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 SEPTEMBER 2002 Welcome to this month's issue of the Sports Injury Handbook E-zine. You've probably fallen back into your regular Fall schedule (whether you like it or not), so make sure to maintain your exercise routine. Build sports into your hectic day, and the day won't seem so hectic any more. School's back in session as well. Children also need to make time for fun and exercise in addition to doing homework, including after-school sports. Better yet, plan fun exercise activities for the whole family, such as a game of touch football or Frisbee, a hike through the woods, or a doubles tennis match. We hope you enjoy this newsletter and invite you to pass it on to a friend. We welcome your suggestions for improvements and additions. Yours in health, Allan M. Levy, MD and Mark L. Fuerst In this issue, you'll find: Strength Training for Kids: How Soon? I frequently see 6- and 7-year-olds being pushed into weight training by their overeager parents. Young children typically lack sufficient concentration and regimentation to do themselves much good. In fact, they often do themselves harm because they don't have the coordination to handle weights and are not mature enough to understand what they are doing or why. Starting at age 11, a child can begin lifting light weights with many repetitions in order to learn the proper techniques. More weight can be added as the child gets stronger and grows. With an adequately supervised program, there is room for great improvement in a child's strength without the threat of injury. Q & A - Youth Soccer vs. Youth Football Q: My 9-year-old son wants to play Pee Wee football, but I'm afraid he'll get hurt. I want him to play soccer instead. Which sport is more dangerous? MS, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY. A: While high school football players suffer many injuries, often because bigger players go against smaller players of the same age, I see few injuries among Pop Warner football players. These younger players don't weigh very much or run into each other hard enough to hurt themselves much. Supervised youth football games with full equipment are much safer than sandlot games, where anything goes. Soccer players, on the other hand, wear little equipment playing this collision sport. Young players can suffer many types of injuries, including cuts and concussions when they bang heads together and broken legs when they kick or fall on an opponent's leg. In the News - How the Pros Come Back from Injury During the New York Giants pre-season game against the Atlanta Falcons, both tight ends, Jeremy Shockey and Dan Campbell, went down with minor ankle sprains. Yet, both players were back in action within 8 or 9 days from an injury that normally takes three to four weeks to heal. How did they come back so quickly? Active treatment from Day 1 of the injury. Their ankles were iced immediately on the sidelines. That night, they began doing ankle exercises and received physical therapy, which they continued every day for 1½ hours a day for two weeks. This concept of active rehabilitation is just as important for recreational athletes. If you sprain an ankle, don't sit around and wait until it stops hurting to begin treatment. If you put a joint at rest after an injury, two things happen, and both are bad. You lose range-of-motion in the joint, and the muscles surrounding the joint begin to atrophy from lack of use. For every day you rest, it takes two more days to get back to normal, so you really lose three days by not working on recovery right away. You may not have as much time to devote to rehabilitation as pros do, but the methods are the same. It's just a matter of degree. Book Review - Tell Me Where It Hurts (Adams Media) by Jonathan A. Slater and Mark L. Fuerst  Tell Me Where It Hurts: How to Decipher Your Child's Emotional Aches and Physical Pains is designed to help parents unravel the complex symptoms and complaints they hear from their kids. Slater, a Columbia University child psychiatrist, and I (Mark, that is, who has two young kids and obviously collaborates on more than just sports injury books), also include a section on Sports and Development. We write that "athletics in America has become an obsession, in both the negative and positive sense of the word. At times, the players are viewed only as athletes and not as children who happen to be playing sports." One of the many studies mentioned notes that young athletes who have high self-esteem are less vulnerable to injuries, and recover faster from injuries. The book provides questions for parents to ask themselves to get a handle on how they perceive a child's involvement in sports, stress reduction techniques to ease the stress of competition, and clear information about the dangers of performance enhancers, including how to tell whether a young athlete may be taking steroids. One of the book's main messages for parents is to make sports fun by becoming physically active role models.Disclaimer This newsletter is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. We are not engaged in rendering medical or other professional services. If medical advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. |
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