Injury Prevention in Winchester, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to improve your performance, or a recent retiree who wants to spend more time camping, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our certified Winchester, 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 techniques that are proven to prevent injury. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or call the location most convenient for you.
Physical activity is vitally important to many Winchester, MO residents. We love activities such as playing sports, playing golf, or other physical activities. Additionally, keeping an active lifestyle reduces the risk of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, eurodegenerative disease, mental health issues, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Winchester, MO physical therapists help you come back and perform even better than before, but our injury prevention experts can help you reduce the risk of further injury by improving your overall strength, flexibility, and posture. All of our treatment plans, for both healing from and preventing injury, are based on evidence-backed techniques and are personalized to each client and the lifestyle they desire.
If you’ve recently sustained an injury, or have a persistent injury that won’t heal on its own, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Winchester, MO for a complimentary injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and protect your active lifestyle, keep reading or inquire about an appointment today.
Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Winchester, MO
Most injuries happen for one of two reasons:
- Repetitive demand injuries are injuries happen gradually as a body part degrades because of repetitive movements. They are common in overhead athletes athletes who are required to repeat throwing or striking motions, with joint pain usually being the first warning sign.
- Acute injuries are sudden and spontaneous. Examples include falling or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, fractures, and dislocations.
Some common injuries, like rotator cuff tears, can result from either overuse or acute trauma. Other injuries, such as ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with a sudden impact to the knee.
Why Do Injuries Happen? | Injury Prevention in Winchester, MO
While anyone can suffer an injury almost at any time and for numerous different reasons, they generally happen because your soft tissue, bones, and joints cannot hold up under the force, torque, or stretching that they are subjected to in a given movement or collision. There are three common dysfunctions that lead to injury:
Muscle Imbalance
Muscle balance is crucial to maintaining healthy joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can lead to dependency on one muscle group, which may cause your body to force it to participate in an activity it shouldn’t. It also causes posture dysfunction, 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 poor muscle balance between muscle groups, such as having a strong chest and weak back, or within muscle groups, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff not having proportionate strength. Muscle imbalance can cause injury through:
- Muscle weakness
- Muscle inflexibility
- Poor muscle recruitment
- Coordination deficiency
Customized injury prevention with our experienced physical therapists in Winchester, MO will ensure that different muscles and muscle groups are equally strong.
Movement Dysfunction
Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and impede your body’s ability to naturally perform functional movements, causing injury. It can be caused by a variety of musculoskeletal issues. It can cause injury through:
- Joint mobility restrictions
- Muscle imbalance
- Poor coordination
- Reduced balance
When you initially see our injury prevention professionals in Winchester, MO, we’ll discuss your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, together with your doctor or any additional providers treating you, we’ll devise a tailored plan of attack based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your body moving as it should.
Posture Dysfunction
Bad posture is not just an issue for people with desk jobs. People who play sports and other physically active people can suffer from postural dysfunction when at lest, using the computer, or in specific stances related to their sport. Optimal posture means proper positioning 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 compress the vertebrae, which disrupts our body’s internal communications and makes it challenging to achieve ideal movement health. It causes injuries through:
- Muscle weakness
- Muscle imbalance
- Poor positioning
- Joint mobility restrictions
- Poor muscle recruitment
Good posture is an important part of injury prevention because it ensures you are using your muscles equally, your flexibility is not jeopardized, and your vertebrae remain in place.
How to Prevent Injury in Winchester, 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 strong and flexible enough for your desired activity level:
- Take breaks — Injuries are more common in overworked bodies. If you’re heavily active, one or two rest days a week will signal to your body to engage in its natural healing processes. If you have a more moderate activity level, take it easy for the few hours after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
- Use protective equipment — Helmets, chest guards, safety pads and guards, and other required equipment in sports and other activities can help prevent injuries such as lacerations or brain injuries. If you’ve already suffered an injury to a joint or soft tissue, your Winchester, MO doctor or injury prevention professional may fit you for braces or Kinesio Taping® to stabilize the injured area. 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 stand up to the force and torque of heavy activity. In your personalized injury prevention program with our expert Winchester, MO physical therapists, we’ll work to build up your body to safely participate in the activities you want to participate in.
- Increase flexibility — Stretching contributes to injury prevention in three way:
- It improves 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 drastic positions.
- It enhances circulation, which carries nutrient-rich blood to your soft tissue, eliminating waste byproduct and rebuilding the muscles.
- It improves your posture, which we already know is an an essential part of injury prevention.
According to studies, sports like football that necessitate bouncing and jumping require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility to incorporate and exert the high amount of energy required. Stretching and warm up exercises before games or training further helps prevent injuries.
- Use proper technique — In every sport, there are accepted techniques to use. These techniques not only improve performance but help prevent injuries. Football players are taught to tackle with the shoulder in order 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 both be a better athlete and reduce your risk of injury.
- Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If a part of your body is sore, that’s your body’s way of telling you something isn’t right. If you feel sudden pain, immediately withdraw from the activity and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t feeling up to an intense workout, save it for another day.
- Don’t play through an injury — While teammates, competitors, and fans appreciate an athlete that plays through pain, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could make that injury worse and leave you off the field or court for longer than it originally would have. Depending on the nature of your injury, recommended actions may be using R.I.C.E. method, seeing urgent care, and scheduling appointments with a physical therapist to make sure your recovery and return to action go as well as possible.
- Follow 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 targeting in football, rules against slide-tackling in soccer, and even the existence of bike lanes are examples of rules that were adopted to prevent injuries to ourselves and others. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that violations of those rules are punished.
- Speak a licensed physical therapist — It’s a good idea to see a doctor before another season begins or starting up a new physical activity. While there, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a licensed physical therapist in Winchester, MO is something you should consider. All of our techniques have been proven to help athletes remain healthy, and you plan will be completely unique to you and catered to how old you are, any previous injuries, and how physically active you wish to be.
Injury Prevention for The Elderly in Winchester, MO
Falls in senior citizens were responsible for over 3 million emergency room visits and over 34,000 deaths. Research demonstrates that being physical active is a great method for preventing falls. Other conditions such as arthritis that are wear and tear injuries can be slowed down by physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints healthy. While the physical demands for older adults may not be as high as an athlete, the same principles of strength, stability, flexibility, and optimal posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.
Other services we offer in Winchester, 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
Winchester, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy
Suffering in injury in in an activity you prepare and train for and love can create a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same happiness. The knowledgeable Winchester, 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 that you once valued so much. Request an appointment online or call the location nearest you to start your program with one of our injury prevention professionals in Winchester, MO.