Jim Johnson

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Jim Johnson

• Smith College
• Department of Exercise and Sport Studies

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Developing Young Athletes to reach their Potential
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Injury Prevention

• Injuries result in reduced practice and loss of
  games.
• Injuries can be career ending.
• Many injuries result in long term
  problemsosteoarthritis.
• Injury Prevention is the responsibility of the
  coach.

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Research on Injury Prevention is Limited

• Very Anecdotal

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Random Experimental Trials

• Group 1
  Group 2

Experimental Treatment
Traditional Training
Frequency of Injury
Frequency of Injury
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Extrinsic Intrinsic
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Modifiable Variables
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Youth are most vulnerable during times of rapid
growth.

• Growth is not linear.

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As the emphasis on athletics has increased, so
has the incidence of overuse injuries.
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• Overuse Injuries are relatively new. Athletes in
  early days often played more than one sport. But
  even one sport athletes did not perform specific
  training on a yearly basis.

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Can we practice and train while also reducing the
risk of injury? Can we practice and train so
that athletes want to continue?
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Injury Prevention

• How does the injury occur? Etiology?
• Plan your injury prevention exercises.
• Introduce it to athletes and explain why.
• Supervise!! Waste of time if they dont do it
  rightimportant to place a high emphasis on doing
  exercises correctly.

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• An eccentric exercise for the hamstring helps
  reduce the frequency of hamstring strains.

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Ice Hockey

• Adductor muscle strains are common problem in ice
  hockey.
• When hip adductor strength is 80 or less than
  abductor strength the athlete is 17x more likely
  to sustain an adductor injury.
• Researchers at Lenox Hill hospital in NY
  significantly reduced adductor strains.

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Knee--Ankle

• Improve Proprioception--Balance
• Improve stability
• Improve landing
• One legged landings
• Agilitylearn to lower COGflex at the knee
• Improve Hamstringsbackward movements

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Balance Trainingeasy to do
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Overuse Injuries

• Year round training/specialization has become
  common.
• While athletes may be more skilled, intense
  repetitive training can also result in overuse.
• Overuse injuries are more subtle, more difficult
  to detect since there is not one event that
  causes an overuse injury.
• Overuse can be prevented by appropriate
  training/conditioning practices.

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• Overuse injuries are caused by repetitive stress
  followed by incomplete rest and recovery.

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• The response of tissues in the body such as bone,
  muscle, and tendon have the same response as the
  whole body. Tissues fatigue and recover to become
  stronger.

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Overuse Injuries

• Overuse injuries are caused by repetitive
  submaximal loading.
• Repetitive stress is followed by insufficient
  rest.
• Muscles, tendons, bones, and ligaments adapt to
  repeated stress by becoming stronger.
• But when there is too much stress and/or too
  little recovery time, recovery is overwhelmed and
  tissues weaken.
• Damage is the result.

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Muscles Stabilize Joints
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Fatigue causes bone/joint stress.

• The dynamic stability of a joint is highly
  dependent on muscle action. However, as muscles
  become fatigued their ability to stabilize the
  joint is compromised resulting in increased
  stress on ligaments.
• Muscle fatigue also tends to alter biomechanics,
  resulting is increased bone and joint stress.

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Impingement Syndrome
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Where do overuse injuries occur?

• Muscle-tendon-bone-connection
• Stress fractures-often in females.

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• Prevention is the Key

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Training errors are the common cause of overuse
injuries.

• Abrupt Changes in intensity, duration, frequency
  are primary causes.
• Rapid progressionespecially in pre-season
• Lack of planned rest

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How to Practice without Overuse

• Expertise requires practice and repetition.
• Can you create practices that involve repetition
  without causing excess fatigue? Boredom?
• Be careful of athletes who are on multiple teams.
• Daily, Weekly, and Annual Plans are a necessity.

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Active Rest

• Two to Three Weeks
• Athletes stay fit but do not continue with
  specific sport training.
• Cross-train
• Plan and Superviseathletes must be educated that
  this time is good for them.

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Weekly

• Quantify Practice
• Use Hard-Easy schedule
• Periodize training within the week.

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Daily

• Muscles contract and relax faster when warm.
• Muscles and connective tissue are less stiff.
• Specific warm-up is importantwhen athletes are
  going to perform high speed activities they need
  to practice that exact activity at slower speeds.
• Fitter athletes take longer to warm up.
• Static stretching is not a warm up!

• Warmup

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Decrease repetitive activities

• Organize practice so that athletes practice
  without excessive repetitions.
• Train for retention of skillnot immediate gain.

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Massed vs Distributed

• Distribute skill practice throughout a session.
• Massed practice results in better immediate
  performance but distributing practice results in
  better retention.
• Reduce fatigue and poor biomechanics by
  distributing tasks throughout the practice or
  workout session.

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Contextual Interference

• When practice tasks are changing, retention is
  improved. Practicing the identical task
  repeatedly improves immediate performance.
  Practicing the task with interruption is better
  for retention.
• ExampleIf youre going to hit 100 backhands in
  practice, retention is superior if strokes are
  mixed up.
• Better to mix it up since retention is better and
  there is less overuse.

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Athlete Development

• Symmetrical Development

• Good Biomechanics

• Athletes need to develop balanced bodies. When
  athletes only train those muscles immediately
  engaged in an activity they tend to become
  unbalanced. Improper joint alignment is cause for
  overuse.

• Athletes who perform tasks in a biomechanically
  proper manner reduce joint and tendon stress.
  Proper technique should be continuously stressed.