An article in today’s New York Times covers what appears to be an increasing problem, overuse injuries in children. Children’s joints etc are wearing out because they are participating too heavily in sports.
What is behind this? I can’t imagine pushing children to compete so hard. Why is this becoming such a problem?
I think that IS the problem. This isn’t happening to your average kid who plays sports, or even a couple of sports, like I did. The ones being affected appear to be the ones who harbor real hopes of getting a college scholarship and/or being a professional athlete. They work themselves hard because they know the competition is doing the same, and they have a limited number of spots to compete for.
But what makes this all so sad is that working themselves that hard is really counterproductive–rest days to let your body recover are a very important part of just about any training program. Overtraining is a bad thing all around: in addition to increasing the risk of injury, it also decreases performance…
I’m sure it’s no surprise that I’m going to blame the parents (and to a lesser extent, coaches, but often they are parents too) on this.
None of this happens in a vacuum. Little Johnny might like baseball, but you can bet that it’s not him pushing to practice till past dark several nights in a row. Drills are not fun- and while you absolutely must practice to be able to play, this is often taken to extremes.
I know too many of these parents- they say they want a better life for their kids, and all they are doing is encouraging them, but i see the shaming that goes on. It’s funny that so many here equate sports success with good colleges…and then their kids are bottom 20% of their class academically. Spending half the time studying that they do training would yield better results.
I share my office, and my co-worker has 2 sons. Both of them play a sport every season- baseball, basketball, soccer, football. No break. It doesn’t surprise me that this will have long-term effects.
I wonder if there is a uniform geographic spread to this issue, or whether there is any concentration anywhere. I have my suspicions, but no data to back it up.
Kids today are over-scheduled in sports. You’ll see a kid participate in two sports a week, four or six sports a year. Between practice and games, it’s too much for their little bodies to handle. T-ball, soccer, little league, gymnastics, touch football, hockey, basketball, swimming, tennis, dance, skiing. I know children who participate in fully half of these sports in a year’s time.
Parents may be at work and don’t want to leave the kids alone, so they sign them up for after school events.
They may think that free time breeds junkies, so they don’t want to give the child a minute to think for himself.
They may think that “winning” makes a successful child.
We may put too much emphasis on easy money in this country, and kids think that through sports, they can attain that unattainable level of shallowness.
At least they are playing various sports. The biggest problem I had was when time commitments prevented me from playing anything other than hockey. The doctor tells me that my skating muscles are so much more developed than my running muscles (I know they have names but I am writing this post rather quickly) that my knee problems would be corrected by strengthening the weakened muscles. The problem, he said, arises when a kid goes into a sport and doesn’t do other activities to keep the neglected muscles up to snuff.
Please forgive the poor layman explanation.
That isn’t the problem though read the article:
Those kids likely will be fine. I played a sport nearly every day growing up (some organized some not) and all that resulted from it was being in excellent shape.
But I did the same thing as a kid and never had any problems. Still haven’t. I played basketball and baseball in leagues, had tennis lessons, and played football in the streets when I had time. There was some overlap there, if not two a week, four to six a year. And of course, there was gym a couple of days a week in school. I was never forced to do anything (I didn’t like soccer, so I quit after a year), and… well, you’ve read my posts, you tell me what you think of me. 
My youngest brother is basically the same - he’s played baseball, basketball, tennis, and now he’s wrestling for his Jr. High team. Anecdotes, granted, but overscheduling is not the cause of these injuries.
It’s not too many sports, it’s overtraining. I’m not a doctor, but this sounds like the kids are developing repetitive stress-type injuries at an age where such a thing should be preposterous. A seven-year-old swimming 8,000 yards a day? A young teenager pitching 64 games in a two-month summer? That’s mad! That’s why, for example, the Little League I grew up playing in stated that a pitcher could not use a curveball, and could not pitch more than six innings in any given week. It’s not the average, possibly overscheduled kid who is at risk from these injuries.
You didn’t have a problem, but plenty of people have. It stands to reason that the more sports you’re doing, the more hours you’ll spend doing them, and the more chance of overuse injury you’ll have.
Kalhoun-
That is not what the article is talking about. These kids are getting injured becuase they overwork specific muscles while neglecting other ones. In the soccer example she didn’t have knee problems becuase she played a lot of sports she had knee problems becuase her hamstrings were small compared to her other muscles:
If she had played basketball for example where a lot of jumping or football where a lot of heavy pushing is required she would have been fine. She hurt herself again becuase she neglected the exercises she was told to do after her first injury.
