Youth Sports Injury Prevention Techniques
By: Rachel Amarosa, ATC
The end of summer marks the return of fall sports. For most of our local middle school and high school athletes, this year is particularly more exciting because most sports were either completely altered or cancelled last year due to Covid-19. Since Covid-19’s onset, many different aspects of our lives have changed, however, because of safety precautions and protocols we are able to see some sense of normalcy with our youth teams returning this year. At this time, most of our schools are a few weeks into their preseasons which is usually when we start to see the repetitive-stress & sports-related injuries begin to plague our teams.
Roughly 62% of sports-related injuries occur during practice rather than in games. The most common types of sports-related injuries among our youth athletes are muscle strains, sprains, growth plate injuries and repetitive motion injuries. Our goal as healthcare providers is for our athletes to enjoy and excel in their sports participation. One way we promote this is through education. Education can help to prevent many of these sidelying injuries.
The first way we can prevent injury is knowing and implementing a proper warm up. A proper warm up is necessary prior to any and all participation (practice, training and competition). A warm up should consist of 5 to 10 minutes of aerobic activity such as jogging or skipping. In addition, starting with low intensity sports specific actions like dribbling a soccer ball or light throwing along with short periods of dynamic stretching is important. Begin slowly to increase your heart rate and skill development then progress your intensity with more sport specific skills and movement such as jumping, sprinting, bounding and cutting. These activities continue to add benefits by increasing blood flow, deep muscle temperatures, and respiration rate.
Another essential component to injury prevention is making rest a part of an athlete’s week. Having an athlete understand the need for rest can prevent injuries throughout their entire season. Overloading of the joints, muscles and tendons cause your body to break down. Adequate rest allows for the appropriate recovery between sessions along with encouraging long term athletic participation. Youth athletes should have atleast one to two days off from any particular sport each week. Absolute rest is not recommended or necessary. Building in a day of dynamic stretching appears to be the best recovery mode to enhance performance and cardio-respiratory responses. To help promote recovery and soft tissue mobility, self massage techniques such as a foam roller or stick massager can be extremely beneficial to implement throughout the season. In addition, proper nutrition and hydration should be a major focus along with maximizing an athlete’s sleep. Sleep is one of the most important factors in recovery and should entail 8 to 10 hours nightly. This will assist in an athlete’s adaptation to physical, neurological, and emotional stresses of their training.
Lastly, the best advice within this article is to listen to your body! There is a fine line between soreness and pain from an injury. Athletes can unknowingly or knowingly cross this line often. The advantage of understanding when pain is present and getting treatment at the start of an issue instead of trying to play catch up, helps keep an athletes sidelining time to an absolute minimum. Our philosophy with physical therapy and athletic training is always to take care of the injury immediately in order to prevent further progression. It’s much better to miss a few days versus a small injury lingering and progressing into a significant injury that can be season ending.
Whether you are an athlete, coach or parent you can play an important role in ensuring a youth athlete’s experience and success in sports. For everyone participating this fall, we wish you good luck & a great season!