Wright City, MO

Wright City, MO

Don't let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love.

Injury Prevention in Wright City, MO. Whether you’re an athlete hoping for an opportunity at the next stage, or a recent retiree who wants to spend more time bike riding, don’t let the fear of reinjury keep you from the activities you love. While our professional Wright City, 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 teach out measures that are proven to reduce the risk of injury by preparing your body for the stressors of your desired activity. Schedule an appointment at Axes Physical Therapy today or contact the location nearest you.

Physical activity is an essential part of many Wright City, MO people’s lives. We love active endeavors such as playing sports, biking, and more. Additionally, keeping an active lifestyle reduces the risk of chronic conditions including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia, anxiety, and certain cancers. Not only can physical therapy with one of Axes’ licensed Wright City, MO physical therapists allow you to return to action and perform even better than before, but our injury prevention specialists can help preserve your active lifestyle by improving your overall strength, flexibility, and posture. All of our treatment plans, for both healing from and preventing injury, have been prove to work and are personalized to each client and the activities they want to return to.

If you’ve recently suffered an injury, or have a lingering injury that is not getting better with time, contact the Axes Physical Therapy location most convenient for you in Wright City, MO for a no-risk, no-obligation injury screening. To take preventative measures and ensure that you can continue with your sport or hobby, read on below or inquire about an appointment at your earliest convenience.

Injuries Axes PT Can Help Prevent in Wright City, MO

Most injuries fall into two categories:

  1. Overuse injuries are injuries that are caused by repetitive movements over time. They are common in overhead athletes athletes who are required to repeat throwing or striking motions, with joint pain usually being the first indicator.
  2. Acute injuries are injuries that happen suddenly. Examples include landing on uneven ground or receiving a blow. These can result in bruises, sprains and strains, fractures, and dislocations.

Some common injuries, such as rotator cuff tears, can either develop over time or occur suddenly. Other injuries, such as ACL tears, almost always occur spontaneously, with a sudden impact to the knee.

Injury Prevention Wright City, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Wright City

Why Do Injuries Happen? | Injury Prevention in Wright City, MO

While injuries occur for many different reasons, and are sometimes inescapable, they generally occur 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 essential to supporting joints and preventing injury. Imbalance can cause overemphasis for one set of muscles, causing it to perform actions it cannot do safely. It also prevents you from having ideal posture, and one set of muscles becoming fatigued sooner, increasing the risk of injury. Injuries can be caused by insufficient muscle balance in relation to other muscle groups, such as having a strong hamstring and weak quadriceps, or within muscle groups, such as the four muscles in the rotator cuff not having proportionate strength. Symptoms include:

Tailored injury prevention with our experienced physical therapists in Wright City, MO will ensure that different muscles and muscle groups are equally strong.

Movement Dysfunction

Movement dysfunction can impact your stability and lead to your body moving in ways it is not designed to, increasing your risk of injury. It can be caused by many different musculoskeletal issues. It can lead to:

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

At our first injury prevention appointment in Wright City, MO, we’ll go through 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 additional providers involved in your care, we’ll develop a personalized treatment plan based on empirically-backed research and studies to get your movement back on track.

Posture Dysfunction

Bad posture doesn’t just affect people with desk jobs. Athletes and other physically active people can have postural dysfunction when resting, driving, or in specific stances necessary for their sport. Healthy posture means proper alignments of your body from your head to your toes in a way that keeps the spine within its natural curves. Poor posture can bring the vertebrae closer together, which has a negative affect on our body’s ability to communicate with itself and attain ideal movement health. Symptoms include:

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

By guiding you to good posture, we’ll aid in your injury prevention by ensuring you are using your muscles equally, your flexibility can be improved and maintained, and your vertebrae remain in place.



How to Prevent Injury in Wright City, MO

You can still suffer an injury even if you did everything you could to reduce that risk. We cannot promise that our injury prevention program completely negates the risk of injury. However, there are several steps you can take to greatly reduce the risk of injury:

