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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