Engaging in sports and physical activity from a young age has numerous health benefits, but in turn, may increase the risk of developing specific sport/growth related injuries.

It is known that children in the pre-teen age range from 8-12 can be training/playing sport up to 20 hours per week (That’s a lot!!)

Young athletes may be particularly susceptible to injury, due to the physical and physiological demands on the body as your kids continue to grow. In combination with the activity overload and these ongoing growing changes, there is a small chance that your children may unfortunately become injured a a result of this.

The most common growth-related injuries in kids affect both the knee and the heel, and sometimes both at the same time. In sports medicine these conditions are classed as diseases but in fact they are just growth-specific injuries, usually in relation to high activity levels in adolescents.

The first condition affects the lower part of the knee (patella tendon) where the kneecap (patella) attaches to the shin bone (tibia). This condition is called Osgood-Schlatter’s disease and is classed as inflammation of this patella tendon. Pain is usually located over the hard bony lump on the top of the shin bone. It most often occurs during growth spurts, when bones, muscles, tendons and other structures are changing rapidly. Because the demand of physical activity puts additional stress on these structures and in combination with growth-related changes it can cause the tendon to become overloaded, inflamed and often very sore!

Sever’s disease is another common growth-related condition and is similar to Osgood-Schlatter’s but instead of affecting the knee, it targets the heel of the foot where the achilles tendon attaches to the heel bone.

Both of these conditions can be treated effectively by your Physiotherapist using a variety of treatment techniques in order to settle pain levels and get your child back to their everyday sporting activities safely.

Feel free to book in and see one of our friendly staff members to get your kids back to doing what they love as soon as possible!!