A parent walks into the gym and says the same thing we hear all the time.
“My kid is always sore, but I think it’s just part of the season.”
At first, it seems normal. Their athlete has practice three or four nights a week. Games on the weekend. A tournament coming up. Maybe a private skill session mixed in. Maybe they are playing for their school team and a club team at the same time.
Nothing dramatic happened. No big collision. No awkward fall. No moment where everyone knew something was wrong.
But slowly, things start to change.
Their athlete is limping a little after games. Their knee hurts when they jump. Their shoulder feels sore after throwing. Their shins ache every time they run. They are slower than normal, more tired than usual, and frustrated because they feel like their body is not keeping up.
This is how many overuse injuries happen.
They do not always show up as one major injury. They build quietly over time. A little soreness becomes daily pain. A tight muscle becomes a movement compensation. A tired arm becomes shoulder or elbow pain. Shin soreness becomes something more serious.
And by the time the athlete finally says something, the issue may have been building for weeks or even months.
That is why parents, coaches, and athletes need to understand this simple truth:
More is not always better.
More practices do not automatically create a better athlete. More games do not always lead to better performance. More reps, more tournaments, and more training sessions can become a problem when the athlete does not have the strength, recovery, and physical capacity to handle the workload.
The goal is not to train less.
The goal is to train smarter.
Overuse injuries are not just “bad luck.” In many cases, they are the result of too much repetitive stress, not enough recovery, poor workload management, early sport specialization, or an athlete’s body being asked to handle more than it is prepared for.
Research has estimated that approximately 50% of all sports injuries are related to overuse (Wilder & Sethi, 2004). In youth athletes, the concern is even greater because their bones, tendons, muscles, joints, and growth plates are still developing.
When we understand overuse injuries this way, the conversation changes. It is no longer about whether an athlete is tough enough to push through pain. It is about whether their body is prepared for the demands being placed on it. For youth athletes, the goal should be simple: build the strength, movement quality, recovery habits, and training plan needed to keep them healthy enough to keep playing and improving through structured strength training and performance training.
An overuse injury happens when the body is exposed to repeated stress without enough time to recover, rebuild, and adapt.
In youth sports, that stress can come from running, jumping, cutting, throwing, lifting, skating, kicking, or repeating the same sports movement over and over again.
At first, the body may be able to handle it. That is how athletes get better. Training creates stress, the body recovers, and the athlete adapts.
The problem starts when the stress keeps coming faster than the body can repair.
Wilder and Sethi (2004) describe overuse injuries as repetitive microtrauma that leads to tissue damage over time. These injuries are most likely to occur when an athlete changes the mode, intensity, duration, or frequency of training too quickly. In other words, the body is not usually breaking down because of one practice. It is breaking down because the total workload has exceeded what the athlete is currently prepared to handle.
Think of it like bending a paperclip. One bend may not do much. A few bends may still seem fine. But if you keep bending it over and over without giving it a break, eventually it weakens and breaks.
The same idea applies to bones, tendons, muscles, joints, and growth plates.
This is why overuse injuries often feel confusing to parents. There is usually no single moment where the injury “happened.” The athlete may not remember stepping wrong, falling, or getting hit. Instead, the pain builds slowly. It may start as soreness after practice. Then it shows up during warm-ups. Then it lingers after games. Eventually, it can affect how the athlete runs, jumps, throws, lands, or competes.
For young athletes, this matters even more because their bodies are still developing. Overuse injuries in children and adolescents can occur when repeated mechanical loading exceeds the body’s ability to remodel and recover (DiFiori, 2010). This is especially important during growth spurts, when bones, muscles, tendons, and growth plates are changing quickly.
Common overuse injuries in youth athletes can include tendon pain, shin splints, stress reactions, stress fractures, Osgood-Schlatter disease, Sever’s disease, little leaguer’s shoulder, little leaguer’s elbow, and low back stress injuries (Cassas & Cassettari-Wayhs, 2006; DiFiori, 2010).
The key point is this: overuse injuries are not just “growing pains” or normal soreness from being active.
