Youth sport participation offers many benefits including the development of self-esteem, peer socialization and general fitness. However, an emphasis on competitive success, often driven by goals of elite-level travel team selection, collegiate scholarships, Olympic and National team membership and even professional contracts, has seemingly become widespread. This has resulted in an increased pressure to begin high-intensity training at young ages. Such an excessive focus on early intensive training and competition at young ages rather than skill development can lead to overuse injury and burnout.
Prevention of Overuse...
Limiting weekly and yearly participation time, limits on sport-specific repetitive movements (eg, pitching limits) and scheduled rest periods are recommended (B). Such modifications need to be individualized based on the sport and the athlete's age, growth rate, readiness and injury history (C). Careful monitoring of training workload during the adolescent growth spurt is recommended, as injury risk seems to be greater during this phase (B). This apparent increased risk may be related to a number of factors including diminished size-adjusted bone mineral density, asynchronous growth patterns, relative weakness of growth cartilage and physeal vascular susceptibility. Preseason conditioning programs can reduce injury rates in young athletes (B). Prepractice neuromuscular training can reduce lower extremity injuries (B). Given the altered biomechanics that may occur with ill-fitting equipment, proper sizing and resizing of equipment is recommended, although date are lacking that demonstrate a link to injury (C). To reduce the likelihood of burnout, an emphasis should be placed on skill development more than competition and winning (C).
