Unsupervised Youth Sports May Lead to Injuries

Doctors have found injuries among young athletes are on the rise. The reasons behind it are not new as young children and teens are often placed under pressure from their coaches or parents to succeed. Sometimes the line between acceptable methods to promote competition and what could count as child abuse gets blurred. Most of the time sports training related injuries are just that, but sometimes coaches or parents can go over the lines to give their kids an edge.

The benefits of sports participation cannot be denied. They give children a way to exercise and they will learn teamwork, which bosses will letter try to exploit once a child enters the corporate environment for the first time. (Children will also learn that the corporate emphasis on teamwork to accomplish goals is often phony while Midget football league, AYSO and Little League allows for a real sense to develop.

The question is how to over competitive parents or in some cases children taking the game a little too seriously know where to draw the line. In an effort to minimize sports-related industries, a team of coaches led by a coach at Ball Sate University hopes that introducing a standardized training program will reduce the risk of school related industries in sports.

While cases caused by ignorance on the part of coaches are parents are rare such as wrapping team participants in plastic wrap and subjecting them to sauna like conditions to lose weight are rare, injuries resulting from wear and tear and repetitive stress are more common amongst young athletes.

Knowing how much to train and when to stop can avoid a lot of these and watching how many hours a day your child or you force your child to devote to such activities can cause this type of injury to be less common. Of course, if your child is a computer whiz, you should probably also be on the look out for waning signs of carpal tunnel syndrome.

The drive to compete is the major factor in causing youth sports industries. Teams for youth run by adults tend to be focused on who finishes first and win championships. Backyard games organized by children are often more concerned about changing the rules or evening out the teams so the sides are matched more evenly. Teaching young children when to recognize signs of muscle soreness and to realize when they are overdoing it can further reduce the amount of youth sports injury related cases.

Flexibility exercises and general exercises should be included by coaches rather than just drills to work on specific skills needed by the members of the team. Warm up and cool down exercises are important for young athletes just as they are for adults, and having a supervising adult who knows about healthy sports behaviors is not a bad idea. Should problems more severe than a muscle ache develop it is always best to see a doctor.

Sources:

"Warning Signs. Doctors Note Rise in Injuries Among Young Athletes." Randy Griffith.Tuesday, August 27, 2007. The Daily Item. Sunbury, PA

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