A recent study suggests young female athletes are at a much greater risk for developing overuse injuries than their male counterparts when it comes to playing high school sports. Among the 3,000 male and female athletes representing 20 different sports, girls developed repetitive motions injuries about two-thirds more than boys.
Young Female Athletes in High School at Greater Risk for Overuse Injuries
A new study published in the Journal of Pediatrics has suggested that young female athletes face a higher incidence for repetitive motion injuries than young male athletes. The study was conducted by researchers from the Ohio State University (OSU) Wexner Medical Center with findings analyzed from over 3,000 male and female participants engaged
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The research also found that about half of all athletic injuries were overuse injuries.
The most common overuse injuries seen in the young athletes included stress fractures, tendonitis, and joint pain. These overuse injuries tended to affect the lower leg the most with the knee and the shoulder coming in right behind in frequency of injury.
Best’s research found that the most affected age group was between the ages of 13 and 17, typically the high school aged sports groups. These injuries accounted for twice as many visits to sports medicine doctors than other minor traumas associated with sports play.
Why are Female Athletes Injured More and How Can They Lower Their Risk?
The researchers suggested female athletes to pay particular attention to their bodies at this intersection of their sports careers and their lives. Bones develop at their greatest rate during the teenage years for girls and especially for girls in high-impact sports, it is an absolute necessity to provide their bodies with proper
Studies have also shown that women in particular, unfortunately have a disadvantage in life when compared to male counterparts, and that is one pertaining to their higher risk for ACL injury. Due to a neuromuscular imbalance that is concomitant with overactive quadriceps strength compared to hamstring strength, females tend to place more stress on the ACL. Accordingly, this increases the pressure on the ACL leading to a higher prevalence of injury that will arise more on the female spectrum than that of the male (Myer et al., 2009). Furthermore, this is important to be aware of for female athletes and for the Physical Therapists who treat them in efforts to provide educational information regarding the relationship of stronger hamstrings correlating to a lesser chance of ACL injury. Personally, I have worked with athletic females in the past as a personal trainer and while I was not strengthening hamstrings with the direct objective to prevent an ACL injury, I was cognizant of the notion that a balanced quadriceps and hamstring ratio was necessary to avoid lower extremity injuries as a
Young children having major physical injuries while participating in sports should be of more concern. In the article High School Football Comes With a Risk, by Jeffrey Perkel it states that, “...boys aged 10 to 14 we’re most likely to end up in the nation’s emergency departments with a traumatic brain injury…,” This shows how adolescents are unnecessarily hurting themselves because of these sports. Expectedly, during the 2005-2006 US high school football season an , estimate of 517, 726 injuries were submitted to the RIO. Even my own personal experiences with sports all ended in tragic faults. Swimming with
As previously stated, the subjects were female athletes who play/played basketball or soccer. The data for this article came from MEDLINE and was through the dates 1978 to 1998 (Ireland,
Injuries are one of the top reasons why sports are bad for kids. In the video we watched from WCPO called “Pressure On Teen Athletes Sore” they say that the amount of injuries have increased from 7 Thousand to 22 Thousand a year. The amount tripled. It is said that the injured children's families spent $30,000 in six months. This source also said that the more sports you play there is an increased risk of getting an injury. In one of the article called “ High School, College Football Comes With Risk. In this article a Primary Investigator at the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio named R. Dawn Comstock states that there might be more injuries in some school because some schools
The highest rate of sports related injuries for the youth is between the years of 5 to 14 years of age. As many as 20 percent of children who play sports get hurt, and about 25 percent of their injuries are classified as serious. As of now football is the number one sport that has the most injuries with the youth reported, with basketball falling in second behind it. Sprains, strains, fractures, and concussions are the most common injury between the age of 6-19 years old.
Young athletes are at very high risks for injuries during the course of playing sports. It should be recognized that the development stage of adolescent growth is a period of physiological growth in height, muscle, skeletal and with their desire to be recognized by peers. Their belief that nothing bad will happen to them makes adolescents themselves prone to injuries. High school students play sports for various reasons such as scholarships, talents, hobbies, and fame, these reasons make high school athletics an important aspect of the student’s life.
