The COVID-19 pandemic may be the front-page news, but parents of youth athletes need to remain vigilant about safety precautions for sport-related concussions. This is particularly true as young athletes are returning to the field and injury prevention and management remain critical among youth football players in particular.
By Susan Yeargin, PhD, ATC
Illness is the second most common reason (after injury) athletes miss training and competition. A student athlete’s ability to be and stay well is of utmost importance now more than ever. In this article we’ll cover what science has to say about healthy immune function in athletes, while helping them build their inner defense system and resiliency.
By Jill Lane
Everyone knows that having young athletes warm up before exercise is essential in practically every sport. But now, research shows that the type of stretching that’s performed can actually improve athletic performance. In a Spanish study of junior tennis players, a warmup including the static stretches that many parents will remember doing when they were young led to poorer performance than a warmup based on dynamic stretching.
By Greg Gargiulo
What do I mean by the prodigy sports? Specifically, I’m talking about sports that involve adolescents and younger who are specializing in only one sport. Tennis, figure skating, gymnastics, swimming, soccer, ballet, and volleyball are all examples of these prodigy sports. It’s not uncommon for me to see young figure skaters under the age of 10 already skating every day. They simply are not interested in other sports. But specializing at such a young age can have disadvantages, namely overuse and repetitive motion injuries.
By Dr. Bob Weil
Since the early 1970s when professional sports organizations and universities began to realize the importance of strength training for injury prevention and performance improvement, we have been continually inundated with the latest “breakthroughs.”
By Jay Vincent
In my experience, confidence is achieved through repeated experiences of success. But what is success? Success comes from the satisfaction and pride of completing a task and/or reaching a goal. If this is true, that experiencing “success” comes from reaching a goal or completing a task, then contrarily, the experience of failure comes from incompletion – not reaching a goal, from quitting before the task is finished.
by Robin Quinn Keehn
Welcome to the second installment of MVP PARENT, which has seen a slight delay in publication as the world is suddenly focused on basic hygiene. Sports teams of all sizes are broadening their traditional focus on injury prevention to include everyday infection prevention for both the players and the spectators.
By Richard B. Dubin
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is relatively new to the world, but has taken center stage in American life in a way that is unprecedented for many sports parents. Isolation and quarantine can be frightening, but many Baby Boomers may remember a time before the advent of vaccines when similar steps were taken to stem the spread of polio, diphtheria (whooping cough), and measles.
The Olympic motto is what many young athletes strive for. What if you could help your child achieve these goals with an exercise as simple as jumping off a box? A study published on PLOS ONE in January 2016 showed just that – but experts also advise caution when considering plyometrics for young athletes.
By Jill R. Dorson
Vaping—nearly 80% of adolescents are doing it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—that’s 8 out of 10 teenagers, which means that student athletes are not immune. Vaping is defined as inhaling and exhaling the vapor (technically called aerosol) produced by an e-cigarette or similar battery-powered device. The devices are small, some as small as a USB drive.
By Nicole Wetsman and Janice T. Radak
