Injury Prevention Womack, MO

Injury Prevention in Womack, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, 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 professional Womack, 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 movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to guide you through measures that are proven to reduce the risk of injury by preparing your body for the stressors of your desired activity. Make an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or reach out to the location most convenient for you.

Being physically active is an essential part of many Womack, MO people’s lives. Many of us participate in active endeavors such as playing sports, playing golf, and more. Additionally, pursuing an active lifestyle reduces the risk of chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, degenerative brain diseases, depression, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Womack, MO physical therapists help you come back and perform even better than before, but our injury prevention specialists can help keep you active by improving your overall strength, flexibility, and posture. All of our methods, both when helping restore motion health and when looking to improve it, have been prove to work and are customized for each client and the level of activity they want to reach.

If you’ve recently suffered 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 Womack, MO for a no-risk, no-obligation injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can continue with your active lifestyle, keep reading or inquire about an appointment today.

Types of Injuries We Prevent Prevent in Womack, MO

Injuries typically fall into two categories:

Wear-and-tear injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. They are common in overhead athletes such as softball or shotput and pole-vaulters and typically reveal themselves with joint pain.
Acute injuries are injuries that happen suddenly. Examples include falling or receiving a blow. 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, such as receiving a direct blow to the knee.

Injury Prevention Womack, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Womack

What Causes Injuries? | Injury Prevention in Womack, 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 handle the force, torque, or stretching that are required or are possible in a given activity. There are three primary causes of why your body cannot adjust to an activity:

Muscle Imbalance

Muscle balance is crucial to maintaining healthy joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can result in an overreliance on one set of muscles, which may cause your body to use it in a way 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 probability 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 an imbalance between the four muscles of the rotator cuff. Symptoms include:

Muscle weakness
Muscle inflexibility
Poor muscle recruitment
Poor coordination

Personalized injury prevention with our professional physical therapists in Womack, MO will ensure that your muscles are at optimal proportional strength.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can result in poor balance and lead to your body bending in ways it is not designed to, increasing your risk of injury. It can be caused by many different musculoskeletal issues. Symptoms include:

Joint mobility restrictions
Muscle imbalance
Coordination deficits
Reduced balance

At our first injury prevention appointment in Womack, MO, we’ll evaluate your medical history and perform a base evaluation to identify the root causes of your movement dysfunction. Then, in concert with with your doctor or any other providers treating you, we’ll come up with a customized plan of attack been proven to work through research and studies to get your movement back on track.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people with slouched shoulders. Athletes and other physically active people can suffer from postural dysfunction when lying down, using the computer, or in specific stances necessary for their sport. Healthy posture means proper positioning when both static and moving in a way that encourages our spine to stay in 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 achieve optimal movement health. It can also lead to:

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 can be improved and maintained, and your nervous system can communicate as its intended to.

How to Prevent Injury in Womack, MO

All sports and physical activities carry an inherent risk of 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 a rest — Injuries are more common in overworked bodies. If you’re heavily active, one or two rest days a week will encourage your body to engage in its natural healing and recovery processes. If you have a more modest activity level, rest for the rest of the day after an activity so you don’t overwork your muscles and joints.
Use the correct equipment — Helmets, mouth guards, elbow pads, and other required equipment in many sports helps you avoid injuries like contusions or concussions. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Womack, MO doctor or injury prevention professional may recommend stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other measures like tying your athletic footwear tightly can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
Strengthen muscles — Strengthening soft tissue helps it stand up to the force and torque your body is put through in sports and other activities. Our Womack, MO injury prevention experts will work to build up your body to safely participate in the activities you want to participate in.
Increase flexibility — Stretching achieves three important things for injury prevention:
1. It increases which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which lets for your tendons and ligaments to handle more forceful positions.
2. It enhances blood flow, which allows for nourishing blood to flow to your soft tissue, removing waste byproduct and re-energizing the muscles.
3. It improves your posture, which we already know is an an essential part of injury prevention.
According to research, sports like basketball that require dynamic motions require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility to perform those movements. Stretching and warm up exercises before games or training further helps prevent injuries.
Use proper technique — Through the years, each sport and physical activity develops a consensus of the best techniques to use. These techniques not only improve performance but help prevent injuries. Football players are taught to tackle a certain way to reduce the risk of brain damage, and swimmers learn the proper strokes to make sure their muscles are moving unnaturally. We utilize DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and evaluate how to improve it.
Listen to your body — If a part of your body is bothering you, that’s your body’s way of telling you something is wrong. 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 training session, save it for another day.
Don’t play through an injury — While playing through pain is often viewed as a courageous act among competitors, forcing your body to perform with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could exacerbate a current injury and leave you off the field or court for much longer than if you had sat out at the time of the injury. Depending on the severity of your injury, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, visiting urgent care, and a series of physical therapy sessions to ensure your body heals properly and can withstand the activity you want to return to.
Follow the rules — Most sports have special rules at different levels to help prevent injury. Penalties for leading with the helmet in football, rules against coming from behind in soccer, and even the existence of special lanes on the street and sidewalk for bikers are all rules put in place to keep players safe. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that violations of those rules are punished.
Speak a professional physical therapist — It’s a good idea to get a physical before a new season or committing yourself to any strenuous activity or training regimen. While there, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a knowledgeable physical therapist in Womack, MO is a good idea for you. All of our techniques have been demonstrated to prevent injury, and we’ll personalize your program to how old you are, your injury history, and how physically active you wish to be.

Injury Prevention Womack, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Womack

Injury Prevention for Senior Citizens in Womack, MO

Falls in senior citizens were responsible for more than 3 million emergency room admissions and over 34,000 deaths. Studies show that being physical active is invaluable in preventing falls. Other conditions such as arthritis that accumulate over time can be slowed down by 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, balance, flexibility, and correct posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Womack, MO include:

Womack, 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 euphoria. The professional Womack, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to design for you a personalized injury prevention program that will keep your body as safe and healthy as can be, 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 do not want to lose. Make an appointment online or contact the location nearest you to see what our Womack, MO injury prevention specialists can do for you.