How often should children exercise?

It is important to encourage young people to be physically active. Not only does a sedentary lifestyle in early years track into adulthood, but being physically fit during childhood and adolescence can help in preventing chronic disease later in life.

However, in modern society the demands on youthful athletes can be high.

With overlapping school/club/district training programs, when and what type of exercise is too much?

Physical development in children

In children, the rate of physical development is influenced by the level of hormone production. During puberty when children have growth spurts, this hormone production leads to quicker bone growth. Research has shown that during these periods of rapid growth, the bone will grow longitudinally faster than it will increase in density.

For this reason, the bone will go through a stage of increased skeletal fragility that can lead to an increase in the chance of injury. An increase in chance of injury during this stage has also been linked with a reduction in flexibility and strength imbalances observed during these times.

Due to everyone maturing at different rates, there are no definitive time frames for this stage of development. A rough guide indicates that entry into this stage begins around 10-12 years of age and ends any time from 12-16.

Under any circumstance, it is not recommended to participate in strength and conditioning programs without the guidance of a professional who is trained in this area. It is especially important during these periods of rapid growth to refrain from unsupervised weight training. Participation in any other sporting programs such as football, cricket and netball is fine.

Overtraining can lead to injuries

In previous years, the school of thought was that overtraining a developing athlete could damage the body’s growth plates and may in fact stunt growth. Once having gone through their growth spurt, short of training to the point of breaking a bone, it is difficult to cause damage to the growth plate through over training.

However other musculoskeletal conditions such as muscle strains, ligament tears and tendinopathies are common conditions experienced as a result of over training throughout mid-late teenage years.

It is common place these days for adolescents to be undergoing multiple training loads between different school, club and team commitments spread over different sports. As the coaches are attempting to train their team to full potential, it is often overlooked that some players may be doing too much.

Young players also often feel pressure to perform with each team for fear of being dropped.

The right training workload

The key to ideal training workload is communication. It is important for players and coaches alike to distribute the work load evenly between each team.

If each coach is putting a player through a full training work load, the athlete can potentially be doing two or three times the ideal training amount. Ideally a player should be having an easy day between hard training sessions/games. This could be a complete rest day, or an easy session with a focus on skills.

Overtraining during the week will only cause you to fatigue earlier on match day.

Don't play through an injury

It is vital that if a player is nursing an injury to communicate with the coaching staff as to not make it worse, as kids will often neglect to do this.

Whilst being stoic is a positive attribute, not addressing an injury often leads to ongoing and sometimes permanent injuries.

Early intervention and having injuries assessed by your local Back In Motion physio is key.