Injury Prevention in Juvenile Athletes

Participation in sport has enormous health and social benefits for children. Although any sport naturally carries some level of injury risk, there are some important considerations to minimise the risk of injuries in children and adolescents.

1.        Children are not ‘little adults’

Rapid physical, hormonal and psychological changes occur in children that are unlike adults. Injuries that occur in juvenile athletes can be completely different to adults even with the same mechanism. These injuries can potentially compromise the open growth plates and obstruct normal growth.

2.        Avoid specialising in one sport (1)

A focus on one particular sport to the exclusion of others is often thought to lead to increased sporting success. However, with juvenile athletes it has been shown to have more risks than benefits, such as mental and physical burnout and increased frequency of injury and sickness, especially when the child is under the age of 12. It is wise to delay specialising as long as possible, even until late adolescence.

Juvenile athletes should be encouraged to play a wide range of activities, both organised sport and informal physical activity. A good rule of thumb is for children to avoid participating in more organised sport in hours per week than their age in years. For example, a nine year old soccer player should only participate in a maximum of nine hours per week of soccer (including training and games). Furthermore, the amount of informal ‘play’ should be twice as much as the organised sport per week. Some ideas could include jumping on a trampoline, playing handball, shooting a basketball etc.

3.        Avoid a spike in load

Arguably the biggest injury risk for the juvenile athlete is a spike in training load, ie. a dip in training load (start of the season, illness, holidays or another injury) followed by a sudden increase in training load. It’s crucial for the juvenile athlete to return to their previous frequency/intensity of sport with progressive increases in load to minimise the chance of injury.

4.        Adequate sleep reduces injury risk (2)

Children’s optimal sleep recommendation is 8.5 to 9 hours per night. Juvenile athletes who sleep less than 8 hours per night are 1.7 times more likely to get injured than those who get 8 or more hours sleep per night. Some considerations to get more sleep:

-              Devices (get off your phone!)

-              Training times (early morning start?)

-              School commitments (plan your homework!)

At Kinetic Sports Physiotherapy, a Sports Physiotherapist can give you specific advice regarding your child’s training load, injuries and sports-specific screenings.

1.             Jayanthi NA, LaBella CR, Fischer D, Pasulka J, Dugas LR. Sports-Specialized Intensive Training and the Risk of Injury in Young Athletes:A Clinical Case-Control Study. The American Journal of Sports Medicine. 2015;43(4):794-801.

2.             Milewski MD, Skaggs DL, Bishop GA, Pace JL, Ibrahim DA, Wren TAL, et al. Chronic Lack of Sleep is Associated With Increased Sports Injuries in Adolescent Athletes. Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics. 2014;34(2):129-33.