Is Your Child Involved in a Lot of Sports or Play? Help Avoid Pediatric Injuries with Physical Therapy!
As proud as you are of your child’s bravery on the playground or playing field, a part of you still frets over the potential for injury. It’s only natural to be concerned about spasms, sprains, strains, accident injuries, and overuse injuries in active kids. Pediatric injuries typically fall into one of two categories: acute or overuse injuries.
Overuse injuries are repetitive stress on any part of the body. In most cases due to the incorrect techniques that are used to participate in an activity.
Prevention is better than cure! Consider learning smart preventative strategies for you and/or your child, and ask our physical therapist to help you develop and implement them. Our sports conditioning program will help you and your child ready for the sport that you love.
Proper Diet and nutrition is the key to start a day!
Young athletes need to eat a balanced diet consisting of healthy, natural foods instead of highly-processed junk food and sugary soda.
Proper hydration, including a balance of water and electrolytes, is also critical for sports. Jeevam Therapy can offer valuable advice on the subject.
Educating your child on common play and sport injuries
Kids who resolve to “play through the pain” or who fail to recognize common injury symptoms put themselves at risk for even greater physical damage. It might be that they are hyposensitive to the pain and proprioceptive inputs, and there is always a reason behind their hyposensitivity. Or, it might be SPD (sensory processing disorder). We can diagnose and suggest some treatment options so your child does not get hurt repeatedly.
It’s critical that we know how the child got hurt and time to stop playing immediately, and seek help. Teach your child that staying in the game to prove “toughness” could lead to being benched (either literally or figuratively) with painful, serious, possibly even long-term complications.
Incorporating the proper warm-up and cool-down methods
Kids always seem to be in a hurry to leap into activities — and just as eager to leap away from those activities when they’re done with them. But as any expert can tell you, engaging in athletics without warming up first can promote soft tissue injuries. A bit of jogging or some gentle stretches, or if you have a warm-up routine developed by your specialist, might be all that’s needed to prevent these problems. But it’s equally important for your child to perform some cool-down stretches after the activity, which helps the tissues recover from their workout.
Encouraging safe play
Even physically fit person can run into trouble if they don’t have good body awareness, proprioception, and core stability and if they are impulsive ignores to play safe. If you or your child play a sport that requires any kind of protective gear, invests in that gear, make sure it fits properly, and see to it that your child knows how to wear that gear safely.
Even casual playground time can prove dangerous if your child is defeated by dangling shoelaces or other common dangers. Educate your child on the need to check such details before playing.
Playing with the proper sports technique is another important consideration. For example, using the bat, racket, or golf club in the wrong technique can quickly lead to shoulder strains, elbow tendonitis, back pain, and other problems that might warrant a visit to the physical therapy clinic for injury and pain. Or you can prevent those beforehand by consulting Jeevam Therapy at 732-535-7323.
If your child needs more coaching than the school coach can offer, see about engaging a private coach to instill the proper use of equipment and movement technique.
Preparing for a sports conditioning physical therapy program:
A strong, agile body is a must for preventing sports or play injuries. If your child has obvious muscle weakness or other functional limitations, physical therapy can help minimize that obstacle to improve athletic safety and performance. Our physical therapy team can evaluate your child’s balance, coordination, stance, gait, muscle strength, and range of motion for any issues that might need improvement. Specific physical therapy exercises can then be prescribed to straighten those issues out before your child takes the field. our program guides gradually through gentleness to vigorousness, finally finishing with work hardening.
So, how will pediatric physical therapy help my family avoid pediatric injuries?
Let our physical therapists assess your or your’s or your child’s movement patterns. After evaluating balance, coordination, stance, gait, muscle strength, range of motion, and myofascial adhesions your PT will develop an individualized conditioning program specifically for the choice of sport. Specific physical therapy exercises regimen will be implemented to address the concerning areas before you or your child takes the field.
Our team can help make sure your child is safe while performing athletic activities by:
- Learn to stabilize the core before mobilizing your extremities.
- Demonstrating how to play safely.
- Providing proper warm-up and cool-down techniques.
- Educating you and your child on common injuries for his or her sport.
- Expressing the importance of proper nutrition.
- Designing a treatment plan for injury prevention.
Looking for more information? Contact us! 732-535-7323
If you or your child are ready for action, Jeevam Therapy is ready to help enjoy sports in a safe and healthy way.
Tags: health, wellness, child development, physical therapy, pain relief, pediatric injuries, injury prevention
