Injury Prevention in Woodson Terrace, MO. Whether you’re an athlete and want to up your game, 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 deserve. While our certified Woodson Terrace, MO physical therapists work extensively with athletes and others to recover from injury, we are complete movement health specialists who can evaluate your movement, muscle and joint strength, and flexibility to teach out measures that are proven to reduce the risk of injury. Request an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or contact the location most convenient for you.

Physical activity is vitally important to many Woodson Terrace, MO residents. We love activities such as playing sports, biking, and more. Furthermore, keeping an active lifestyle reduces the risk of future health problems such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia, mental health issues, and many types of cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Woodson Terrace, MO physical therapists help you return to action as fierce as ever, but our injury prevention professionals can help keep you active 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 developed uniquely 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 nearest you in Woodson Terrace, MO for a free injury screening. To reduce your chance of an injury and protect your sport or hobby, read on below or call to speak to a physical therapist today.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Woodson Terrace, MO

Injuries generally fall into two categories:

1. Chronic injuries are injuries happen gradually as a body part degrades because of repetitive movements. They are common in overhead athletes such as softball or quarterbacks and typically are accompanied by joint pain.
2. 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, broken bones, 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, such as ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with an immediate impact to or twisting of the knee.

Why Do Injuries Happen? | Injury Prevention in Woodson Terrace, MO

While injuries occur for many different reasons, and some are unpreventable, they generally happen because your muscles, ligaments, tendons, bones, and joints cannot handle 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 essential to supporting joints and reducing injury. Imbalance can result in an overreliance on one muscle group, which may cause your body to use it in a way it shouldn’t. It also prevents you from having good posture, and the weaker muscles will become tired more quickly, increasing the risk of injury. Muscle imbalance applies to insufficient muscle balance in relation to other muscle groups, such as having a strong hamstring and weak quadriceps, or in the same muscle group, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff having different levels of strength. Symptoms include:

• Muscle weakness
• Muscle inflexibility
• Poor muscle recruitment
• Coordination deficits

Tailored injury prevention with our licensed physical therapists in Woodson Terrace, MO will bring balance to your muscles.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can result in poor balance and lead to your body moving in unnatural ways, increasing your risk of injury. It can be caused by numerous musculoskeletal issues. It can cause injury through:

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

When you first see our injury prevention specialists in Woodson Terrace, MO, we’ll go through your medical records and analyze your current movement health, strength, and flexibility. Then, alongside with your physician or any additional medical professionals treating you, we’ll come up with a personalized game plan based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your movement health to reach its potential.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people with slouched shoulders. Athletes and other physically active people can have postural dysfunction when lying down, driving, or in certain stances necessary for a given activity. Healthy posture refers to correct positioning of the neck, torso, pelvis, and extremities in a way that does not remove the spine from its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the bones of the spine closer together, which disrupts your nervous system and makes it challenging to achieve optimal movement health. Symptoms include:

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

By helping you understand the best practices for posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring muscle balance, flexibility, and that your nervous system can communicate as its intended to.

Keys to Injury Prevention in Woodson Terrace, 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 precautions to greatly reduce the risk of injury:

• Take a rest — 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 signal to your body to naturally heal any mild pain or soreness. If you have a more moderate activity level, rest for the rest of the day after an activity so your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints become too fatigued.
• Wear the right equipment — Helmets, chest guards, protective eyewear, and other equipment necessary in many sports helps you avoid injuries such as contusions or concussions. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Woodson Terrace, MO physician or physical therapist may suggest stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other methods like tying your cleats tightly offers further protection.
• Increase muscle strength — Strengthening soft tissue helps it stand up to the force and torque of heavy activity. Our Woodson Terrace, MO injury prevention experts will work to achieve optimal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to safely participate in the activities you want to participate in.
• Enhance flexibility — Stretching contributes to injury prevention in three way:
  1. It improves which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which allows for your soft tissue to handle more dramatic movements.
  2. It improves blood flow, which carries nourishing blood to your muscles, removing waste byproduct and reinvigorating the muscles.
  3. It encourages good posture, which we already know is an is one of the most important aspects of injury prevention.

  According to a peer-reviewed sports medicine paper, sports like football that require bouncing and jumping require soft tissue with sufficient flexibility to perform those movements. 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 improve performance 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 make sure their muscles are moving unnaturally. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to capture how you move and analyze how to both improve your performance and reduce your risk of injury.
• Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If a part of your body is sore, your body is trying to send you a message. If you feel sudden pain, stop immediately and seek proportional medical care. If your body isn’t holing up well in an intense training session, don’t force it.
• Don’t play through an injury — While gritting through pain is often seen as a valiant act among competitors, playing with an injury to a muscle, joint, tendon, or ligament could aggravate a current injury and put you out of commission for longer than it originally would have. Depending on what caused your injury and how severe it is, you may use methods like the R.I.C.E. method, visiting urgent care, and scheduling appointments with a physical therapist to ensure 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 existence of bike lanes are all rules that leagues enacted to keep participants safe. There’s a reason those rules exist, and a reason that violations of those rules are punished.
• Consult a professional physical therapist — It’s in your best interest to have a medical evaluation before a new season or committing yourself to any strenuous physical activity. While there, ask your doctor if injury prevention with a professional physical therapist in Woodson Terrace, MO is right for you. Every treatment plan we employ has been demonstrated to reduce the risk of 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 for Senior Citizens in Woodson Terrace, MO

Falls in adults over 65 were responsible for over 3 million urgent care admissions and over 34,000 deaths. Studies show that physical activity is a great method for preventing falls. Other conditions that cause pain such as arthritis that accumulate over time can be more bearable and take longer to progress with physical therapy exercises that keep your soft tissue and joints strong. While seniors typically do not exert themselves as much as an athlete does, the same principles of strength, stability, flexibility, and optimal posture can greatly aid in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Woodson Terrace, 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

Woodson Terrace, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in one of your favorite activities can lead to a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same exhilaration. The licensed Woodson Terrace, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to guide you through your own 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. We will aid you in feeling the physical and mental health benefits that you once valued so much. Make an appointment online or reach out to the location nearest you to start your program with one of our injury prevention experts in Woodson Terrace, MO.