The conclusion of a 7-year study in Victoria in 2010, found that children aged 15 and under were 5.4 times more likely to be hospitalised for sports-related injuries than for road-traffic injuries . This is cause for major concern amongst the junior sporting population of Australia, with a significant increase in sports-related hospitalisations nationally each year. Eccentric factors such as overtraining and early specialisation have been linked to this rise. In the absence of a national sporting injury prevention body and subsequent national injury prevention policy, associations and sporting clubs may be ill-equipped to deal with this extensive
Millions of children participate in organized sports in America every year, and millions of children are diagnosed with overuse injuries every year as well. This paper will examine four of the major overuse injuries plaguing the adolescent population in the US. It will also cover the treatment and prevention methods for each diagnosis in addition to reasons why the injuries occur and how they should be addressed.
The most common injuries that many adolescents receive are contusions and strains (Adirim & Cheng, 2003). The ankle and the knee are the most commonly injured areas followed by less common injuries of the hand, wrist, elbow, shin, calve, clavicle, head, and neck (Adirim & Cheng, 2003). Sever’s disease is an injury to the heel whereas Little League elbow affects the elbow joint. Contact sports such as hockey and football report more contusion injuries due to the collisions that happen during the game (Adirim & Cheng, 2003). In contrast, non-contact sports such as running, soccer, and basketball report more muscle strain injuries. When an athlete is repetitively using their elbow, an injury called, Little League elbow may occur.
The ACL injury becomes more prone to injured as sports increases. Female counterparts have been found the more susceptible than males. Many reasons suggesting for injury intrinsic as well as extrinsic factors.
There are twenty-three different sports injuries. the first one on the list would be an achilles tendon injury. The achilles is the biggest tendon in your body, it is very common for this tendon to get injured. The tendon gets injured in the following sports such as basketball, baseball, softball, football, soccer, tennis, volleyball, running, dancing, and gymnastics.
For most female teenage athletes, staying healthy is one of the key reasons they participate in athletics. Playing sports helps with things such as building higher self-esteem as well as improved physical and mental health. Unfortunately, some young female athletes are also experiencing the "female athlete triad."
It is true that participation in youth athletics has a number of benefits such as the building self-confidence and moral character but is it all worth the possibility of severe trauma to the body or even worse, the mind. Sports induced concussions alone have doubled for kids ages 8-13 in the past decade. In just 2012 alone, there were 3,800,000 reported. Other injuries that are common in young athletes are knee injuries and sprains. Dehydration is also a major concern. It has been shown that single sport athletes are prone to more injuries than multiple sport athletes. Actions need to be taken to lower these numbers, such as restrictions on the number of practices, the intensity at practice, and more information given to coaches, parents and athletes on how to prevent injuries. These restrictions should consist of limiting the number of pitches a pitcher may pitch in a single game, more sufficient screening being done before an athlete returns from a concussion or limitations on how tackles can be performed are a few examples.
Many sports involve the use of repetitive motions, and these motions can lead to injuries. This is due to the imbalance created when certain muscles are much stronger than others, and this triggers overuse injuries. When muscles are overworked, they tend to become tight. The body then turns to other muscles to take over for the ones that have been stressed. Often, the muscles recruited during this process cannot handle the strain, and this is what brings on the injury.
“Children must be developmentally ready to learn particular motor skills.” Children without developed motor skills cannot reach a standard required for elite level competition, and forcing such children may only lead to added pressure and poor self-worth. Likewise, athletes of such a young age, training to compete in high level events can cause physical damage to their developing body. The still-growing bodies of young athletes are especially vulnerable. In a study published in 2008 Lara B. McKenzie, doctor at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, found that gymnastics and ice hockey were associated with the highest clinical incidence of catastrophic injuries, in both male and female participants. Relating to training while too young. Children who are still growing are at risk for something called growth-plate fractures, as well as lasting physical problems, despite taking precautions while training, which will still peak in adolescents. Training programs for these athletes are physically challenging. Due to this, it creates physical stress on their developing body and as a result can damage