They are often a sign that the athlete’s total workload is higher than their current capacity.
That does not mean the athlete should stop training forever. It means we need to look at the full picture. How much are they practicing? How many games are they playing? Are they getting enough rest? Are they strong enough to handle the demands of their sport? Are they moving well? Are they recovering between high-stress days?
Youth athletes do not need less development. They need better development.
And better development starts with understanding that the body can only adapt to what it is prepared to handle.
Youth sports have changed.
For many athletes, there is no real offseason anymore. A school season rolls into a club season. A club season turns into tournaments. Tournaments lead into showcases, camps, private lessons, and extra skill sessions. Before long, a young athlete is playing the same sport for most of the year with very little time for their body to recover.
That is a major reason overuse injuries have become such a common issue.
In the United States, approximately 25 to 30 million children participate in team sports, with millions more involved in individual sports (DiFiori, 2010). Another review notes that about 30 million children and teenagers participate in organized sports each year, and that sports are one of the leading causes of injury in adolescents (Cassas & Cassettari-Wayhs, 2006).
The problem is not that kids are playing sports.
Sports are great for young athletes. They build confidence, discipline, friendships, fitness, and life skills. The problem is that many athletes are now being asked to handle adult-level schedules with developing bodies.
A young athlete may have school practice, club practice, weekend games, tournament weekends, private coaching, extra conditioning, strength training, skills training, and very little true rest.
Each one of those things may seem reasonable on its own. But the body does not separate school practice from club practice or private lessons from tournament games. It only feels the total stress.
When that total stress keeps stacking up, tissues may not have enough time to recover and adapt.
This is where the “more is better” mindset becomes risky.
More games do not always mean better development. More practices do not always mean better performance. More reps do not always mean more progress. At some point, more becomes too much.
This is especially true when athletes specialize in one sport too early. Early specialization can expose the same muscles, tendons, bones, joints, and growth plates to the same movements over and over again. DiFiori (2010) explains that year-round training, increased competition, and single-sport specialization at younger ages create an environment where overuse injuries are more likely to develop.
A study of 351 female youth soccer players ages 12 to 15 found that playing on more than one soccer team was associated with a 2.5-fold increased risk of overuse knee injury (O’Kane et al., 2017). That is important for parents to understand. The issue is not always one hard practice. Sometimes the issue is the athlete’s total schedule across multiple teams, multiple coaches, and multiple expectations.
Interestingly, the same study found that participation in other physical activities was associated with a 50% decreased risk of lower extremity overuse injury and a 61% decreased risk of knee overuse injury (O’Kane et al., 2017). That supports what good coaches have said for years: young athletes benefit from a wider athletic foundation, not just repeating one sport all year.
Many of these injuries are not caused by one bad decision. They are caused by the schedule.
A little too much throwing.
A little too much running.
A little too much jumping.
A little too much competing.
Not enough rest between high-stress days.
Over time, the athlete’s body starts to send signals. Soreness becomes more frequent. Pain lasts longer. Movement starts to change. Performance starts to drop. The athlete may still be playing, but they are no longer adapting in a healthy way.
That is why prevention starts with looking at the whole picture.
Parents and coaches cannot only ask, “How hard was practice today?”
They also need to ask: How much has this athlete done this week? How many teams are they playing on? How many days off do they actually have? Are they sleeping enough? Are they getting stronger through proper strength training? Are they recovering? Are they playing through pain?
The goal is not to scare athletes away from hard work. Hard work matters. Consistency matters. Practice matters.
But youth athletes need the right balance of stress and recovery. When the workload is managed well, training helps them improve. When the workload is too high for too long, it can break them down.
Overuse injuries are not rare.
A national study of U.S. high school athletes from the 2006-2007 through 2011-2012 academic years reported 2,834 overuse injuries across 18,889,141 athletic exposures (Schroeder et al., 2015). Overall, overuse injuries occurred at a rate of 1.50 per 10,000 athletic exposures. Girls had a higher rate of overuse injury than boys, with girls at 1.88 per 10,000 athletic exposures compared with boys at 1.26 per 10,000 athletic exposures (Schroeder et al., 2015).
