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Trying to Achieve Balance in Youth Sports

Posted by on Nov 13, 2015 in Dr Robert S Wolf, Orthopedic Surgeon | One Comment
Trying to Achieve Balance in Youth Sports

Orthopaedic Perspectives

“If you’re not first, you’re last” – Ricky Bobby

The intensity of participation and investment of time and finances in youth sports has undergone explosive growth over the past 3 decades.  Fueled by the preeminence of collegiate and professional sports in the media and associated monetary reward, children are devoting increasingly more time to sports training, and have refined their training to a level not seen in the past.  Sports-specific training with year-round competition, amplified intensity of training, and decreased down-time has become the rule for most sports.  While this worked out well (we think) for athletes like Tiger Woods and Serena Williams, is this a good trend for the majority of our young athletes? How do we strike the balance between the benefits of hard work and the health of a well-rounded life?  I don’t have the perfect answer to this question, but here are some reasonable insights.

Most parents want their children to possess exemplary character in terms of integrity, honor, discipline, service, and valuing hard work for the blessing it can be, both for themselves and those they touch.  Sports participation and achievement, when approached properly, can help build these traits.  Training towards a goal has value, but only if the goal is worthy and the training is wise.  Approximately 1 in 168 high school baseball players will be drafted by a MLB team, and 1 in 2451 high school basketball players will be drafted in the NBA.  Setting high goals is a prerequisite for high achievement.  But if the only goal for your young baseball or basketball player is to be a pro, and the standards of training reflect this mindset, the great majority of players (and parents) will fail.

On the other hand, if our goals are centered on building character and health as part of the overall refinement and nurturing of our children’s development, then training should reflect that. From an orthopaedic sportsmedicine perspective, this means not ratcheting up the intensity and repetition to the point that stress injuries occur and the joy of participation disappears.  Some of the more common injuries I see are stress fractures in adolescents.  The frequency of these injuries has multiplied over the past decade: proximal humerus fractures and medial elbow stress injuries (pitching), distal radius (wrist) fractures (gymnastics), lumbar stress fractures (football/weightlifting/gymnastics), foot/tibia fractures (cross country), cartilage injuries of the elbow (throwers), etc.  These were much less common in the past, and the obvious etiology has been the trend to focus on only one sport.  While intensity and repetition help refine skill, they also focus physiologic stress unnaturally and increase the likelihood of injury in developing athletes.  Common sense and injury statistical analysis dictates that the rest produced by varied sports seasonal participation is good for overall athletic development and injury prevention.  In other words, playing different sports in different seasons is good, while focusing on one sport year-round may not be, at least in terms of musculoskeletal health.

Unfortunately, the entire youth-sports system now seems to encourage year-round participation in a single sport to maximize achievement.  My best advice is this: try to encourage participation in different sports in different seasons to enhance overall athletic growth and decrease injury.  If your child focuses on one sport, encourage extended periods of rest where their involved joints can recover (i.e. the off season for baseball players) and pursue other modes of training during this time.  We want our children to be well–rounded in academics: educated in history, language, arts, math, and science.  We do not limit them to a math-only education, even if our goal for them is to be an engineer someday.  Our goal is to offer opportunity and encourage all potentials, understanding that limiting their options pre-maturely will impair their growth and defeat our purpose as parents.  A similar well-rounded approach in youth sports would be beneficial on multiple levels : physically, emotionally, spiritually.  Now I’ll try to convince my family to take my advice!

“Every athlete exercises self-control in all things.  They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.  So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air.  But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”

-1 Corinthians 25-27

If you have concerns or questions please contact my office at the Alabama Orthopaedic Center at 205-271-6503 for your consultation. -Dr Robert S Wolf

1 Comment

  1. Gail Massey
    December 5, 2015

    This is a wonderful post Dr. Wolf. Good for everyone to read and especially the younger generations who play sports.

    Reply

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