Training and reducing the risk of injuries: How to win at youth sports

Say no to specialization

Overuse injuries are often the result of sports specialization, which is when a youth athlete participates more intensely or solely in one sport, rather than participating in numerous sports year-round. The incorrect rationale behind sports specialization is often spurred by parents who believe their child’s best chance at earning an athletic scholarship or playing professionally is to constantly practice the same sport over and over again.

But there’s no evidence to support that belief, Weiss-Kelly said. In fact, about 8 million students participate in high school athletics across the U.S. annually, and only about 2% are awarded athletic college scholarships, many of which are partial scholarships, according to the NCAA.

“Pediatricians are 100% against sports specialization,” Weiss-Kelly said. “Sports specialization does not necessarily make your child better or more likely to get a college scholarship. But it does increase their risk for injury.”

And it’s not just pediatricians that oppose sports specialization. Tim Robertson, the founder of Speed Strength Systems, a performance training facility based in Chesterland, also opposes the idea of young athletes fixating entirely on one sport.

Robertson, who trains youth athletes ages 8 and up, said he encourages all youth athletes he works with to participate in a range of athletic activities throughout each year.

“Knowing the human body, knowing the development of an athlete, I feel a lot of kids do not develop fully because they specialize in one sport,” said Robertson, who is also entering his 13th year as the head strength and conditioning coach at John Carroll University. “If you do the same movement patterns – for example, if all you do is throw a baseball and swing a bat – that could potentially wear on you and be detrimental to your shoulders or your spine. You have to consider all of that. Doing different neuromuscular changes of movement – like different sports and different demands – can be beneficial for you overall as an athlete.”

Allowing children to participate in multiple sports allows them to maintain physical fitness and conditioning while decreasing their risk for overuse injuries, Weiss-Kelly said.

“We’re not suggesting kids become couch potatoes during the offseason, we’re just suggesting they do something different,” she said.

More games, more money

Preventing overuse injuries in youth athletes is simple: Don’t continuously overwork them in the same sport, and allow them to instead take a break from a specific sport.

But there’s one problem: greed. Adults often reap bigger financial benefits when kids play more.

“Part of the problem is youth sports are really an industry in this country,” Weiss-Kelly said. “Coaches, teams, leagues and tournament sponsors all make more money the more the kids play. So there’s a conflict of interest there.”

Experts say too many youth sports organizations, travel tournaments and camps have become fixated on the immediate financial benefits of youth sports rather than the long-term benefits and life lessons kids can gain from participating in sports.

U.S. families spend a combined $30 to $40 billion annually on their child’s sports activities, according to the Aspen Institute’s 2022 State of Play report. That’s an enormous industry built on the backs of kids who more often than not just want to have fun with their friends, but are instead subject to increasing demands – both physical and emotional – from parents and coaches alike.

That profit-driven motivation for coaches and leagues leads to schedules overloaded with games and tournament, which in turn leads to increased injury risks and burnout for young athletes.

“I think the prevalence of travel (sports) for some of these kids is off the charts,” Robertson said. “You have some 10-year-olds who are playing 60, 70 or 80 (baseball) games in a summer. It’s just out of control.”

Rest, reduce, replenish

Allowing your child to take a break or “offseason” from a specific sport is one way to reduce their risk for overuse injury. Another solution is to ensure your child’s training to includes proper athletic fundamentals and progression through increasing levels of physical activity.

Robertson said when working with youth athletes, he focuses not on preventing injuries, which are inevitable, but rather on reducing the risk of injury.

“We try to reduce injuries by doing proper training, proper progressions, proper exercise, proper movement,” Robertson said. “A lot of people just associate training with lifting a weight or running from A to B; it’s much, much more involved. We monitor volume, intensity, rest periods, recovery time – all of these things have to go into play in order to train an athlete. We’re trying to really teach them how to move, how to strengthen their joints, build stability and that overall will hopefully reduce the onset of any type of injury.”

Aside from proper athletic training, Robertson and Weiss-Kelly both point to proper nutrition as a vital aspect of any athlete’s success, but particularly for children who are still growing.

Youth athletes who are taxing themselves physically but don’t have proper nutrition run the risk of developing Relative Energy Deficiency in Sports (REDS), according to Weiss-Kelly. REDS is a syndrome where athletes don’t consume enough calories or food to meet their energy needs, resulting in declining health and athletic performance while increasing the risk for a bone stress injury.

“If you’re not replacing your calories well enough, you could actually be decreasing your overall bone mineral accrual for your lifetime,” Weiss-Kelly said. “Getting good nutrition improves performance and sometimes it’s hard for kids to understand that. So when kids talk about building muscle, well, we need you to take in enough calories and protein to support that muscle that you want to build.”

Increased injury awareness, including concussions

Parents and coaches have made great strides in recent years and decades towards being more aware of youth athletes’ health, according to Weiss-Kelly. She specifically notes how attitudes towards head trauma injuries have improved in recent years as science has further detailed the risks associated with head and brain injuries.

Weiss-Kelly said when she first started practicing medicine some 25 years ago, there wasn’t nearly as much concern from parents, coaches and even medical professionals about mild head injuries – which coaches often referred to as “getting your bell rung.”

That’s no longer the case, according to Weiss-Kelly, who said she receives much less pushback about holding athletes out of games with concussions than she did earlier in her career.

“People are much more aware of what concussion symptoms are and much more likely to bring their kids in for concussion symptoms than they were in the past, for sure,” said Weiss-Kelly, who also works as an unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant for the NFL and previously as a consulting team physician for the Cleveland Browns. “I very much appreciate the concentration and concern about head injuries and the willingness to treat it properly these days.”

Examples like that, where the general public has evolved on concussion awareness, offer a glimmer of hope for the future of youth sports. Parents and coaches are continuously tasked with learning best practices and fine-tuning approaches towards training youth athletes and preventing injuries to provide the best experience possible.

“There are many different training philosophies out there, but bottom line is the training should be supported by science,” Robertson said. “You really have to do your due diligence as a parent of who’s going to be working with your child. I’m not saying they have to have a master’s degree or anything like that, but just have some type of formal education to know the anatomy, physiology and biomechanics of movement. You’re working with the body and you can screw that body up if you don’t follow proper guidelines.”