Dr. Scott's Body Blog: High School Athletes: Overuse injuries don't just happen to adults!

High school sports at most schools are pretty grueling, especially if you are serious about them. Two-a-days, off-season lifting, mini-camps and keeping up with school work can be difficult balance, and if you throw in a healthy dose of on-going puberty and college visits it can certainly be overwhelming. Combining lots of exercise, hormone changes and a “no pain no gain” attitude often spells trouble for a high school athlete in any sport.

Our subject this week is Brady Weas, a two-way starter at Whitefish Bay High School. Brady, a mountain of a young man, is serious about football and expects to play in college at a high level after he graduates. He also had been having some knee pain for several week prior to visiting us, enough to the point where he had to take it easy during practice. This is the last thing you want when you are entering the year in high school where schools can start contacting you after the season.

Even at 16 years old Brady was exhibiting signs of overuse injuries, mainly signs of adhesion, in his knee. Adhesion comes from the body’s inability to clean out the metabolic waste created by muscles simply because those muscles weren’t trained to work as hard as they were asked to. If the body can’t remove waste as fast as the body creates it, inflammation sets in and the body will respond by laying down layers of collagen on the affected muscles (scar tissue). This collagen will restrict range of motion, weaken the muscle and create a lower threshold for pain. Every major non-trauma related sports injury you see or hear about on TV does not happen to healthy tissue. It only happens to dysfunctional tissue. Catching this injury before it becomes serious could make the difference between scholarship offers and perhaps a season-ending injury.

Once a detailed assessment was complete we found that he muscular imbalance due to adhesion restricting his glutes and hamstrings that led to some lingering knee pain. After a few visits and some home exercises his knee pain resolved. Brady has now found a new appreciation for taking care of himself to ensure these injuries don’t return, and knows exactly where to go if he begins to have issues arise again.

"Before my first treatment with Dr. Scott the knee pain I was experiencing was at about level 9 on a 10 point scale. 10 being the worst. Within a few sessions the pain was reduced to 3. My knees feel great and what's more is that Dr. Scott took the time to explain what was causing the problem and what I can do separately to keep my knees feeling good. Thanks Dr. Scott!"