Injury Prevention in Wickes, MO. Whether you’re an athlete hoping for a shot at the next stage, or a recent retiree who wants to dedicate your time to taking ski vacations, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the happy, healthy lifestyle you desire. While our professional Wickes, 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 guide you through techniques that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or reach out to the location nearest you.

Being physically active is vitally important to many Wickes, MO residents. Many of us participate in active endeavors like playing sports, kayaking, and more. Additionally, committing to an active lifestyle reduces the risk of significant health problems including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia, mental health issues, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Wickes, 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 optimizing your overall movement health. All of our treatment plans, 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 lifestyle they desire.

If you’ve recently sustained an injury, or have a persistent injury that just won’t go away, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location nearest you in Wickes, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and ensure that you can continue with your sport or hobby, read on below or inquire about an appointment today.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Wickes, MO

Injuries typically fall into two categories:

1. Repetitive demand injuries are injuries happen gradually as a body part degrades because of repetitive movements. They are common in overhead athletes such as raquetball or shotput and pole-vaulters, with joint pain usually being the first warning sign.
2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen because of a specific and sudden trauma. Examples include falling 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, for example rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, for example ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Wickes, MO

While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally happen because your muscles, ligaments, tendons, 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 crucial to maintaining healthy joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can cause an overreliance on one muscle group, which may cause your body to use it in a way it shouldn’t. It can also lead to poor posture, and the weaker muscles will become fatigued sooner, increasing the risk of injury. Muscle imbalance applies to poor muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong bicep and weak tricep, 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

Tailored injury prevention with our professional physical therapists in Wickes, 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, inflammation, previous injuries, and muscle imbalance call all contribute to movement dysfunction. It can lead to:

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

At our first injury prevention appointment in Wickes, MO, we’ll evaluate your medical records and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, in concert with with your physician or any other medical professionals involved in your treatment, we’ll create a customized treatment plan 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 is not just an issue for people with desk jobs. Athletes and other physically active people can suffer from postural dysfunction when lying down, sitting, or in specific stances they need to be in for their sport. Healthy posture refers to proper alignments of the different joints and muscles of your body in a way that does not remove the spine from its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the vertebrae closer together, which disrupts our body’s internal communications and makes it harder to reach ideal motion health. It can also lead to:

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

Good posture is a necessary part of injury prevention because it ensures muscle balance, flexibility, and that your spine is in its natural position.

Keys to Injury Prevention in Wickes, 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 things you can do to greatly reduce the risk of injury:

• Take breaks — Injuries are more common when you do not give your body time to restore itself. If you’re heavily active, make sure to take one or two days off per week to allow your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. If you’re moderately active, take it easy after activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
• Use protective equipment — Helmets, chest guards, safety pads and guards, and other equipment necessary in many sports helps you avoid injuries such as cuts or head injuries. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or soft tissue, your Wickes, MO doctor or injury prevention specialist may fit you for stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other methods like making sure all the equipment is snug can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
• Strengthen muscles — Strengthening soft tissue helps it withstand the force and torque of heavy activity. Our Wickes, MO injury prevention specialists will work to achieve ideal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to be able to stay healthy in the activities you want to participate in.
• Improve flexibility — Increasing your flexibility accomplishes three important things for injury prevention:
  1. It increases your range of motion, which allows for your soft tissue to adapt to more drastic movements.
  2. It enhances circulation, which allows for nutrient-rich blood to flow to your muscles, removing waste byproduct and rebuilding the muscles.
  3. It encourages good posture, which we already know is an an essential part of injury prevention.

  According to studies, sports like football that necessitate sudden twists and movements require soft tissue flexible enough to perform those movements. Stretching and warm up exercises before games or training further helps prevent injuries.

• Use correct technique — Through the years, each sport and physical activity develops a consensus of the best techniques to use. These techniques not only help you get be the best player you can be but help reduce the risk of injury. Football players are taught to tackle a certain way to avoid brain damage, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to use the appropriate muscles. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to break 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 isn’t right. If you feel something suddenly that doesn’t feel right, stop immediately and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t feeling up to an intense workout, don’t force it.
• Don’t play through an injury — Even though teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate a player that guts it out through pain, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could make that injury worse and leave you off the field or court 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, visiting an emergency room, and scheduling appointments 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 to reduce the risk of injury. Penalties for leading with the helmet in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the presence of bike lanes are all 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 licensed physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to see a doctor before a new season or committing yourself to any strenuous activity or training regimen. During your visit, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a professional physical therapist in Wickes, MO is something you should consider. Every treatment plan we employ has been proven to reduce the risk of injury, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to how old you are, any previous injuries, and which activities you want to participate in.

Injury Prevention for The Elderly in Wickes, MO

Falls in senior citizens were responsible for more than 3 million emergency room admissions and over 34,000 deaths. Studies show that physical activity is invaluable in preventing falls. Other conditions that cause pain such as arthritis that accumulate over time 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 good posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Wickes, MO include:

• Shoulder Pain
• Mobility
• Knee Injury
• Joint Pain
• Sciatica
• Dry Needling
• ACL Tear
• Pain Management
• Rotator Cuff Tear

Wickes, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Being injured in in an activity you prepare and train for and love can create a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same elation. The experienced Wickes, 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 confident that you can safely return to the activities you love. You deserve to feel the physical and mental health benefits that you do not want to lose. Request an appointment online or call the location nearest you to see what our Wickes, MO injury prevention experts can do for you.