Injury Prevention in Young Athletes

Whether your child is playing year-round sports, participating in private lessons or coaching, or playing on an elite AAU or club team, young athletes and their parents are constantly looking for ways to elevate athletic performance. Focusing on one activity over the course of a year can lead to an overuse injury, causing frustration and time away from play.

Here are a few ideas to help your athlete move better participate smarter and prevent overuse injuries:

Warm-Up

Teaching kids to do an active or dynamic warm-up will help them to better prepare their bodies for the stress and strain of a practice or game. Activities like high knees, butt kicks, side shuffles, skipping, and jumping jacks are all basic movements that are fun and great ways to warm-up. Aim for a 10-minute warm-up where they break a sweat before the game starts.

Focus on Basic Movements

If your child is involved in competitive sports, introduce them to basic strength training exercises like bodyweight squats, lunges, and hip bridges. Emphasize proper form before adding weight. Talk to your child’s coach, school athletic trainer, or school strength and conditioning coach about good form for basic movements.

Encourage Different Activities

Not everyone is going to be a multi-sport all-star but being involved in other activities allows kids to work different muscle groups and be challenged in different ways. This promotes overall athletic development and can help decrease the risk of overuse injury. Encourage them to explore new sports during the off-season or simply play outdoors for fun!

In our Nationwide Children’s Sports Medicine clinics, we regularly see young athletes with overuse injuries of all kinds, the most common ones involving the knee. We are able to help athletes recover in our Functional Rehabilitation Program, using movement screening to help kids move more efficiently and avoid injuries after they have returned to play. Movement screening is a great tool used by health care providers to assess how a patient’s body parts work together while doing a few key movements that are important to both athletic and everyday activity. Staying injury-free and having fun is the best way to increase the engagement and elevate the performance of young athletes.