Injury Prevention in Weldon Spring, MO. Whether you’re an athlete hoping for an opportunity at the next level, or a recent retiree who wants to dedicate your time to bike riding, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you deserve. 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 movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to show you exercises that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or contact the location nearest you.

Physical activity is vitally important to many Weldon Spring, MO residents. We love active endeavors like playing sports, kayaking, and more. Furthermore, pursuing an active lifestyle helps stave off future health problems including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, eurodegenerative disease, mental health issues, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Weldon Spring, 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 treatment plans, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, have been prove to work and are developed uniquely for each client and the level of activity they want to reach.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a lingering injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Weldon Spring, MO for a no-risk, no-obligation injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and ensure that you can continue with your sport or hobby, read on below or call to speak to a physical therapist today.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Weldon Spring, MO

Most injuries fall into two categories:

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 basketball players and typically are accompanied by joint pain.
2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen because of a specific and sudden trauma. Examples include landing on uneven ground or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, twisting joints, broken bones, and dislocations.

Some common injuries, such as rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, such as ACL tears, are almost always the result of trauma, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.

Why Do Injuries Happen? | Injury Prevention in Weldon Spring, MO

While injuries occur for many different reasons, and some are inescapable, they generally occur because of dysfunction or instability and your body and between body parts. There are three chief causes of why your body cannot adjust to an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is essential to maintaining healthy joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can cause overemphasis for one muscle group, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It can also lead to poor posture, and the weaker set of muscles will be pushed past its limit, resulting in failure and a higher likelihood of injury. Injuries can be caused by insufficient muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong hamstring and weak quadriceps, or within muscle groups, such as an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Muscle imbalance can lead to:

• Muscle weakness
• Muscle inflexibility
• Poor muscle recruitment
• Poor coordination

Personalized injury prevention with our certified physical therapists in Weldon Spring, MO will bring balance to your muscles.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can result in poor balance and impede your body’s ability to naturally perform functional movements, increasing your risk of injury. Problems in your nervous system, swelling, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. Symptoms include:

• Joint mobility limitations
• Muscle imbalance
• Coordination deficiency
• Decreased balance

When you initially see our injury prevention specialists in Weldon Spring, MO, we’ll go through 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 care, we’ll create a tailored plan of attack based on empirically-backed 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, sitting, or in specific poses necessary for their sport. Good posture refers to correct positioning of the neck, torso, pelvis, and extremities in a way that encourages our spine to stay in its natural curves. Poor posture can compact the bones of the spine, which disrupts your nervous system and makes it harder to reach the strength and range of motion you need to achieve. Symptoms include:

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

Good posture is a vital part of injury prevention because it ensures you are using your muscles equally, your flexibility can be improved and maintained, and your spine is in its natural position.

How to Prevent Injury in Weldon Spring, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything possible to reduce that risk. No one precaution is 100% foolproof in injury prevention. However, there are several steps you can take 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 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 processes. If you’re moderately active, rest for the rest of the day after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
• Use the appropriate equipment — Helmets, chin straps, elbow pads, and other required equipment in many sports helps you avoid injuries like cuts or head injuries. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Weldon Spring, MO physician or injury prevention professional may suggest braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize a joint. Other methods like tying your shoes tightly can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
• Strengthen muscles — Strengthening soft tissue helps it withstand the force and torque your body is put through in sports and other activities. In your personalized injury prevention program with our certified Weldon Spring, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to achieve optimal muscle balance and strengthen the often forgotten muscles needed to be able to stay healthy in the activities you want to participate in.
• Increase flexibility — Increasing your flexibility accomplishes three important things for injury prevention:
  1. It increases which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which allows for your soft tissue to adjust to more dramatic movements.
  2. It improves blood flow, which allows for protein-rich blood to flow to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to recover.
  3. It enhances your 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 basketball that necessitate bouncing and jumping require muscles and tendons compliant enough to store and release the high amount of energy required. Also, don’t forget to stretch and warm up before games or training to further reduce the risk of injury.

• Use proper technique — In every sport, there is an accepted way to position and move your body. These techniques not only help you get be the best athlete you can be but help prevent injuries by not forcing your body into unnatural positions and movements. Football players learn to tackle with the shoulder in order to reduce the risk of a head injury, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to use the appropriate muscles. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to slow down your movement and evaluate how to both be a better athlete and reduce your risk of injury.
• 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 is wrong. If you feel something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, immediately stop all physical 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 — While teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate a player that guts it out through pain, forcing your body to perform with soft tissue or structural damage could make that injury worse and put you out of commission for much longer than if you had sat out at the time of the injury. Depending on what caused your injury and how severe it is, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, visiting your doctor, and rehab with a physical therapist to ensure your body heals properly and can withstand a return to physical activity.
• Play by the rules — Most sports have special rules at different levels in the interest of safety. Penalties for helmet to helmet hits in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the existence of bike lanes are all rules put in place to keep players safe. Those were enacted for a reason, and there’s a reason that there are penalties for them.
• Consult a licensed physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to get a physical before starting another season or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. While there, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a experienced physical therapist in Weldon Spring, MO is something you should consider. Every treatment plan we employ has been demonstrated to help athletes remain healthy, 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 The Elderly in Weldon Spring, MO

Falls in senior citizens were responsible for more than 3 million urgent care admissions and over 34,000 deaths. Research demonstrates that being physical active is a great method for preventing falls. Other conditions that cause pain like arthritis that accumulate over time can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints strong. While the physical demands for older adults may not be as high as an athlete, healthy strength, stability, flexibility, and optimal posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Weldon Spring, 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

Weldon Spring, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in something you love doing can create a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same happiness. The professional Weldon Spring, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to develop your personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body strong and flexible, and your mind at ease 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. Make an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to start your program with one of our injury prevention specialists in Weldon Spring, MO.