Young Athletes Advised to Be Wise: Don't Specialize -- Diversify
by Ed Thomas
March 31, 2005
(AgapePress) - A Christian sports medicine doctor says the rash of injuries to minor-age athletes is a reflection of today's emphasis on winning and getting ahead of the game in sports. He says both are attitudes that parents need to take the lead in changing -- for the good of the athletes.Dr. Todd Fowler is participating in a national information campaign by sports surgeons and trainers that is designed to teach about the necessity of cross-training among young athletes. Fowler says greatly expanded playing opportunities for female and male athletes than in the past have changed the dynamics of how often youth -- pre-teens and teens -- are participating in sports.
"They're starting younger in females, and [getting] more competitive earlier to try and get better so when [the athletes] get to high school, they can be seen and get a college scholarship," Fowler says. "And parents are pushing their kids because that's a way to financially make it [feasible] for their kids to go to school [at the collegiate level]."
He suggests that if more youth were participating in sports, and if the environment were less emphatic about winning, then the athletes would not push themselves so hard to win.
Fowler says an unfortunate aspect of the new habits of training for this group of athletes -- i.e., year-round participation without moving to alternate sports that make use of different muscle groups -- has led to a rash of reconstructive surgeries and repetitive-use injuries. He says physicians like himself all across the country have seen a near epidemic of physical injuries in youth that were once confined to college or professional athletes.
He explains that because young bodies are still developing in their connective tissue areas -- called "growth platelet" areas -- parents and their children must use a wiser course of cross-training and take a break from various sports at different times of the year.
"Cross-training is a great idea," he says, suggesting that an avid runner either take a day off now and then or substitute bicycling on the days off. "You do something different with different muscles instead of using the same ones over and over again," he explains.
Overuse of tissue areas, he says, can often cause permanent injury. Fowler says parents and trainers need to understand that and to avoid overuse, as well as heavy weight-training, for that reason.
Ed Thomas, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