That same study found that overuse injuries represented 7.7% of all reported high school sports injuries, but the percentage changed a lot depending on the sport. In some repetitive sports, overuse made up a much larger share of injuries. For example, overuse injuries represented 55.7% of all boys’ swimming and diving injuries, 47.7% of all girls’ swimming and diving injuries, and 36.8% of girls’ track and field injuries (Schroeder et al., 2015).
This matters because overuse injury risk is not the same in every sport.
The body parts affected also vary by sport. Schroeder et al. (2015) found that the most common overuse injury site overall was the lower leg at 21.8%, followed by the knee at 15.9%, shoulder at 11.5%, foot at 11.3%, and lower back, spine, or pelvis at 10.7%.
For running-based sports, lower leg and knee issues are common. For throwing and overhead sports, shoulder and elbow issues become a bigger concern. For sports that involve repeated jumping, landing, cutting, and sprinting, knees, shins, feet, ankles, and backs often take the load.
Another important point is that overuse injuries are often underreported. In the high school study, 50% of overuse injuries resulted in less than one week of time loss, while 7.6% resulted in more than three weeks of time loss (Schroeder et al., 2015). That sounds encouraging at first, but it also means many athletes may return quickly without fully addressing the reason the injury happened.
In female youth soccer players, O’Kane et al. (2017) found that the total lower extremity overuse injury rate was 1.9 per 1,000 athlete-exposure hours. Knee injuries accounted for 47% of those overuse injuries. The most common diagnoses were tendinitis at 42%, patellofemoral pain syndrome at 21%, and Osgood-Schlatter disease at 13.6% (O’Kane et al., 2017).
Those numbers matter because they show that overuse injury is not just a vague soreness issue. These are real injuries that can affect training, performance, confidence, and long-term development.
In a study of highly trained adolescent multisport athletes, Rejeb et al. (2017) found that overuse injuries made up 50.3% of time-loss injuries, and growth-related conditions represented 20% of all injuries. Most injuries involved the lower extremities at 67%, with foot and ankle injuries making up 22% and knee injuries making up 13% (Rejeb et al., 2017).
That is a major takeaway for youth sports.
Overuse injuries are not only happening to single-sport athletes. They are happening in high-performance youth environments where athletes train often, compete often, and are exposed to high volumes of repetitive stress during key years of growth and maturation.
One of the biggest mistakes adults make is treating young athletes like smaller versions of college or professional athletes.
They are not.
Youth athletes are still growing. Their bones are changing. Their muscles and tendons are adapting. Their coordination is developing. Their growth plates are still open. That makes them more vulnerable to certain types of overuse injuries.
Growth cartilage is especially important. DiFiori (2010) explains that young athletes have growth cartilage at the articular surface, the growth plates, and the apophyses, which are tendon attachment sites. Research and clinical observations suggest that growth cartilage is more susceptible to injury from repetitive loading than mature bone (DiFiori, 2010).
This is why certain injuries show up so often during the youth years.
Osgood-Schlatter disease is a common example. It often appears as pain near the tibial tubercle, just below the kneecap, especially in athletes involved in running, cutting, and jumping sports (Cassas & Cassettari-Wayhs, 2006).
Sever’s disease is another common overuse injury. It usually shows up as heel pain in young athletes, especially those involved in running and jumping sports. Cassas and Cassettari-Wayhs (2006) note that calcaneal apophysitis, or Sever’s disease, is the most common cause of heel pain in athletes between 5 and 11 years old, and 60% of patients report pain in both heels.
Throwing athletes have their own concerns. Little leaguer’s shoulder is a stress injury near the growth plate of the upper arm and often presents as shoulder pain during throwing. Little leaguer’s elbow is a medial elbow injury related to repetitive throwing stress (Cassas & Cassettari-Wayhs, 2006).
