We all want our children to be fit, active and driven to do their best. It’s important to balance any aspirations of becoming a future All Black or Silver Fern with sustainable training and a love of play. With our Body In Motion physiotherapists specialising in youth and adolescent injury management, we can provide expertise to set your child up for a lifetime of healthy physical activity.
Children, parents and coaches can benefit from:
- Early recognition and accurate diagnosis of youth-specific injuries
- Early and appropriate treatment and management of both traumatic and chronic overuse conditions
- Education and advice on appropriate training loads, warm-ups and self-help techniques
- Timely referral to our network of sports physicians and orthopaedic specialists if appropriate
- Training of fundamental movement patterns to help develop skill acquisition.
Youth injury is on the rise because:
- Too often young athletes are treated like little adults, but their growing skeleton responds to load in a different way to that of adults
- There is increased involvement in organised sport and training from an early age
- There is early specialisation in a sport or a specific team position
- Children spend less time doing backyard sport, climbing trees, playing with mates, and learning fundamental movement patterns
- From an early age, children get involved in representative teams and talent squads with the focus on being the best
- There is a big increase in overall training hours – training for 20+ hours a week is not unusual for some sports.
Children are not little adults
The growing body responds very differently to adults and presentation of injuries is quite different.
At Body In Motion, we acknowledge the differences between adults and the growing skeleton and can assess and treat the young athlete taking into account age, maturity, training age, training load and numerous other factors that make the young athlete unique.
Our very own Body In Motion physiotherapist Ali Wilson has been working closely with Netball SportSmart, ACC Injury Prevention and AIMS Games to help reduce and understand youth injuries and prevention strategies. With ACC seeing a rise in youth and adolescent injuries and investing heavily in injury prevention through the ACC SportSmart, now is a perfect time to start treating young athletes as individuals and not little adults.