Tissue Types in the Body
During an acute injury, different structures in body can be damaged for similar reasons—submaximal loads—when a tissue is asked to do more than it is capable of, suddenly. Different tissue types have different names for their injuries:
Muscles: strains, tears
Tendons: tendinitis, tendon rupture/tears
Ligaments: sprains, tears
Bones: fractures (broken bones)
Sometimes, bones can break at the growth plates, which are the parts of the bone that are responsible for growing. These are called growth plate fractures.
Alexandra Abbott, MD
Many injuries that occur in children and teenagers are related to overuse (chronic injuries), and don’t show up suddenly. These can be mitigated by carefully modulating training load, biomechanics, and recovery. However, there are many acute injuries that can also occur in sport regardless of your best intentions and programming for training load and recovery.
The risk for these injuries can be mitigated with optimized movement patterns and biomechanics, but these do not eliminate injury risk. Recognizing injury severity and need for evaluation early is paramount to athletes’ recovery from sudden, or acute, injuries.
Acute Injuries
Tendons connect muscles to bones to make them move!
Ligaments bridge bone to bone
Walk it Off?
Most sports injuries can be evaluated by a child’s pediatrician, a sports medicine physician, or in an acute care setting such as urgent care or the emergency room. Not every injury requires a visit to see a healthcare provider. However, any injury that prevents normal function of the body part, takes longer than 3 days to show signs of improvement, or causes pain that cannot be relieved with over-the-counter pain medications would likely benefit from an evaluation.
Prevents normal function: unable to walk normally (i.e. limping), unable to use the hand or arm normally
Not showing signs of improvement: the injury may not disappear or resolve completely in 3-5 days, but swelling, bruising, and pain should be decreasing in this window of time if a visit with a healthcare provider is not being considered.
Inadequate pain control: pain persisting through over-the-counter pain medications (i.e. acetaminophen/Tylenol, ibuprofen/Motrin/Advil)
No Pain, No Gain?
I’m not sure who should receive credit for this phrase for athletes, but they are not the best words to live by. Sports should be pain-free. Playing with a minor injury is a good way to progress it to a severe one. An athlete who pushes through pain is likely adding days onto a calendar for when the injury will be gone. A parent or coach who pushes a youth athlete through pain is doing the same thing, without the immediate feedback of pain that only the athlete can feel.
Injury Prevention
Some injuries are not preventable. Acute injuries are more common and more severe in contact sports, and are more likely to happen to athletes who do not have a good biomechanical foundation. For example, an ankle sprain or fracture can happen to any athlete who rolls their ankle (ankle inversion), but is more likely and more likely to be severe if an athlete is forced by another player to roll their ankle with force and contact. Both scenarios are less likely to result in injury if the athlete has been working on ankle strengthening exercises prior to this event. This same framework applies to most injuries that can occur for athletes.
Abbott Sport Performance can help athletes address deficiencies in their movement patterns and reduce risk for injuries based on sport-specific injury risk. Injury prevention plans can help athletes create a pre-habilitation routine that may save a season or career from injury later.
The Takeaways
Acute (sudden) injuries can happen to any athlete. You should consider seeking care if an athlete is having trouble walking or otherwise functioning normally due to injury, if the injury is not showing signs of improvement, and/or if pain is not controlled with medication available for the athlete. They are more likely to happen to athletes when higher forces are applied (i.e. older athletes, contact sports), and risk can be decreased with training that focuses on injury prevention, which can be guided with our individualized programming.