Too much of a good thing can be harmful, especially when it comes to children playing sports. As more children and adolescents participate in organized and recreational sports, pediatricians are seeing an increasing number of children and adolescents with overuse injuries caused by too much training and not enough rest.
The AAP defines an overuse injury as a micro traumatic injury to a bone, muscle or tendon that has been subjected to repetitive stress without sufficient time to heal or undergo the natural healing process. The risks of overuse are more serious in the pediatric/adolescent athlete because the growing bones of the young athlete cannot handle as much stress and the mature bones of adults.
It is recommended that young athletes limit training in one sport to no more than five days a week, with at least one day off from any organized physical activity. In addition, athletes should take time off from one sport for two to three months each year. Taking a break from a sport allows injuries to heal and the opportunity to work on strength training and conditioning to reduce the risk of future injuries. It also helps kids take a psychological break, which is necessary to avoid burnout, or over training syndrome.
Symptoms of burnout include chronic muscle or joint pain, personality changes, elevated resting heart rate, decreased sport performance, fatigue, lack of enthusiasm about practice or competition, or difficulty completing ordinary activities. Youth athletes need to be educated about proper nutrition and fluids, and how to avoid hypothermia, hyperthermia, over training, overuse injuries and burnout. Additional recommendations include:
Weekly training time, number of repetitions, or total distance should not increase by more than 10% weekly.
Focus of sports should be on fun, skill acquisition, safety and sportsmanship.
Join only one team per season.
Be aware of risks associated with weekend tournaments (soccer, baseball, tennis), such as heat related illness, nutritional deficiencies, overuse injuries and burnout.
Multi-sport athletes who use the same body parts for different sports especially need to take a break between seasons to avoid overuse injuries.
Getting caught up in making the professional leagues or Olympics is unrealistic. Children and adolescents often train year round on multiple teams of one sport with the hope of earning a college scholarship in that sport or becoming a professional athlete, but less than one percent of high school athletes make it to the professional level.
Lifelong fitness and enjoyment of physical activity should be the overall goal of participating in athletics.
~American Academy of Pediatrics, June, 2007