Overuse Injuries

STOP Sports Injuries Campaign Goal: Prevent Overuse Injuries

Aim of the STOP Sports Injuries campaign is provide parents, coaches and athletes accurate information and tools to prevent, recognize and treat the long-term consequences of sports overuse and trauma injuries to children.

Stress Fracture Risk Double for Girls in High-Impact Sports

Girls who play sports more than 8 hours per week are twice as likely as their less active peers to suffer a stress fracture, a new study finds. Most at risk were those engaged in three activities (running, basketball and cheerleading/gymnastics) which involve repeated jumping and landing which place particuarly high stress on bone, with the risk of injury increasing about 8 percent for each extra hour of activity over four per week.

Pitching Injuries: Risk Factors

If your child is a pitcher, he/she has about a fifty-fifty chance of experiencing pain in his/her elbow or shoulder during his/her baseball career. Not surprisingly, baseball has been the most widely studied youth sport in the United States, so that the risk factors for overuse injuries are well-established.

Overuse Injuries: Signs and Symptoms

The signs and symptoms of overuse injury should not be ignored as "growing pains" but should be taken seriously by the athlete, parent, and coach, says a 2011 position statement on overuse injuries issued by the National Athletic Trainers' Association.

Preventing Overuse Injuries in Youth Athletes

Overuse injuries account for fifty percent of all youth sports injuries, but half are preventable, says the National Athletic Trainers' Association in a new position statement.

Stress Fractures In High School Athletes: A Growing Problem

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.

Preventing Pitching Injuries: Allow Adequate Warm Up

Inadequate warm-up is one often overlooked risk factor for youth baseball pitchers .  Research by the American Sports Medicine Institute shows that a pitcher needs to throw twenty-five fastballs before he achieves command and is fully warmed up. The problem is that a pitcher who comes to the mound from playing another position as a reliever only gets seven tosses before facing live batters.

Is Strength Training Okay for Young Athletes?

Because the growth plates at the end of the major bones in a child's arms and legs are open, their muscles and bones are still developing, and because their hormone levels aren't the same as adults, intense strength or resistance training for youth athletes is inappropriate before skeletal maturity.

Child's Ability To Heal Quickly From Sports Injuries: A Mixed Blessing?

The ability of kids to heal faster from sports injuries than adults is a mixed blessing with pluses and minuses.  it is important to let an injury fully heal before a child is allowed to return to play; playing hurt increases the risk of future injury and permanent disability.

Specialization: Too Much Sports or Too Much Sport?

In the face of the growing epidemic of overuse injuries in youth sports, sports parents are often given two different kinds of advice: to make sure that their kids don't play sports all the time (too much sports) and to make sure their child isn't playing a single sport too much (too much sport).

Balance and variety is best

In considering what "too much sports" and "too much sport" mean it is helpful to use real-world examples.

In the face of the growing epidemic of overuse injuries in youth sports,
sports parents are often given two different kinds of advice: to make
sure that their kids don't play sports all the time (too much sports)
and to make sure their child isn't playing a single sport too much (too
much sport).

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