Back pain can also be a sign of an overuse issue. Spondylolysis, a stress fracture of the pars interarticularis in the spine, occurs in approximately 6% of the general population but may contribute to nearly 50% of back pain cases in athletes (Cassas & Cassettari-Wayhs, 2006).
These are not simply “aches and pains.”
They are signs that the athlete’s developing body may be receiving more repetitive stress than it can currently tolerate.
The adolescent growth spurt makes this even more important. During this period, bones can grow quickly, while muscles and tendons may need time to catch up. Changes in limb length, body mass, coordination, and strength can increase stress on joints, tendons, bones, and growth plates (DiFiori, 2010).
That means the same workload that felt fine six months ago may become too much during a growth spurt.
This is where smarter performance training matters.
Youth athletes need strength. They need speed. They need power. They need conditioning. But those qualities have to be built with a plan that respects their stage of development.
Training should not just add more stress to an already overloaded athlete. It should build the physical capacity to handle sport better through structured strength training.
When a youth athlete gets hurt, parents often look for the one thing that caused it.
Was it the last tournament?
Was it the new cleats?
Was it the extra speed session?
Was it the private lesson?
Sometimes one change can trigger symptoms, but most overuse injuries are about the total load.
Wilder and Sethi (2004) explain that overuse injuries often happen when an athlete changes training mode, intensity, or duration too quickly. They also note that training errors, such as increasing distance too rapidly, training at too high of an intensity, or doing too much hill work, are commonly involved in overuse tendon injuries in runners.
Modern load management research supports the same idea. A 2025 narrative review on load management explains that training load includes both external load, such as distance, sprints, jumps, weight lifted, accelerations, and impacts, and internal load, such as heart rate, soreness, fatigue, and perceived effort (Kanwal et al., 2025). Two athletes can complete the same workout but experience very different internal stress.
That is why the best question is not, “Did they work hard?”
The better question is, “Was the work appropriate for what their body can handle right now?”
In youth sports, workload can spike quickly.
A basketball player may go from a quiet offseason to five days of practice and weekend tournaments.
A baseball player may throw for a school team, a club team, and a private coach in the same week.
A soccer player may have school practice, club practice, games, tournaments, and extra conditioning.
A volleyball player may jump hundreds of times per week between practice, games, and skill sessions.
The body does not care which coach assigned the work. It only knows how much stress it has to absorb.
This is where the acute-to-chronic workload concept can be useful. In simple terms, acute workload is what an athlete has done recently, while chronic workload reflects what they have been prepared for over a longer period. Kanwal et al. (2025) explain that rapid spikes in acute load can increase injury risk, while consistent chronic training loads can help athletes build the capacity to tolerate higher demands. The same review notes that the acute-to-chronic workload ratio is not perfect and should not be used as the only decision-making tool, but the basic lesson is still valuable: sudden jumps in workload are risky.
That is why parents should look at the athlete’s entire week, not just one practice.
A schedule may look manageable on paper, but when you add up the total number of sprints, jumps, throws, cuts, landings, and minutes played, it may be much more than the athlete is ready for.
This is also why some athletes get hurt even though they are “in shape.”
Being busy is not the same as being prepared.
An athlete can be conditioned but still lack strength. They can have good skill but poor landing mechanics. They can play a lot of games but have weak hips, poor trunk control, limited ankle mobility, or underdeveloped deceleration ability.
Capacity matters.
If the demand of the sport is higher than the athlete’s capacity, the body eventually pays the price.
That is why sports performance training should not just be about doing more. It should be about helping athletes build the strength, power, coordination, and movement quality needed to handle what their sport already asks of them.
Pain is information.
It does not always mean something serious is happening, but it should not be ignored, especially when the same pain keeps coming back.
Many young athletes will keep playing through pain because they do not want to lose playing time, disappoint their teammates, or fall behind. Some athletes also assume soreness is just part of being competitive.
But recurring pain is different from normal post-workout soreness.
Parents should pay attention when an athlete has pain that gets worse during practice or games, pain that changes how they run or jump, pain that continues after activity, pain during normal daily activities, swelling, limping, tenderness directly on bone, or a noticeable drop in speed, power, throwing velocity, or confidence.
