Kids specializing in sports is becoming more common at younger and younger ages.  With club sports, kids are now playing their sport of choice year-round, sometimes playing on multiple teams at the same time. This means double the workouts, double the stress on their growing bodies and double the risk of injury.  

Since I have been practicing I’ve seen a wide range of injuries in middle and high school aged kids from ankle and knee injuries, back pain, shoulder and elbow pain to hamstring issues.  I myself suffered my first knee injury when I was in 8th grade and it required surgical repair.  One thing that I have noticed in many of these young athletes is poor movement patterns that they have already established at a young age.  Have you ever noticed if your kid looks different when they run compared to their peers? Is their posture different from others? Is their swim stroke asymmetrical? One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen is that parents/kids think they will outgrow the movement dysfunction. Or, because they are good at their sport despite poor movement, the movement dysfunctions don’t really matter.

 Predicting injuries can be a difficult thing, however, in all of the athletes I’ve treated over the years, they have all had 2 things in common-mobility deficits and severe weakness, usually more pronounced on one side.  The response I typically get is that they do strength training at practice and in PE.  More times than not, their coaches aren’t correcting their faulty movement patterns. So, while they think they are helping kids build strength, they may actually be hurting them by programming these poor movement patterns.  I moved horribly as a kid and still struggle with many movements as an adult.  This was probably a huge factor in my inability to stay healthy me entire high school career.  If any of you know my story, you know that I had 3 knee surgeries and an ankle surgery over a 5-year span.  I think a lot of my issues were the result of poor movement patterns that were never corrected or addressed.  

How do you know if your kid isn’t moving well? If it’s not obvious, and it may not be, it is worth visiting with a movement professional like a physical therapist to have them perform a movement screen on your kid.  If there are any points of concern, they can be brought to the forefront and a plan can be established to address the dysfunctions.  This is something I would recommend for any young athlete serious about their sport and those trying to move onto collegiate level of play.  I would recommend visiting with a movement professional once every 6 months and working regularly with qualified trainer.  It is important to reassess every so often because even though movements should improve over time, other faulty movement patterns may develop.  I worked with a young pitcher who came in with elbow pain and he couldn’t fully extend his elbow.  We worked on this and got him back to pitching but 6 months later he came back with new onset of elbow pain. His parents were smart to address it as soon as it happened again.  At his second round of treatment his elbow no longer had the mobility deficits, but he lacked shoulder external rotation in his throwing arm-a completely different mobility deficit than before which meant a different focus on his treatment.  If these poor movement patterns and strength deficits are addressed early on and monitored by a professional, one would expect a healthier career.  So even if your kid has not had an injury but you want to keep them as healthy as possible, find a local therapist who can do a movement assessment on them. It is quick and will provide you with a lot of valuable information along with a roadmap on how to address the deficits and keep your young athlete healthy and injury free.  If you found this information helpful don’t forget to subscribe to get notified of new blogs posts.  

Yours truly,

 Savannah Torrez, PT, DPT, COMT

“Movement is a medicine for creating change in a person’s physical, emotional, and mental state” -Carol Welch