  • Take a rest — Your body needs time to rest and recover after any moderate to intense activity. 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 modest activity level, take it easy for the few hours after an activity so your body doesn’t become too fatigued.
  • Use protective equipment — Helmets, mouth guards, safety pads and guards, and other equipment necessary in sports and other activities helps you avoid injuries like bruises or head injuries. If you’ve had a previous injury, your Wright City, MO physician or physical therapist may recommend stabilizing braces or Kinesio Taping®. Other techniques like tying your cleats tightly can further help injury prevention by stabilizing your joints.
  • Strengthen muscles — Strengthening your muscles, tendons, and ligaments helps them stand up to the force and torque of heavy activity. Our Wright City, MO injury prevention specialists will work to achieve optimal muscle balance and strengthen the smaller muscles needed to safely participate in the activities you love.
  • Enhance flexibility — Stretching contributes to injury prevention in three way:
    1. It enhances which movements you can make and how far you can extend them, which allows for the tendons and ligaments connecting your muscles to your bones to adapt to more pronounced movements.
    2. It increases circulation, which carries protein-rich blood to your muscles, removing waste byproduct and encouraging the muscles to heal.
    3. It boosts your posture, which, as you read earlier, is an important part of injury prevention.

    According to studies, sports like football that necessitate dynamic activities require soft tissue flexible enough to incorporate and expel the high levels of energy required. Stretching and warm up exercises before activities further helps prevent injuries.

  • Use correct technique — In every sport, there is an accepted way to position and move your body. These techniques not only improve performance but help prevent injuries by not forcing your body into unnatural positions and movements. Football players are taught to tackle with the shoulder in order to reduce the risk of a concussion, and rotational athletes like golfers and baseball players learn how to best rotate their body. We use DorsaVi video motion analysis to slow down your movement and evaluate how to both improve your performance and prevent injury.
  • Don’t ignore what your body is telling you — If you feel pain in a muscle or joint, your body is trying to send you a message. If you feel a sudden crack or grinding sensation, stop immediately and seek proportional medical care. If your body does not feel well enough for a particularly rigorous training session, save it for another day.
  • Don’t play through an injury — While gutting it out through pain is often seen as commendable among competitors, playing with soft tissue or structural damage could make that injury worse and leave you on the sidelines 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 your doctor, and a series of physical therapy sessions 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 in the interest of safety. Penalties for helmet to helmet hits in football, rules against coming from behind in soccer, and even the existence of bike lanes are examples of rules put in place 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 in your best interest to have a medical evaluation before a new season or starting up a new physical activity. While there, inquire with your doctor if injury prevention with a professional physical therapist in Wright City, MO is right for you. Every treatment plan we employ has been proven to prevent 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 Wright City, MO | Sports Therapy | Physical Therapy Near Wright City

Injury Prevention for Older Wright City, MO Adults

Falls in senior citizens were responsible for over 3 million emergency room admissions and more than 34,000 fatalities. Research demonstrates that being physical active is a great method for preventing falls. Other conditions such as arthritis that develop over the course of several years can be effectively managed with physical therapy exercises that keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints strong. While the physical demands for seniors may not be as high as an athlete, the same principles of strength, balance, flexibility, and optimal posture are great agents in injury prevention.

Other services we offer in Wright City, MO include:

Wright City, MO Injury Prevention | Axes Physical Therapy

Suffering in injury in one of your favorite activities can create a mental block that keeps us from experiencing the same exhilaration. The licensed Wright City, MO physical therapists at Axes are here to guide you through your own 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 doing most. We will aid you in feeling the physical and mental health benefits that you do not want to lose. Schedule an appointment online or reach out to the location nearest you to get started with one of our injury prevention professionals in Wright City, MO.

Services Offered

Services Offered
  • Physical Therapy
    • Pre/Post Surgical Rehabilitation
    • Acute Injury Management
    • Chronic Injury Management
  • Work Conditioning/Hardening
  • Functional Capacity Evaluations
  • Certified Hand Therapy
  • Sports Physical Therapy
  • Pediatric Orthopedic Physical Therapy
  • Geriatric Physical Therapy
  • Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization
  • DorsaVi Video Motion Analysis
  • Spine Specialty – Certified Manual Therapy, McKenzie
  • Free Injury Screenings
  • Kinesio Taping®
  • Blood Flow Restriction Therapy

Our Team

Sara Crain
PT, CEAS, Astym Cert.
Julie Freiner
OTR/L, CHT
Samantha Bixby
PT, DPT, Astym Cert.
Farren Holman
PT, DPT, Astym Cert.
Matt Williams
MS, OTR/L, ATC/L, CHT
Jeff Hunter
Clinic Director, PT, Cert. MDT, MBA
Bailey Zimmermann
Front Office Supervisor
Amanda Reynolds
Front Office

Locations

Begin Your Recovery Today

Injuries and pain shouldn’t keep you from moving and doing the things you love.