DiFiori (2010) describes a symptom-guided grading system for overuse injuries. In lower-level cases, symptoms may only occur at the end of activity or early in activity before fading. As severity increases, symptoms may appear earlier, persist throughout activity, limit training, or eventually prevent training altogether.
That progression matters.
If an athlete has pain only after a hard game, that is one conversation.
If they have pain during warm-ups, during practice, after practice, and then while walking around school the next day, that is a very different conversation.
The earlier an issue is addressed, the easier it usually is to manage.
Waiting until pain becomes severe often means the athlete needs more time away from sport. Some stress fractures may require 6 to 8 weeks or longer before a full return to sport, depending on the location and severity (Wilder & Sethi, 2004). Certain throwing injuries may require weeks or months away from throwing before progressing back safely (Cassas & Cassettari-Wayhs, 2006).
That does not mean every ache needs panic.
It means parents should stop brushing off repeated pain as “normal.”
A sore muscle after a tough training session is one thing. A recurring painful knee, heel, shin, shoulder, elbow, or back is something else.
The goal is to catch small problems before they become long layoffs.
Rest can help calm symptoms down.
But rest alone does not always fix the reason the injury happened.
That is one of the biggest mistakes athletes make with overuse injuries. They stop for a few days or a few weeks. The pain improves. Then they return to the exact same schedule, the same movement issues, the same weakness, the same poor recovery, and the same workload.
Then the pain comes back.
The better question is not only, “How do we make the pain go away?”
The better question is, “Why did the body get overloaded in the first place?”
For some athletes, the answer is too much volume. For others, it is poor technique. For others, it is weakness, poor movement quality, limited mobility, lack of recovery, rapid training progression, or playing on too many teams at once.
Most of the time, it is a combination.
DiFiori (2010) explains that treatment for overuse injuries should protect the injured area by reducing loading, but also rebuild tissue strength, restore flexibility, retrain proprioception, and gradually return the athlete back to sport-specific activity.
That is a key point.
The athlete does not just need time off.
They need a better return-to-play plan.
A good plan should gradually reload the injured area, rebuild strength, improve movement quality, and help the athlete tolerate the demands of their sport again.
Kanwal et al. (2025) describe return-to-play as a process of gradually increasing load while monitoring symptoms and performance benchmarks. This is important because injured tissues have reduced capacity. Returning immediately to the same workload that caused the problem can create another spike in stress before the body is ready.
This is also why performance training should not be random.
If an athlete is already overloaded from sport, the answer is not to crush them with more fatigue. The answer is to build capacity intelligently.
Strength training is not just about lifting heavier weights.
For youth athletes, proper strength training helps build the body that the sport depends on.
A stronger athlete can absorb force better. They can land with more control. They can decelerate more efficiently. They can cut, sprint, jump, and change direction with better mechanics. They can tolerate more of the repetitive stress that sport creates.
That matters because many overuse injuries happen when the demands of the sport are greater than the athlete’s ability to handle those demands.
Cassas and Cassettari-Wayhs (2006) list muscle weakness and imbalance as factors that can contribute to sports-related overuse injuries in children and adolescents. DiFiori (2010) also identifies previous conditioning level, anatomic factors, training progression, equipment, sport technique, and recovery as important contributors to overuse injury risk.
O’Kane et al. (2017) give us a clearer picture of how strength and movement quality matter. In female youth soccer players, increased knee valgus during landing was associated with a 3.2-fold increased risk of overuse knee injury. On the other hand, greater strength was protective. A one-standard-deviation increase in hamstring strength was associated with a 35% decreased risk of overuse knee injury. A one-standard-deviation increase in quadriceps strength was associated with a 30% decreased risk. Greater hip flexor strength was associated with a 28% decreased risk, and greater hip external rotation strength was associated with a 35% decreased risk (O’Kane et al., 2017).
That is powerful.
It shows that overuse injury prevention is not just about doing less.
It is also about preparing better.
