If your kid suddenly looks clumsy, feels tight, or keeps complaining about sore knees or heels, this might sound familiar. As a sports performance coach, it’s one of the most common questions I get from parents: “My kid is going through a growth spurt. What should I do?”

Here’s the short answer. A growth spurt is not a reason to stop sports performance training. But it is a reason to train smarter. It’s one of the most important windows in a young athlete’s development, and also one of the riskiest times for injury.

The good news is that a few simple adjustments make a big difference. Here’s what’s happening in your athlete’s body, how to tell when it’s happening, and what you can do to keep them healthy and still building speed and strength through it.

Why Your Athlete Suddenly Feels Slow and Clumsy

During a growth spurt, bones grow faster than the muscles and tendons attached to them can keep up. That mismatch creates extra tension on the areas where tendons attach to growing bone, especially the knees and heels.

What most people don’t realize is that the same training can suddenly feel much harder on the body. A workload that was fine six months ago can be too much while they’re growing fast. It’s not that they got weaker. Their body is just going through a lot at once.

A few things tend to happen together:

• Coordination dips. Longer limbs change their leverage and timing, so movements that used to be smooth can look awkward for a while. Speed often stalls or even drops.
• Flexibility drops. Muscles get pulled tighter as the bones lengthen.
• Relative strength falls behind. They’re bigger, but their strength hasn’t caught up to their new size yet.
• Growth-related pain shows up. Knee pain below the kneecap (often Osgood-Schlatter) and heel pain (often Sever’s) are common during this stage.

Athletes who grow the fastest tend to be at the highest risk. Rapid growth of close to 3 inches in a year is a common red flag coaches watch for.

6 Signs Your Athlete Is in a Growth Spurt

You probably know this feeling: one month their shoes fit, the next month they don’t. Growth spurts usually hit somewhere between 10 and 14 for girls and 12 and 15 for boys, but every kid is on their own timeline.

Watch for these signs:

• Outgrowing shoes and pants every few months
• Looking clumsy or “out of sync” in movements that used to come easy
• Complaining about tight hamstrings, hips, or calves
• Knee pain below the kneecap or pain at the back of the heel
• Being more tired than usual and eating everything in the house
• Performance that stalls or even dips for a while

If you’re seeing two or three of these at once, there’s a good chance your athlete is in the middle of a growth spurt.

5 Ways to Keep Your Athlete Healthy Through a Growth Spurt

Here’s the part nobody tells parents: most growth spurt problems aren’t caused by training. They come from training that doesn’t adjust. These five steps are how we handle it in our sports performance training with every athlete.

1. Track how fast they’re growing

Measure their height every 3 to 6 months, at the same time of day, and write it down. A tape measure on the wall is all you need. If they’ve shot up a lot since the last check, that’s your signal to be more careful with training, not push harder.

2. Watch their total schedule

Multiple teams, private lessons, tournaments, and PE class add up fast. A few simple guidelines help keep the load in check:

• Weekly hours of organized sport at or below their age (a 13-year-old stays at 13 hours or less)
• No more than 16 total hours of organized sport per week
• No more than 8 months a year in one sport

And avoid big jumps in training when they’re growing fast. Adding a second team or a new travel schedule in the middle of a growth spurt is asking for trouble.

3. Keep strength training, just adjust it

This is where a lot of parents go wrong. They pull their kid out of the weight room during a growth spurt. That’s the opposite of what helps. Strength training is what lets muscles and tendons catch up to the growing bones, and it’s what keeps their speed improving while they grow.

What changes is the type of work. During a growth spurt, we:

• Scale back the highest-intensity jumping, landing, and hard cutting
• Revisit basic movement patterns and coordination
• Keep building strength and speed with controlled, well-coached work
• Use a good warm-up every session, which has been shown to cut youth sports injuries significantly

4. Feed the growth

Growing athletes need fuel for two jobs: training and building a bigger body. Teen athletes near peak growth can burn well over 3,000 calories a day, and most don’t eat enough to match it.

Simple fixes:

• Add a real snack after school, before practice
• Add a snack before bed on training days
• Build meals around protein, carbs, and plenty of fruits and vegetables
• Don’t forget calcium and vitamin D for growing bones

5. Protect their sleep

Most teens need 8 to 10 hours of sleep a night. Most teen athletes get closer to 6. Sleep is when the body recovers and grows, so this one matters more than any supplement.

Phones out of the bedroom, a consistent bedtime, and avoiding early morning training when possible all help.

How to Help Your Athlete Handle the Awkward Phase

Growth spurts don’t just change how athletes move. They change how athletes feel about themselves. A kid who was one of the best on the team can suddenly feel slow and awkward, and that’s frustrating.

A few things help:

• Tell them it’s normal. The clumsiness is temporary. Their body is catching up, and it will.
• Talk about what their body can do, not how it looks. This matters even more for girls, who often feel less confident as their bodies change.
• Give them a voice. Ask how they’re feeling and let them have input in their training. Teens want more independence, and feeling heard keeps them bought in.

Timing matters too. Early bloomers often dominate for a few years because they’re bigger and stronger than everyone else. They need to hear that the advantage won’t last forever and the work still matters. Late bloomers need the opposite message: their growth spurt is coming, and the athletes who stay in the game and keep building are the ones who come out ahead.

Keep Building Speed and Strength Through the Growth Spurt

A growth spurt isn’t something to fear or something to push through. It’s a window that needs a plan. Track their growth, watch their total schedule, keep them strong, feed them well, and protect their sleep. Do that, and your athlete stays healthy through the awkward phase and comes out the other side faster, stronger, and more confident.

If your athlete is in the middle of a growth spurt and you’re not sure how to adjust their training, that’s exactly what our sports performance coaches do at Prepare for Performance in Rockville. Our Breakaway Speed program builds speed, strength, and durability with coaching that adapts to each athleteis stage of development. Right now, your first month is 50% off. Reach out and we’ll help you figure out the right next step.