Overuse injury: New Study Targets Youth Pitching Injuries.
If you treat young athletes in your practice like I do at Chiropractic Lane, you’ll be interested in the results of a new study of young baseball athletes. The study, sponsored by the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine, followed 750 young pitchers ( ages 9-18) for three years.
His conclusion? Despite the introduction of pitching limits in youth baseball, young pitchers are now being injured in ever increasing numbers. And the people most to blame seems to be the parents and the young athletes themselves.
The study concludes that a significant number of young pitchers routinely exceed the safe pitching limits in a several ways. Approximately 40 percent play in leagues which don’t monitor pitch counts/limits. More than half pitched on consecutive days. Nearly one in five will pitch multiple games on a single day, and up to a third will pitch for more than one team. Finally, as many as 13 percent of these young hurlers are pitching more than eight months out of the year. (Young athletes who pitch 8 months or more annually are five times as likely to require surgery.)
Taken together, the hypercompetitive environment, is driving many young athletes toward injury.
We have seen this before in concussion injuries in football and knee injuries in girl’s soccer – growing bodies cannot take the abuse of intensive sports competition like and adult can. I will add that even adult athletes can often not take the impact on their bodies but with young people it is the parents who must be willing to step and put limits on their children.
The author suggest a simple series of “Rules of Ones” to avoid overuse injury. One game per day. One day of rest after any pitching. One position only during any pitched game. One Team at a time. One season of some other organized sport. And finally, One week off for any complaint of arm soreness or fatigue.
via Blogger http://chiropractic-lane.blogspot.com/2013/07/overuse-injury-new-study-targets-youth_27.html
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