3 Ways to Avoid Overuse Injuries in Youth Athletes

Learning how to play a sport as a child is one of the best ways to develop self awareness, learn new skills (both physically and mentally), learn how to interact with others, and learn the ever important art of winning and losing graciously. Being exposed to a variety of sports at young ages is so good for a developing neuromuscular system and to improve one’s sense of self. However, it seems that children are starting to specialize in one sport at increasingly younger ages. 

All sports require repetitive action. Soccer players run, pivot, cut, pass, and shoot with their feet, generating force through the stability of their hips and pelvis. Swimmers continuously reach with their arms and generate force through their torsos. Overtime, these repetitive movements cause stress on a growing skeleton and can lead to overuse injuries. Some common overuse injuries seen in pediatric athletes are strains to the growth plates of the elbow and shoulder in throwing sports (AKA Little Leaguer’s Shoulder/Elbow), strain to the growth plates in the knees and heels (Oschgood-Shlatters and Sever’s Disease respectively), patellar tendinitis (“Jumper’s Knee”), and shin splints (medial tibial stress syndrome). Other overuse injuries that we see commonly in pediatric patients are ACL strains or tears, IT Band Syndrome, Spondylolysis, and Concussions. So how do we encourage children to continue playing their favorite sport while minimizing the risk of developing an overuse injury? 

Here are 3 things that all parents of youth athletes should consider 

1. Develop Body Awareness

Help your child develop body awareness by explaining to them the difference between Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) which is a normal part of training and the pain felt from injury. 

DOMS is the most noticeable when first learning a new sport or when ramping up training. Once your child has adapted to a new sport (within the first two weeks of training) they should no longer notice this type of muscle soreness after every practice. Another big differentiator between DOMS and tissue injury is that DOMS is in the muscle tissue, not in joints.  If your child is complaining about constant joint pain in the shoulder, elbow, knee, wrist, ankle, etc. then this is a sign to take a deeper look. Trust your intuition and get it checked out.  

Swelling and loss of motion of a joint is never a normal sign of training and this requires immediate attention.

2. Improve Strength and Conditioning 

Cross-training is a term that is used to describe training multiple sports in order to improve performance in the main sport of interest. While playing multiple sports is so important for development, as mentioned earlier,  I would argue that this needs to go a step further than just playing multiple sports. Many sports show a preferred right or left hand/foot dominance which will train the athlete to develop specific movement patterns based on their dominant side while leaving the other side relatively untrained. 

This is why a balanced strength and conditioning program is important. If your child is gung ho that they are going to be a professional basketball player someday, then they need to start developing their joint mobility and muscle flexibility and resilience in order to meet the training demands of that sport. It is important to find a trainer that is familiar with the sport and someone with whom your child can fail repetitively in front of and not feel like a “failure”. Anyone who has done any regular lifting program knows that failure is absolutely a crucial part of the training process. Anecdotally, I am seeing many more youth athletes start strength and conditioning programs, and especially more female youth athletes, which is so encouraging to see! 

3. Take Time Off

Lastly, it is important to rest. Let me repeat that. It is important for your child to rest. No sport should be played all year around. Research shows that playing their favorite sport 6-9 months out of the year tends to be the sweet spot to continue to build capacity and remain competitive without developing chronic overuse injuries. However, this is a very generic guideline and may be even less based on your child’s specific response to training. If they are frequently getting injured or complaining of pain, maybe it isn’t the sport for them. Also try to avoid playing sports during that rest period that are similar to the movement patterns in the main sport. For example if your child is a baseball pitcher, they shouldn’t be playing quarterback in their “off season”. 

It is also important to develop recovery routines within the season. There should be built in rest days during a week’s worth of training and active recovery activities (i.e. bike riding, light swimming, yoga, etc.) that your child feels comfortable doing to safely burn off energy. 

Shannon Hall  PT, DPT