussions. If you’re returning to activity after an injury, your Weldon Spring, MO physician or injury prevention specialist may recommend braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize a joint. Other measures like making sure all the equipment is snug offers further stabilization.
- Increase muscle strength — Strengthening soft tissue helps it withstand the rigors your body is put through in sports and other activities. Our Weldon Spring, MO injury prevention professionals will work to build up your body to safely participate in the activities you want to participate in.
- Improve flexibility — Stretching contributes to injury prevention in three way:
- It boosts your range of motion, which allows for your soft tissue to adapt to more forceful movements.
- It enhances blood flow, which carries nutrient-rich blood to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to recover.
- It encourages good posture, which, as we’ve discussed, is an important part of injury prevention.
According to research, sports like soccer that include dynamic movements require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility to perform those movements. Stretching and warm up exercises before activities further helps prevent injuries.
- Use correct technique — In every physical activity, there are accepted techniques to use. These techniques not only improve performance but help prevent injuries by not forcing your body into unnatural positions and movements. Football players learn to tackle a certain way to avoid a concussion, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to use the appropriate muscles. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to slow down your movement and educate you on how to improve it.
- 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, immediately withdraw from the activity and seek proportional medical care. If your body does not feel well enough for a particularly rigorous workout, save it for another day.
- Don’t play through an injury — Even though teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate a player that guts it out through pain, 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 the severity of your injury, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, seeing your doctor, and rehab with a physical therapist to make sure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
- Play by the rules — Depending on the sport or activity and age level of the participants, it likely has special rules in the interest of safety. Penalties for leading with the helmet in football, rules against head-first sliding in baseball, and even the existence of bike lanes are examples of rules that were adopted to keep participants safe. 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 see a doctor before another season begins or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. During your physical, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a professional physical therapist in Weldon Spring, MO is a good idea for you. All of our techniques have been proven to reduce the risk of 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 The Elderly in Weldon Spring, MO
Falls in senior citizens were responsible for more than 3 million emergency room admissions 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 like 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 strong. While older adults typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, appropriate strength, stability, flexibility, and optimal posture are great agents in injury prevention.
Other services we offer in Weldon Spring, MO include:
- Total Knee Replacement Physical Therapy
- Vestibular Therapy
- Concussion Treatment
- Soft Tissue Mobilization
- Post Surgical Rehabilitation
- Shin Splint Treatment
- Direct Access Physical Therapy
- Gait Analysis
- Pelvic Floor Therapy
- Dry Needling Near Me
Weldon Spring, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy
Being injured in one of your favorite activities causes a mental block that won’t allow us to experience the same euphoria. The experienced Weldon Spring, 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 do not have to fear going back to what you love. We will aid you in feeling the physical and mental health benefits that you once valued so much. Make an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to get started with one of our injury prevention specialists in Weldon Spring, MO.