Young Athletes Are Not Small Adults

I've had a few worried parents message or call me on the past two weekends saying that their child has had sharp pain suddenly without any falls or accident. A common area of complaint is in the knee or heel.

After a few short questions and answers I am usually able to reassure the parent that their child is fine and nothing is really serious about the painful episode.

Often these young children/ athletes have growing pain. The long bones grow quite quickly (especially if they are having a growth spurt) and the muscles don't lengthen quite as quickly. When the child is active, this shorter muscle(s) often pull on the bony attachments and cause pain.

Their muscles usually will not have developed enough strength to compensate for the sudden increase in lever lengths.

My older boy who is eight plays football once a week. Other days he's at the playground running, jumping and climbing etc. He's growing taller and  his muscles are not always strong enough to generate the forces required to move his longer and now heavier legs. As a result, he often has this "growing pain" in the night especially after he'e been particularly active.

I just taped my older boy's leg last night

From treating all the young and teenage athletes in our clinics, we observe that it may take up to about nine months for the muscles to develop length and strength after a growth spurt in their bones.
This form the basis of injuries that these young athletes get. If the bones grow longer and the muscles don't quite catch up in length, the muscle will be relatively shorter and hence tighter.

The area most prone to overload is where the muscle attaches via the tendons to the bones. Hence these pain and injuries we see are growth related.  Common areas are where the Achilles tendon inserts in the heel bone (usually known as Severs disease, although it is definitely not a disease), and the patella tendon on the shin bone (Osgood Schlatters disease).

Other areas include the quadriceps tendon into the knee cap (Sindling Larsen disease) and the attachment of the hip flexors onto the pelvis.

It is usually due to overload of the tendon attachment to the bone from doing too much too soon (without rest) that causes these pain or injuries.

Majority of the time, most of these cases get better when the muscles "catch up" with the bone growth by lengthening and getting stronger.

Stretching the muscle may be worse sometimes as static stretching can place more traction forces on the tendon insertion on the bone. We tend to teach our young patients and their parents to use the trigger ball instead.

Correct strength training that is pain free often helps the muscle take load off the tendon attachment. Don't use a load that is too heavy.

Come see us in our clinics if your young or teenage child athlete needs help.