Checkup Newsroom

‘I quit!’ Is your child burned out on sports?

Fri, 08 Jan 2016 11:08:27 -0600

“I want to quit!”

“This is not fun!”

“I don’t want to play anymore.”

Are these lines you’ve heard your young athlete say? Have you found yourself asking questions like – “What could cause a talented, young athlete to lose their passion for playing a sport?” “Or why would they throw everything away after we’ve worked so hard?”

Your young athlete may be feeling a sense of overtraining or burnout from their sport.

What is overtraining or burnout?

Overtraining occurs when an athlete does the same skill over and over again with limited rest, causing a loss of enjoyment or withdrawal due to increasing physical demands. This could be specialization in one sport, high volumes of training, or demands of coaches, trainers, parents, or self to achieve a specific skill level, time, or score in their sport. A child may sense these demands as too much, leading to physiological and mood changes affecting self-esteem, levels of stress and ultimately leading to physical and emotional exhaustion.

Overtraining can also increase your child’s risk for injury. Often young athletes are putting in long hours to perfect their sport and participate in competitions or tournaments. This repetitive stress and physical exhaustion on a growing, undeveloped body can promote weakness and breakdown of body support structures, placing the athlete at risk for overuse or repetitive stress injuries. A study performed by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) found that athletes who spend more than twice as much time in sports than in free play, who intensely specialize in a single sport, or who played more hours per week than their age, are more likely to have overuse injuries and potential emotional burnout.

Not all athletes that request to stop a sport are burned out. Some request to stop due to time constraints, interest in trying something new, lack of playing time, or boredom. That is why it’s important to be aware of signs of burnout or overtraining.

What are some causes of overtraining/burnout?

Early specialization in a sport
Lack of rest
Lack of life balance
Loss of fun
Excessive negative or unclear feedback from coaches and/or parents
Poor relationship with coach or teammates

What are signs of overtraining?

Loss of desire to play
Tiring quickly
Resisting working with coaches and teammates
Not reaching training goals
Chronic injuries

What can I do to help?

It is important to switch focus back to the fun of the game. This can happen by starting pick-up games and reducing the pressure to exceed. This transitions the focus to building teamwork, bringing awareness to proper fitness and health, developing friendships, and having fun.

As the athlete’s parent, you are their support system and second voice. Talk to your athlete and their coach about promoting a good life balance and placing fun back into the game. For example, recommend reducing the number of competitions if your child is training 6-7 days a week for multiple hours a day.

What if you’re the parent and coach? Children model those around them. Teach them based on how you conduct yourself in your passion for the sport, the importance of life balance and rest, and how to create open lines of communication with teammates and coaching staff. Reward the positives, but also use the negatives for learning experiences and education.

Change the mindset of “win-at-all-costs” and motivating through a focus on winning, humiliation/anger when they fail, or pressure to get the athletes mind back in the game. Instead, promote a positive atmosphere where there is a balance of the serious, competitive side and fun side. Try to regain the fun, or positively support and guide them as they transition interest to another sport, position, or activity. There is even a possibility that through this process of finding their passion, they might return to that same sport because they want to, not because they were forced. Also, by reducing the monotony of training and allowing your child to try different sports or positions, you can promote varying levels of strengthening, muscle memory, and physical and mental growth.

It is important to be aware that it is OK for an athlete to become serious about their sport and invest time and energy into pursuing their sporting goals as long as they maintain a passion for what they’re doing. If the passion and fun for the sport is removed, there is a risk for heartache, unhappiness and ultimately burnout.

More resources from the Cook Children's Sports Performance Orthopedic Rehab Team Specialists (SPORTS):

About the author

Jenny Arey, PT, DPT, OCS, CMPT, is a SPORTS physical therapist. She's a board certified orthopedic clinical specialist and certified manual physical therapist. The SPORTS Program at Cook Children’s offers educational material for parents, coaches, trainers and nurses for sports-specific injuries. Our team of experts have specialized training in pediatrics and collaborate together to share their knowledge in growing bodies and dynamic training principles.

'It's only a sprain.' But what does that really mean?

Tue, 21 Apr 2015 15:45:38 -0500

At some point in time we have probably all seen a sporting event where an athlete goes down with an ankle injury. In a lot of those cases we have probably also heard the commentators or someone at the event say “Hopefully it’s only a sprain.” While other injuries may be more severe, looking at it as “only a sprain” may not be giving the injury the attention it deserves.

As parents before we just shrug off our children’s injury as nothing too serious, it helps to know exactly what a sprain is.

The American Academy of Orthopedic surgeons define a sprain as a stretch and/or tear of a ligament, the fibrous band of connective tissue that joins the end of one bone to another.

Technically a torn ACL or a torn MCL in the knee is a sprained knee, but we never shrug those injuries off. So why are we so dismissive of ankle sprains? Admittedly a sprained ankle is typically not as severe of an injury as a torn ACL, because an ACL when torn will not heal on its own and requires a surgical reconstruction, but that is a topic for another blog.

Just as with any injury when dealing with an ankle sprain we need to start by determining the severity of these injuries. Ankle sprains are typically divided into three grades based on the severity and presentation of the injury.

Grade 1: Ligaments are stretched, but not torn, ligaments are tender to touch, but no laxity is noted, and the patient is able to walk with little to no pain.

Grade 2: Ligaments are stretched and at least partially ruptured, there is moderate pain and swelling, mild to moderate bruising, some range of motion loss, the patient has pain with walking, and there is mild to moderate laxity noted.

Grade 3: Ligaments are completely torn, there is severe swelling, severe bruising, significant loss of motion, the patient is unable to bear weight or walk on the ankle, and there is significant laxity noted.

The severity of the sprain will definitely influence how we treat these injuries.

So why is it important for my child to rehab an ankle sprain?

The number one predictor of ankle injuries is a previous ankle injury. So what this tells me is that more often than not we aren’t addressing that initial injury effectively. Each ligament sends information to the brain letting us know if our joints are in good alignment or not. This is why we don’t have to look at our feet when we walk to know that our foot is in a good position to take a step. Any time a ligament is torn or stretched we lose some of our awareness of where the joint is in space. If a ligament is completely torn or stretched we aren’t getting those signals until our joint is potentially already in a bad position. After injury we have to do something to make sure that we re-establish that joint awareness, and that is where Physical Therapy comes in.

How can physical therapy help my child recover from an ankle sprain?

Initial focus in physical therapy will reduce swelling and inflammation with RICE (rest, ice, compression, and elevation), and regaining ROM. While this first phase is very important, the portion of rehab that really helps to prevent recurring injuries is the strengthening and proprioceptive (or balance) training. The balance exercises are the exercises designed to retrain joint position awareness by training the muscles to recognize and stabilize where our joint is in space. The balance and strengthening exercises are what will truly help a patient return to higher level activities like jumping and cutting in sports.

When do I get help for my child who has an ankle sprain?

Any time an injury causes notable laxity or instability on exam.
Any time a patients is unable to walk without pain.
Any time balance is negatively affected.
That means grade 2 sprains and above should automatically get help and any grade 1 sprain with balance deficits should also do rehab. If there is ever any doubt, error on the side of caution and contact your physician.

At Cook Children’s, our SPORTS physical therapists are trained in proper rehabilitation of all grades of ankle sprains and work to restore full function and safely guide return to athletic activities. If your child has a history of frequent ankle sprains or you are concerned about risk of future injury, talk to your doctor about a referral to physical therapy.

SPORTS resources