As a parent, ensuring that your child is engaged in physical activities is important for their overall health and well-being. However, it’s equally crucial to monitor how they cope with their activities to avoid injury or burnout. Here’s a guide to help you navigate your child’s sports and physical activity schedule, ensuring they remain healthy, happy, and injury-free.
Recognising When It’s Too Much
If your child is handling their activities well, there’s no need to cut back on their exercise. However, if they begin to show signs of struggling—such as frequent sore throats, grumpiness, or persistent soreness—it might be a sign that they’re not coping well. In these cases, it’s essential to reassess their activity level. They might need more fuel (proper nutrition), rest days, or time for their body to adapt to avoid tipping over into injury or illness.
Listening to Their Body
Teaching children to listen to their body is crucial, especially when they are ill, sore, stressed, or tired. Before training, ask them to rate how they feel in the following areas on a scale of 1-5, where 5 is positive, and 1 is negative:
- How sore are they?
- How tired are they?
- How stressed or well do they feel?
You can use their average score to determine whether they should train and at what intensity. High scores might indicate they can train hard, moderate scores could suggest light training focusing on technique, and low scores could mean it’s better to skip training altogether. After all, missing one session is far better than losing an entire season to injury.
Planning Their Return to Sports
After a break, it’s essential to plan your child’s return to sport carefully. Sit down with them and discuss:
- What sports they want to do
- How often they want to play
- What level they want to reach
It’s also important to talk about recovery time, school work, and social time with friends and family. Balancing these aspects is key to maintaining their enthusiasm for sports without compromising their health.
Understanding Activity Spikes
One aspect parents often overlook is the impact of their child’s daily step count. For example, a child might take over 15,000 steps daily during school but might drop to as low as 5,000 steps a day during a holiday. The sudden increase in activity when school resumes, especially if the school has many stairs, can cause foot and knee pain. Tracking their step count and gradually building up their tolerance by increasing walk lengths can help prevent discomfort.
Tailoring Their Training Schedule
How quickly your child can return to sports depends on various factors, including their current fitness level and how long they’ve been playing the sport. It’s not a one-size-fits-all scenario. For instance, a child of 11 years might not necessarily be ready for 11 hours of sport a week. Their maturity, sleep, nutrition, and whether they’re in a growth spurt all play a role in determining their capacity for physical activity. If your child hasn’t trained recently, start by gradually adding activities one at a time and monitor how well they cope. Recovery days are particularly important in the first few weeks to prevent overloading their system.
Preventing Injuries
Injuries often occur when there’s a sudden spike in activity that exceeds the body’s capacity. To avoid this, plan ahead by identifying potential spikes in activity throughout the season. Gradually increasing the intensity and volume of their activities can help their body adapt and reduce the risk of injury. If your child loves their sport, it can be challenging to tell them to do less. Instead, focus on boosting their capacity to handle more by adopting the 4 R’s recovery approach:
- Recharge and Rest: Ensure they get enough sleep and rest days.
- Refuel: Provide balanced nutrition to support their activity level.
- Rehydrate: Keep them hydrated throughout the day.
- Repair and Grow: Prioritise sleep, as it’s during deep sleep that their body repairs and grows.
Strength and Resilience
Children who are stronger and more resilient tend to suffer fewer injuries. Encourage your child to engage in regular strength training exercises. Technique is vital, so make sure they receive proper instruction from a coach experienced in working with young athletes.
In summary, by carefully managing your child’s activity levels, encouraging them to listen to their body, and planning their training schedule thoughtfully, you can help them enjoy their sports while staying healthy and injury-free. Remember, it’s not just about how much they do, but how well their body can handle it.
Here are 10 key messages distilled from the blog content:
- Plan Return to Sport: After a break, gradually reintroduce sports with careful planning, considering the child’s overall schedule, including recovery, schoolwork, and social time.
- Gradual Increase: If the child hasn’t been active recently, slowly reintroduce activities and include recovery days to prevent overloading.
- Prevent Injuries: Identify potential spikes in activity during the season and gradually increase intensity to help the body adapt and reduce injury risk.
- Tailor Training to the Child: Recognise that each child’s capacity for sport varies, influenced by their age, maturity, fitness level, and growth stages.
- Monitor Activity Levels: If a child is coping well, maintain their activity level, but reduce it if they show signs of struggle, such as soreness or grumpiness.
- Encourage Body Awareness: Teach children to listen to their bodies by rating their soreness, tiredness, and stress levels before training.
- Boost Capacity with 4 R’s: Enhance a child’s ability to handle more activity by focusing on Rest, Refuelling, Rehydration, and Repair (via sleep).
- Strength Training: Encourage regular strength exercises, with proper technique, to build resilience and reduce the likelihood of injury.
- Prioritise Recovery: Emphasise the importance of recovery days and sufficient sleep, especially during periods of high physical demand or growth spurts.
