This week I would like to nominate Eugene Heyward for the Penalty Box. If the name itsn't familiar, that’s alright; Eugene's not really a hockey guy. Eugene is the father of Jason Heyward, a Major League Baseball player who just finished his rookie season with the Atlanta Braves. Their story was featured in the April 19th issue of Sports Illustrated, and as I read the story I kept telling myself “This is what’s wrong with youth sports today, not something to be emulated.”
The sub-head from that article says “Welcome to the new player-development paradigm.” It could just have easily been about a hockey player and his dad. We all know somebody who fits the profile. Jason Heyward has been preparing to play Major League Baseball since he was 10 years old. He only recently started drawing a paycheck. You can read the full article by clicking on the first link in the column on the right. (1)
What I am really railing against here is the notion that to reach the top levels of any given sport, you have to start early and dedicate your life to that sport year-round. Maybe your goal is to play in the NHL, or to play for the Badgers or another D1 college team. Do you have to play hockey all year, traveling all over the country to play against the very best competition in order to achieve that goal? Is that even a responsible thing to do?
I could attack this paradigm from a number of different angles. There is the psychological perspective; at 11 or 12 years old, the kid should be leading a normal childhood, not practicing for a future career. If I could define what a “normal childhood” is these days, and say with conviction that one choice or another is best for the child’s long-term well-being, I might do that. But if sitting around playing computer games while texting your friends is normal, then I can’t be so sure.
I could attack it from a financial and family perspective; how much time and money and family resources are being devoted to this single-minded pursuit, and at what expense to the rest of the family? But again, that is a personal decision that you would have to make. I am certainly in no position to tell anybody how best to manage their family affairs.
I would like to look at this from a physiological perspective; what toll does this take on the body of the young skater? As I mentioned in a previous column, “Dammit Jim, I’m a referee not a doctor,” there have been numerous studies done recently on the occurrence of “overuse injuries.” Overuse injuries are defined as microtraumatic damage to a bone, muscle, or tendon that has been subjected to repetitive stress without sufficient time to heal or undergo the natural reparative process. The key phrase in there is “without sufficient time to heal”.
Additional Resources
- Sports Illustrated: Legend Before His Time
- Want to save arms from blowing out? Don't put them in, coach
- Teens training too hard, too often
- Steadman study hopes to prevent hip injuries in young hockey players
- Youth Sports and Overuse Injuries
- Young minds, big league dreams
- Overuse Injuries, Overtraining, and Burnout in Child and Adolescent Athletes
Back in the day – last century – we played hockey in the winter, baseball in the spring and summer, and football in the fall. There was a natural rhythm matching weather to the suitable conditions for the sport. But more importantly, although we didn’t really know it at the time, each sport exercised different muscle groups. While we were playing baseball, the “skating muscles” in our legs were recovering. When we played football, the throwing muscles in our shoulders and elbows healed. With kids specializing in one sport, and practicing and playing that sport all year, there is no down time for those muscles, and they start to break down.
Surgeons and physical therapists say they see an epidemic of overuse — fractures, tears, and worn-down joints — in children who are playing at higher intensities and at younger ages. Surgeries to repair shoulder, elbow, knee, and hip injuries, once thought to be adult fare, are being routinely performed on preteens and teenagers. Much of this focus in the media lately has been on baseball and pitchers in particular. Washington Nationals’ rookie phenom, Stephen Strassberg had to be shutdown halfway through the season. Speculation is that growing up in southern California and pitching year-round finally caught up to his arm. (2)
Dr. Mininder Kocher is an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in adolescent sports medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston. “All of these injuries,’’ he said, “predispose them to arthritis.’’ Because young athletes’ bones are still growing, they are vulnerable to problems in the growth plates, the soft cartilage at the bones’ ends. “Kids try to play through the pain,’’ Kocher said. “If they continue to play, that could result in a growth-plate problem; it may not grow altogether, or part may grow at a different rate, so you can have one leg longer than the other.’’ (3)
But hockey players don’t really do one motion over and over like pitching a baseball, so what could they harm? How about their hips?
Doctors with The Steadman Philippon Research Institute in Vail are trying to figure out when the hip injuries occur — and what young hockey players can do to prevent them.
Dr. Robert LaPrade, a Steadman surgeon leading the study along with Philippon, said researchers believe a common hip injury happens when hockey players are still growing. The condition, called femoroacetabular impingement, can lead to arthritis later in life.
“We're worried we're creating a generation of kids that are going to have hip arthritis,” LaPrade said. “Ten years ago, kids played baseball and soccer and basketball and hockey. They didn't play one sport all year round like they do now. It's looking like the reason we're getting this epidemic is because kids are focusing on one sport.”
So far, the researchers have found the injury is alarmingly common among 17- and 18-year-old hockey players. Over Labor Day weekend, the researchers screened 20 members of a Colorado Springs “major midget” team, which is basically a pre-college travel team, and discovered a lot of them had hip problems. Doctors aren't disclosing exactly how many of the players exhibited hip problems until the findings appear in a medical journal. (4)
Another factor to consider is the effect of overtraining:
Burnout, or overtraining syndrome, has been well described in the literature for adult athletes, but little is found regarding its applicability in youth. The overtraining syndrome can be defined as a "series of psychological, physiologic, and hormonal changes that result in decreased sports performance." Common manifestations may include chronic muscle or joint pain, personality changes, elevated resting heart rate, and decreased sports performance. The pediatric athlete may also have fatigue, lack of enthusiasm about practice or competition, or difficulty with successfully completing usual routines. (5)
The bottom line is that the kids need time off. At a minimum they should get one or two days each week without structured athletic activity. And more importantly, they need 2 or 3 months off from hockey to let their muscles recover. It may not be evident now, but they will pay the toll down the road.
Encourage kids to play other sports during the time off from hockey. Baseball is good. My brother-in-law told me that in Eveleth, MN they always put their goalies at third base because of their quick reflexes. In Antigo our goalies were usually catchers, doing the butterfly to block wild pitches. I have never really warmed up to soccer, but they tell me that some of the strategy is similar to hockey, and all that running around is good cardio work.
Check out the links on the right. Number 6 is about former NHL player Ray Ferraro, who didn't specialize in hockey until he was 17. He credits his NHL career to one thing: talent. It wasn't because of any year-round rigorous training. (6)
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