The swimmer and the baseball example are just from simple overtraining. A 7 yearold swimming 8,000 yards a day is insane. That is over 4 miles of swimming a day! 64 starts in a summer is just unbelievible to this former baseball player. I doubt I made 64 starts by the time I was 16 and I was a good pitcher. Even professional atheletes do not start 64 games in a summer the max is usually 30-40 games per year.
Kalhoun-
That is not what the article is talking about. These kids are getting injured becuase they overwork specific muscles while neglecting other ones. In the soccer example she didn’t have knee problems becuase she played a lot of sports she had knee problems becuase her hamstrings were small compared to her other muscles:
If she had played basketball for example where a lot of jumping happens or football where a lot of heavy pushing is required she would have been fine. She hurt herself again becuase she neglected the exercises she was told to do after her first injury.
The swimmer and the baseball example are just from simple overtraining. A 7 yearold swimming 8,000 yards a day is insane. That is over 4 miles of swimming a day! 64 starts in a summer is just unbelievible to this former baseball player. I doubt I made 64 starts by the time I was 16 and I was a good pitcher. Even professional atheletes do not start 64 games in a summer the max is usually 30-40 games per year.
Except that, as treis explains, it doesn’t. Those kinds of injuries come from overworking specific muscles, joints, or groups of muscles. If you’re playing three or four sports and going to school, doing homework, and so on, it’s more difficult to put in the amount of training being discussed in this article that results in these kinds of problems.
Got it. You could call it Phenom Syndrome. Concentrated on creating the next Tiger Woods or Dorothy Hamill or whoever. Thanks for clarifying that for me.
Exactly. It’s too bad that parents view their kids as a possible retirement plan. All little Billy has to do is go to every development camp available, work hard, and sign on the dotted line. Parents forget that at some point the kid has to have talent and his own motivation too.
Thanks for the explanation treis. Pretty much what I went through.
I don’t think it’s just the parents. I coach high school girls rowing and we get a lot of of girls who’ve had to stop other sports because of knee injuries. Rowing’s non-impact so it’s a good alternative to running and jumping sports. A lot of these girls really, really push themselves. Everything they do is just balls to the wall, all out effort. They’re used to being the best in everything and hate losing.
There is some limited parent involvement, rowing isn’t a common sports and most parents don’t have dreams of past glory they’re trying to recapture through their kid. But there are a lot of rowing scholarships available for girls (due to Title 9) and the parents know it. But, in most cases, it’s the kids themselves that overtrain.
I agree with the people who say the problem is mainly with kids who concentrate intensely on one sport. I think it’s probably worse in sports such as soccer where some muscles become much more developed than others.
I think it’s really important to make that distinction - I can see a lot of (lazy) parents pointing to that article and saying “see, sports are bad! It’s better for Jimmy to sit at home and play Nintendo in the afternoons”. This is just awful. I think kids should play at least one sport (that they enjoy). They can meet other kids, avoid boredom, have a hobby, and it’s definitely healthy!
I don’t think it’s that simple. I help with coach my daughter’s soccer team, but I am the “third coach”, so I essentially help them out with practices. There is a regular, professional coach (he’s admittedly not paid much), and another father, who is a little more zealous than I am is now the main assistant coach. He played soccer and basketball in college. Many of the girls on the team also play basketball, volleyball, tennis, etc. One has an exceptionally hard-assed father who pushes his daughter in all of these things. Her father is also her softball coach. She’s either 8 or 9 years old, I’m not sure. She is very talented in some ways, but in other ways just okay. For example she has a wicked strong shot for such a young girl and also has very good hand-eye coordination, but pretty horrible conditioning. She is slightly overweight, so when we do any kind of conditioning drills it hurts her and she starts to cry. Her parents tell her to tough it out, but apparently don’t stop her from consuming a real horrible diet.
Now, AFAIK there is no great payout for most, if not all, great softball players. Maybe one or two, that are attractive and great athletes might get some endorsements, but it would be a stretch to say she’d earn enough money to support her elders into their dotage.
My theory is that the pushy parent somewhere along the line had their sports career aborted. Maybe they were injured, weren’t good enough, or missed the winning shot in the big game, and this is their way to win back their previous glory, one small step at a time. BTW, these are the parents that call a team meeting if the girls lose or whatever, and want to know why they’re not making enough “progress”. They seldom ask are their kids having fun or are they actually learning the game and becoming better. The particular kid I have in mind is probably going to hate her father some day if she doesn’t already (she has told me before she didn’t want to sit out a drill because her dad will “yell” at her). Even worse if she turns around and does the same to her kid.
One way this is different than when we were kids, and would play all the time, was if you were tired or hurt you’d quit and go do something else, or sit out. I think with some of the parents this has become a non-option.