Add Injury Prevention to Your Dynamic Warm-Up in 2 Minutes
Are you doing all you can to protect your players from tearing their ACLs? Instituting a regular dynamic warm-up is an important first step toward keeping our athletes healthy. In my last post, The Dynamic Warm up, Why Do it?, we looked at the three primary reasons players need to warm up. If you don’t have a fixed warm-up, […]
The Dynamic Warm-Up, Why Do it?
This week I met with a group of high school basketball players starting their pre-season conditioning. They headed straight for the end line to start warm-ups, and then … waited for me to tell them what to do. Me: Do you have a standard warm up? Players: (looking at each other) Uh, not really. Me: […]
Are we returning injured players to sport too soon?
Why do so many kids not only keep getting injured, but keep getting re-injured?! The biggest risk factor for injury isn’t over-training or lack of fitness, poor coaching or poor preparation. It isn’t even reckless play. The biggest predictor of injury by far, is previous injury. Kids who’ve been injured before and are attempting to return […]
Because We Care More About the Kids than the Soccer
I did something I have never done before at a Fit2Finish soccer session recently. I scrapped my complete injury prevention training plan, and we spent the whole 40 minutes talking, stretching and mending. Why? Because all but one of the players in the group were injured! Several told me they would be training later that evening […]
5 Potential Danger Zones in the Young Athlete
Kids need a challenge but they also need special handling. Most people think, why? My kids are flexible, resilient, and young. They bounce back from anything thrown at them. Let’s throw it all at them! They can handle it. Not so fast. Why? Because they’re growing, and growing presents special challenges and unique demands. They’re not mini-adults […]
How to Say No to the Pressure Toward Early Specialization in Youth Sports
Focusing only on one sport, year-round, can increase kids’ risk of injury and burnout, according to the recent position paper on the dangers of sport specialization put out by the American Academy of Pediatrics. But the incidence of early specialization in so many of our youth sports continues, regardless of doctor’s orders. Physicians tell us that kids […]
Taking the Fear out of Post-Concussion Syndrome
It seems like nearly every soccer-playing kid has had a concussion these days. And even if we’re lucky enough to have kids still in the clear, we’re set on edge by the looming fear that the succession of “sub-concussive hits” now under intense scrutiny may be just as damaging as that one big blow that […]
Four Signs that Kids Sports Are Actually Hurting Them
When I was growing up playing sports, nobody ever got hurt, at least not seriously. I don’t remember a single teammate ever complaining of knee pain, shin pain, heel pain or hip pain. Today nearly all young athletes eventually experience at least one of these maladies. What has changed since the “good ole days?” Plenty. […]
Let’s Stop Concussions but Keep the Game Alive
Fit2Finish note: This is a guest post from Dr. Neilank Jha, neurosurgeon and the head of Konkussion Inc – a concussion treatment program with clinics in many locations in Canada. If you are concerned about concussions in youth sports, also read “Solving the Concussion Crisis: Practical Solutions” here. For many, sports are the epicenter of their youth. Sport teaches children […]
Why Fit2Finish? Because it Starts and Ends with Healthy Kids
I often get asked, “How did you get started with Fit2Finish?” It’s a pretty good story… It was a sunny Sunday afternoon and I was watching my oldest daughter play a mid-season soccer game. The two teams were evenly matched and battled valiantly, contending for every ball – as only ten year old girls with […]