Sports ‘Free Play’ Could Protect Against Youth-Athlete Injuries

Share Button

From Your Health Journal…..”My regular visitors know I love and always promote the Education Week web site and plug their great articles whenever I can. Today, they had a great article called, Sports ‘Free Play’ Could Protect Against Youth-Athlete Injuries by Bryan Toporek. I placed a small snip here from the article, but recommend all of you to visit the Education Week web site (link provided below) to read the complete article. The article discusses how single-sport specialization and an increase in organized competition could lead to a higher rate of injuries for youth-athletes. This means the more unorganized competition and “free play” could help protect against youth-athlete injuries. This does make sense, as sometimes, there is a sense of urgency in organized play, competing to be the best, a ‘whatever’ cost to the athlete to improve performance and outcome. Please visit the Education Week web site for the full story.”

From the article…..

Single-sport specialization and an increase in organized competition could lead to a higher rate of injuries for youth-athletes, according to a study presented at the Society for Tennis Medicine and Science and United States Tennis Association-Tennis Medicine and Injury Conference.

The findings, released to the public this past Friday, suggest that more unorganized competition and “free play” could help protect against youth-athlete injuries.

Dr. Neeru Jayanthi, an associate professor at the Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine, and colleagues investigated 891 youth-athletes in the Chicago area for this study. Out of the pool of participants, 618 of those athletes went to the Loyola University Health System or Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago for treatment of sports injuries, while the other 273 were uninjured and came in for sports physicals.

The study included 124 total tennis players, 74 of whom specialized in only tennis.

Among the 74 single-sport tennis players, 65 of them (about 87.5 percent) reported an injury, while only nine did not. The 65 who were injured spent 12.6 hours per week playing organized tennis and only 2.4 hours a week in free play or recreation. Comparatively, the uninjured single-sport tennis players played organized tennis for 9.7 hours per week and spent 4.3 hours per week in free play or recreation. Both the injured and noninjured specialized tennis players spent roughly the same amount of time per week in either organized or recreational play.

To read the full story…..Click here