First off, no one is able to prevent every injury, no matter how much they say that (insert social media movement philosophy) can predict injury in your athlete.
As a former soccer coach, I used to see my middle school athletes go from school practice to club practice, 4 hours of practice a day and playing weekend tournaments. I heard parents talk about how the coach said they would fall behind the skill level of their peers if he/she wasn’t playing as many tournaments/practices/extra skill work. If the mindset is going to continue like this from parents/coaches at the youth level it needs to become more important for parents/ coaches to implement injury prevention measures in their young athletes. (As a current baseball coach, it is not much different, parents of kids are constantly chasing skill development, to get on better 10U club teams which leads to private fielding, hitting and pitching lessons outside of their practice.) It seems increasingly popular to “specialize” in a sport earlier and earlier.
While early sport specialization is another conversation in itself, and you can make the argument it isn't best for general athletic development especially at the prepubescent ages, as kids develop from learning new movement patterns, parents/coaches need to be cognizant of burnout, decrease in performance secondary to overtraining and overuse injuries.
Fortunately, we have some ‘low hanging fruit’ or easy variables we can manipulate in order to reduce injury risk in our athletes; as 35% of highschool athletes are getting injured per year.
If we’re seeing such a high injury risk in amateur sports, something needs to change in our current education of these athletes, parents and coaches. The lowest of the fruit is the amount of sleep these athletes are getting a night. With the heavy demands of school work on top of ex. School soccer practice from 3:30-5:30p and club practice from 7p-9p, these athletes aren’t getting enough sleep per night. We see in a study by Von Rosen, the athletes who slept more than 8 hours during the week reduced their risk of injury by 61% compared to those that were not sleeping 8 hours.
Another important factor for reducing risk of injury is the addition of a resistance training program, we see the addition of a resistance training program reduces risk of injury by 68% according to a 2017 paper by Zwolski et al. The difficulty here with this is there just isn’t enough time in the day if we want them to sleep their 8 hours a day and are expected to have 4+ hours of practice, on top of an 8 hour school day. Part of this responsibility has to be delegated to coaches, whether using practice time to get into the gym a couple times a week or utilizing programs such as the FIFA11+ which is a comprehensive warm up/ training program designed for soccer players but can be extrapolated to other similar sports. It has been shown to reduce risk of injury in soccer players by 39% according to a meta-analysis by Kristan Thorburg et al.
Lastly, according to the Van Rosen article, most adolescent athletes fail to meet the recommended nutrition intake according to the Swedish Nutrition Food Agency Index. Without specifying a quantity it was shown that athletes consuming a diet concentrated around more fruits, vegetables and fish reduced the odds of sustaining an injury by 64%. These athletes need to ensure proper caloric intake with a focus on protein and carbohydrates, it has been recommended to consume at least 1g/protein per lb of bodyweight and 1.8-4.5g/carbohydrates per lb of bodyweight. Athletes should also insure they are properly rehydrating following a game as athletes who lose 2% of their bodyweight in game have been shown to have much lower performance.
So if we have examples of ways to reduce injury risk, even in those that choose to play the same sport all year around from a young age, why are we not succeeding in implementing these strategies in the youth athlete population? It starts with education of everyone involved in youth sports and an understanding that while many injuries in sport are unavoidable and nothing will decrease your risk of injury to 0%, incorporating these recommendations will increase your chance of staying on the field.
Long story short, injuries are complicated and there is not one singular method to preventing injuries but we have a multitude of ways in which we can reduce your overall injury risk profile.
Alec Hyde PT, DPT, CSCS
@hydesports_dpt
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