The importance of casual play and exercise to build strong muscles and a healthy outlook cannot be underestimated.
Here’s a slightly disturbing statistic for you…
Kids aged 5-15 years old had the greatest increase of all age groups in ACL (knee) surgery between 2000 and 2015.
Time on devices and a lack of casual play means muscles may not naturally develop the strength required to get on with life injury free.
Then we add into the mix the fact that organised sport is often run at a higher intensity than previously. The expectations for our children to excel in sport rather than simply enjoy it can be problematic.
Rapid acceleration/deceleration or changing directions quickly without good muscle strength means the ligaments will end up taking more of the load than the underdeveloped muscles.
The take home advice in our opinion?
• Encourage casual play and exercise. This will help your children build muscle and encourage a healthy lifestyle. It’s also lot’s of fun!
• Don’t push kids too hard with organised sport.
• Avoid more than 3 sports sessions per week. Particularly when they are going through growth spurts.
We talk about this kind of thing a lot because we think it’s so important.
As the saying goes “Our children are our future…”
So let’s encourage them to have a strong healthy future.
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We’re great with kids!
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