Injury Prevention

While not all youth sports injuries are preventable, sport specific strength and conditioning training and adequate rest between games go a long way in preventing both serious and minor injuries. The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends that children and adolescents include fitness exercises during each training session to develop specific skills required for that sport. While fitness activities may be geared towards the strength, endurance and flexibility requirements of that sport, they should not exclude other components of a well-rounded general fitness program.

With statistics showing that one in five children will grow up to develop skin cancer and that protecting skin from the sun during childhood and adolescence is important to reducing the risk of cancer later in life, it's vital that parents become educated about sun safety, take steps to protect their kids against the damaging effects of the sun and build safe sun habits into the family routine.

More 350 infants and toddlers drown in swimming pools each year nationwide, the majority in the summer months of June, July and August; most in backyard pools.  Here are some swimming pool safety tips from the  Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), 350 children under the age of five drown in pools each year nationwide, the majority in June, July and August; most in backyard pools. Among unintentional injuries, drowning is the second leading cause of death to this age group after motor vehicle accidents. Another 2,600 children are treated in hospital emergency rooms each year for near-drowning incidents.

Parents need to be pro-active about safety by insisting that the directors of the youth sports program in which their son or daughter participates puts safety at the top of their list,

Overuse injuries have become commonplace among young athletes in the last decade (although "Little League elbow" has been a problem for decades). They are not the kind suffered by children and adolescents engaging in free play or "pick up" games, but are clearly a product of the organized youth sports boom. The damage to hard and soft tissues resulting from undetected, unreported and often untreated overuse injuries can be permanent and lead to problems later in life, such as arthritis.

The politics of prevention and the barriers to preventive efforts - whether it is in sports medicine, heart disease, cancer, or terrorism - are similar. Over the past seventeen years, I have found that the single greatest barrier to preventive efforts is the fact that we are taught throughout our educational system to be reactive rather than being proactive.

According to recent estimates, over 82,000 people will seek medical treatment this coming year for injuries suffered while skiing, 62,000 will be injured playing hockey, 37,000 snowboarding, and 25,000 while sledding. Over 270,000 Americans are expected to visit hospital emergency rooms after suffering winter sports-related injuries this year. Most are preventable.

An youth athlete's natural flexibility varies by age. Those with poor muscle flexibility experience more soreness, tenderness and pain after exercise. The less flexible the muscle, the more easily it is injured.   Here are simple tests to test flexibility of major muscles and tendons prone to injury in soccer.