Half of these injuries are preventable, find out how 🤕
If you have a kid in competitive sports, you already know the drill — practices multiple times a week, games on weekends, maybe a tournament thrown in just when you thought you'd have a free Saturday. The schedule is relentless, and somewhere along the way everybody just assumes the body keeping up with all of it is going to be fine because it's young and young bodies bounce back.
Mostly, yes. Until they don't. And when they don't, it's usually not the dramatic collision you'd expect — it's something that's been quietly building for months. A muscle that never got strong enough to support what was being asked of it, a way of moving that works fine when everything's going well but breaks down when a kid is tired and pushing hard, a knee or ankle that's been taking the same beating over and over without being built to handle it 🥲
The numbers
Research estimates that more than 50% of youth sports injuries come from overuse — not one bad hit, but the accumulation of doing too much without enough physical preparation underneath it. And roughly half of those injuries are considered preventable. Year-round competition, kids playing a single sport twelve months a year, and very little time spent in the offseason actually getting their bodies ready for the next round have opened up a gap between how much kids are doing and how equipped they are to keep doing it. That gap doesn't close on its own, no matter how invincible your teenager thinks they are 😅
What actually helps
A 2025 meta-analysis of 24 studies found that training focused on coordination, stability, and how the body handles force reduced lower extremity injury risk in young athletes by 27%. A separate analysis found it cut ACL injury risk by 50% in female team sport athletes.
What does that training actually look like? It's strengthening the smaller muscles that hold joints in place — the ones you never think about until they fail. It's teaching a kid's body to land well, change direction safely, and decelerate without something giving out. These aren't the muscles that look impressive. They're the ones that quietly keep everything working while the bigger ones do the fun stuff.
And the time commitment is genuinely manageable: the research found the best results with sessions of 20–30 minutes, twice a week. That fits into an offseason without taking over anyone's life.
The workshop
Trainer Paydyn is hosting a 60-minute Youth Pre-habilitation Workshop for parents of competitive young athletes on Sunday, May 25th at 5 PM in the yoga room upstairs.
This is a session for parents — Paydyn will walk through why these injuries are getting more common, what to look for in how your kid moves, and what you can actually do about it before the next season starts. At the end, he'll open enrollment for a 6-Week Offseason Durability Program — a structured, twice-a-week camp built on the same principles that collegiate programs use to keep their athletes healthy, scaled down for younger bodies.
📅 Sunday, May 25th at 5 PM 📍 Yoga Room, upstairs at West Coast Fitness
Know a sports parent? Forward this along. Even if you don't have a young athlete at home, there's a good chance someone in your life does — and this is the kind of information most families don't hear until they're already sitting in the orthopedist's waiting room Googling recovery timelines.
Keeping your kids in one piece,
Your West Coast Fitness Family
P.S. "It doesn't even hurt anymore" is not a medical diagnosis, no matter how convincingly your 12-year-old delivers it. Come learn what to actually look for 💪
