There is little doubt that participating in physical activity and sports may be very useful for kids and adolescents. It improves their health and well-being, creates opportunities for social interaction and builds resilience and leadership skills for all times.
However, playing sports may also result in injury. A very nasty sports injury is damage to the ACL – the anterior cruciate ligament within the knee, which connects the bones of the thigh (femur) and shin (tibia). ACL injuries have rocketed. Among children in Englandand Our researchThis suggests that one reason is that children usually are not developing basic movement skills, akin to jumping and hopping.
Increasing cases of injury
The ACL plays a vital role in providing stability to the knee joint. In particular, it helps prevent excessive forward motion of the tibia and knee joint during movement, akin to sudden changes of direction during running, pivoting and jump landings. All of those movements are key to many sports.
An ACL injury is debilitating at any age, but an ACL tear in childhood can have long-lasting consequences for health and fitness. These include the early onset of degenerative diseases akin to osteoarthritis, a health condition often related to older age.
When someone experiences an ACL tear or tear, their knee swells and becomes unstable. Weight bearing could also be difficult and the leg may not straighten properly. Without surgery, the knee won’t be repaired. It takes nine months to a 12 months to get better from surgery, and even then players may not give you the chance to return to the extent they played before.
Historically, ACL injuries have been unusual in childhood. But incidence in children over the past 20 years has increased. Research on ACL surgeries A survey conducted in England between 1997 and 2017 found that under-20s had increased 22-fold in that period.
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Our recent research have explored the causes of ACL injury in children. Specifically, we checked out whether an absence of basic sports skills could increase their risk.
These skills – often called basic movement skills – include running, jumping, hopping, bouncing, throwing and catching. Proficiency in these skills is crucial for more complex movements, akin to pivots and landings that stress the ACL.
Lack of skills
Research By one in all us (Michael Duncan) and others It shows British children usually are not developing these basic skills on the age after they should.
The PE curriculum suggests that children must have mastered these basic movement skills by around seven years of age, but within the UK these skills don’t occur until the later years – until the tip of primary school or later. too We desired to see if there was a relationship between this lack of ability and risk of injury.
We assessed basic movement skills in a gaggle of 98 ten- to 13-year-old children playing grassroots soccer. We then determined their ACL injury risk by assessing the errors they made while performing a high-risk movement—a drop jump—that’s related to ACL injury.
We found that basic movement skills explained roughly 50% of the ACL risk rating in children. Children who were classified as “poor” for his or her landing biomechanics — meaning they were at higher risk of ACL injury — had significantly weaker fundamental movement skills than their peers.
If children usually are not becoming sufficiently competent within the big selection of movement skills which can be the idea of sports participation, they’re physically unprepared for the demands of sport-specific training and are at increased risk of ACL injury. can
For teachers or community coaches, specializing in these basic movement skills first and ensuring that children can move effectively is vital to stopping later injury. The development of fine mobility during childhood has the potential to translate into more efficient movement later, which can reduce the prevalence or severity of ACL injury.
Good quality school physical education and community sports coaching are key to making sure that these basic movement skills are effectively developed in children.
Primary school PE teachers and community coaches need ongoing training on the right way to teach children these skills. Furthermore, there must be sufficient curriculum time for physical education in schools in order that teachers can prioritize the suitable development of those basic movement skills.