This is where strength training and sports performance training can play a major role.
The goal is not to make every athlete train like a bodybuilder.
The goal is to build the physical qualities that support sport.
That includes single-leg strength, hamstring strength, calf and foot strength, hip strength, trunk control, shoulder stability, landing mechanics, deceleration ability, and progressive plyometric capacity.
For example, an athlete who cannot control landing forces may place more stress on the knees, ankles, hips, or back. An athlete with poor hip and trunk control may struggle to cut efficiently. A throwing athlete with poor shoulder strength, trunk control, or lower-body force transfer may place more stress on the shoulder and elbow.
Strength training gives the athlete more options.
It helps the body distribute force better instead of dumping stress into one area over and over again.
But the key word is proper.
Strength training should be coached. It should be progressed. It should match the athlete’s age, training history, sport demands, and current workload.
Done well, strength training does not take away from sport. It supports it.
Many parents understand practice.
Fewer parents understand recovery.
But recovery is where adaptation happens.
The athlete does not get faster, stronger, or more durable just because they trained hard. They improve when their body has enough time and resources to adapt to the training.
Sleep is one of the biggest pieces of this puzzle.
Kanwal et al. (2025) summarize evidence showing that adolescent athletes sleeping less than 8 hours per night had a 1.7-fold greater risk of injury compared with athletes who slept adequately.
That should get every parent’s attention.
A youth athlete who is practicing late, waking up early for school, doing homework, traveling for tournaments, and sleeping 5 to 7 hours per night may not be recovering well enough to adapt.
That does not mean they are lazy.
It means their body is under-recovered.
Recovery includes sleep, nutrition, hydration, stress management, days off, and lower-load training days. It also includes not stacking intense workouts, games, and practices on top of each other without considering how the athlete is responding.
This is why a smart training plan includes both stress and recovery.
Too little stress and the athlete does not improve.
Too much stress without recovery and the athlete breaks down.
The goal is to find the right dose.
Overuse injury prevention does not have to be complicated, but it does require awareness.
The first step is managing training load.
Athletes should avoid sudden spikes in running volume, throwing volume, jumping volume, sprinting volume, or overall practice intensity. DiFiori (2010) notes that the “10% rule,” limiting increases in training frequency, intensity, or duration to no more than about 10% per week, can serve as a general guide.
It is not a perfect rule, but it is a useful reminder: do not jump from very little work to a huge amount of work overnight.
The second step is building in recovery.
Recovery is not laziness. Recovery is when the body adapts.
DiFiori (2010) recommends that young athletes have at least 1 to 2 days of rest each week from sport-specific training, along with an extended period away from their primary sport each year.
That can be hard for competitive families to hear, especially when everyone feels pressure to keep up.
But athletes cannot adapt if they never recover.
The third step is being careful with early specialization.
Playing one sport all year may seem like the best way to get ahead, but it can also increase repetitive stress and burnout. DiFiori (2010) notes that parents should promote sport diversification, especially at younger ages, and allow children to explore different activities.
O’Kane et al. (2017) found that playing on more than one soccer team increased overuse knee injury risk, while participation in other physical activities was associated with lower injury risk. That does not mean every athlete must play multiple sports forever. It means young athletes need a wider base of movement, not just the same pattern repeated all year.
The fourth step is improving technique.
Poor throwing mechanics, poor landing mechanics, poor sprint mechanics, and poor cutting mechanics can all increase stress on the body. Repetition matters, but repeating poor movement under fatigue can create problems.
Athletes need coaching, not just more reps.
The fifth step is creating honest communication.
Parents should ask more than, “How was practice?”
Ask: What hurts? What feels different? Are you sore or are you in pain? Did anything change today? Are you moving normally? Are you tired all the time?
Athletes should know that speaking up early is not weakness.
It is how they stay in the game longer.
If you are a parent of a youth athlete, start with the basics.
Look at your athlete’s full weekly schedule. Count every practice, game, tournament, private lesson, lift, conditioning session, and extra skill workout.
Then ask yourself a few honest questions.
