Leg

There is good news and bad news on the youth sports injury front. The good news is that sports and recreation musculoskeletal injuries declined 12.4 percent in the U.S. over the past 10 years for children ages 5 to 14 years. The bad news: injuries in football and soccer went up, says a new study.

Static stretching neither prevented or induced injury when compared to not stretching before running, according to the results of a first-of-its-kind large scale randomized study presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons in San Diego.

New research suggests that more intense training and inadequate diet are placing high school athletes at significant risk for developing stress fractures in the bones of the back, hip, leg and foot, with girls more likely to suffer such overuse injury and at an earlier age than boys.

You've dusted off your bike and gone out with your kids for your first family ride of the season, but now your butt hurts.  I wish I could promise that, after you been riding a few more times, your butt will stop hurting,  but I can't.  I can promise, however, that it will get better, and that there are some things you can do for a sore butt and some of the other minor, but often painful, problems you may experience from recreational/fitness cycling.

The hamstring muscles play a critical role in nearly every sport because they are the muscles an athlete uses to increase speed and make quick changes in direction. Injuring a hamstring muscle can be very debilitating and should be taken very seriously, particularly in children.

Studies show that a new way of stretching (dynamic stretching) increases power, flexibility and range of motion, and may reduce injuries while the kind of stretching routine most of us have been doing since we were in grade school (holding a stretch for 20 or 30 seconds, supposedly to prepare muscles for exercise, or static stretching) not only fails to do what it is supposed to do but may actually weaken muscles and hurt athletic performance.

A strain is a twist, pull and/or tear of a muscle and/or tendon. Tendons are fibrous cords of tissue that attach muscles to bone. Strains and sprains are among the most common sports injuries.

Shin splints are an inflammation of the tendons attaching the shin muscles to the
tibia (shin bone) and are common in sports involving a lot of running like track and field, soccer, basketball and lacrosse.  There are various ways to prevent and treat shin splints.