Preventing Repetitive Stress Injuries in Adolescent Athletes: What Every Parent Should Know

Kids are balls of energy when they’re young, and encouraging them to stay active with outdoor games and sports activities provides great benefit to their overall health, as well as for things like improving attention and memory, building muscles and endurance, and strengthening bones. It even helps to prevent problems with things like obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes long term if they continue staying active as they age.

Unfortunately, increases in physical activity also increases the chances of injury, and repeating the same motions can lead to some common problems you should look out for. Let’s find out more by exploring the common reasons these injuries happen, the types of injuries kids often get, and the treatment options available.

Parents of children in the Fort Worth, Texas area looking for ways to prevent or treat sports injuries can find help with Dr. Joseph Daniels and his staff at Southwest Orthopedic Associates.

Common causes of sports injuries

A repetitive stress injury can result when your child is continually performing the same movements during physical activities. This puts stress on their muscles, joints, and bones. It happens when overexerting themselves during warm-ups, or when a sport requires repeating motions. Doing this over time can lead to damage to the affected areas — most commonly in the fingers, wrists, elbow, shoulders, knees, and ankles. 

Signs of these types of injury include tingling pain, swelling, numbness, stiffness, or weakness to the affected musculoskeletal tissue.

Types of injuries

Here are the injuries your child will get from repetitive stress to joints, ligaments, and muscles:

• Sprains and strains: these affect ligaments and muscles respectively, and happen when these tissues are overstretched or torn

• Dislocations: impact injuries can cause a bone to move out of its socket, causing swelling and weakness

• Fractures: this can mean a small crack in a bone or a major break, and often results from impact injuries or falls

• Concussion: collisions or falls in sports that cause any blow to the head can lead to brain injury

• Joint inflammation: when the muscles, tendons, or ligaments become inflamed, they can hurt and swell

Common examples of this damage include Achilles tendinitis, tennis elbow, jumper's knee, runners knee, and anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries.

Injury prevention tips

Here’s what you can do to help your child avoid these injuries:

• Avoid having them playing the same sport all year around
• Make sure they drink plenty of water before, during, and after intense physical activity
• Make sure they know the right techniques for practice and playing in the sport
• Encourage them to mix up their exercise regimen, to prevent performing the same actions all the time
• Be sure they remember to stretch and warm up before and after sports events
• Get them the proper equipment to play, including footwear, guards, and helmets as necessary
• Help them recognize when to stop if they’re overexerting themselves

Repetitive stress injuries can be frustrating for active kids, but help is available when it happens. Make an appointment with Dr. Daniels and his staff at Southwest Orthopedic Associates today to start the road to recovery.