Injury Prevention in Youth Athletic Populations

As the number of injuries in competitive play continue to rise, coaches are implementing exercises and plans to mitigate the increasing number of injuries. In addition, youth females are 2-4 times more likely to sustain injuries to their lower extremities. With this knowledge, Perfect Performance has continually implemented strategies to decrease the likelihood of injuries and increase the longevity of our athlete’s careers.

Some of the ways we practice injury prevention at Perfect Performance is:

• Load management
  
• “Prehab”
  
• Athlete Monitoring
  
• Nutrition
  

Load management is practiced through our programs and training schedules. Using our systematic training we prepare and strengthen the body through chronic stress. We use our speed and agility program in conjunction with our strength programs to apply it directly into our skill training program. With our directors working together, we are able to manage our athletes and ensure they are able to grow while staying healthy.

“Prehab” has become more popular to mitigate injuries in recent years. We use preparatory exercises in our warm-ups, banded activation, and mobility exercises to prepare the body for high stress environments and decrease the risk of injury. Prehab before you have to Rehab.

Thirdly, monitoring our athletes through our programs. During our workouts, we set percentages and prescribe exercises to load each athlete at their own ability. Each workout they report back to us and our directors assess daily, weekly, and monthly to see growth, fatigue and stress. We also are taking steps to further improve our monitoring by requiring daily surveys before each workout to help athletes understand the importance of other aspects of training like sleep, nutrition, stress, fatigue.
Lastly, nutrition is a key component to maintaining an athletes success. Lebron James has been known to spend more than 1 million dollars on nutrition and training each year. Now although we are unable to access his resources, youth athletes can still maintain their health through proper nutritional habits. Perfect Performance provides nutritional monitoring and analysis to assist and athletes understanding and growth.

Although preventing all injuries is out of reach, practicing techniques that Perfect Performance offers in all of their programs allow for athletes to remain healthy and decrease the risk and likelihood they are to be injured.