Does your athlete have at least one true rest day each week?
Are they playing on multiple teams at the same time?
Are they going through a growth spurt?
Are they complaining about the same pain over and over again?
Are they limping, changing how they move, or losing confidence?
Are they sleeping at least 8 hours most nights?
Are they eating enough to support their activity level?
Are they getting stronger through proper strength training, or are they just doing more?
These questions matter because prevention starts before the injury becomes obvious.
If your athlete is always sore, always tired, or always dealing with the same nagging pain, their body may be telling you something.
Do not ignore it.
At Prepare for Performance, we believe youth athletes need more than random workouts and extra conditioning.
They need a plan.
Our sports performance training in Rockville, MD focuses on helping athletes build strength, speed, power, movement quality, and confidence in a way that supports long-term development. The goal is not to simply make athletes tired. The goal is to help them become more prepared for the demands of their sport.
That means we coach how athletes sprint, jump, land, cut, decelerate, and control their body. We build strength progressively. We pay attention to movement quality. We help athletes develop the capacity to handle practices, games, and tournaments with more confidence.
For athletes dealing with recurring soreness, nagging pain, or performance drops, it is often not about needing more work.
It is about needing the right work.
If your athlete needs a better plan, our sports performance training in Rockville, MD is built to help athletes train smarter, move better, and build the strength they need to stay healthy and perform at a higher level.
Overuse injuries are common, but they are not something parents should accept as a normal part of youth sports.
Research suggests that approximately 50% of all sports injuries are related to overuse (Wilder & Sethi, 2004). In high school athletes, overuse injury patterns vary by sex and sport, with girls showing higher rates than boys and repetitive sports showing some of the largest proportions of overuse injuries (Schroeder et al., 2015). In adolescent female soccer players, knee injuries made up nearly half of lower extremity overuse injuries, and risk increased when athletes played on more than one team (O’Kane et al., 2017). In highly trained adolescent multisport athletes, overuse injuries made up about half of time-loss injuries, and growth-related conditions represented 20% of all injuries (Rejeb et al., 2017).
The answer is not to scare kids away from training.
The answer is to train smarter.
Youth athletes need hard work, but they also need recovery. They need practice, but they also need strength. They need competition, but they also need long-term development.
More is not always better.
Better is better.
And when athletes build strength, move well, manage workload, recover properly, and speak up early, they give themselves the best chance to stay healthy, keep playing, and continue improving.
Cassas, K. J., & Cassettari-Wayhs, A. (2006). Childhood and adolescent sports-related overuse injuries. American Family Physician, 73(6), 1014-1022.
DiFiori, J. P. (2010). Evaluation of overuse injuries in children and adolescents. Current Sports Medicine Reports, 9(6), 372-378.
Kanwal, S., Ahsan, M. T., Khan, R. N., & Khan, A. (2025). Load management and injury prevention in elite athletes: A narrative review. Premier Journal of Science, 11, 100088. https://doi.org/10.70389/PJS.100088
O’Kane, J. W., Neradilek, M., Polissar, N., Sabado, L., Tencer, A., & Schiff, M. A. (2017). Risk factors for lower extremity overuse injuries in female youth soccer players. The Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine, 5(10), 2325967117733963. https://doi.org/10.1177/2325967117733963
Rejeb, A., Johnson, A., Vaeyens, R., Horobeanu, C., Farooq, A., & Witvrouw, E. (2017). Compelling overuse injury incidence in youth multisport athletes. European Journal of Sport Science. https://doi.org/10.1080/17461391.2016.1275820
Schroeder, A. N., Comstock, R. D., Collins, C. L., Everhart, J., Flanigan, D., & Best, T. M. (2015). Epidemiology of overuse injuries among high-school athletes in the United States. The Journal of Pediatrics, 166(3), 600-606. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2014.09.037
Wilder, R. P., & Sethi, S. (2004). Overuse injuries: Tendinopathies, stress fractures, compartment syndrome, and shin splints. Clinics in Sports Medicine, 23(1), 55-81.
