Growth Spurts and Injury

School is out for the summer! Kids are done classes as well as (most) sports. Time for them to relax before things start all over again in September! And if you're the parent of a child starting to hit adolescence, the fall will likely bring comments with how much they've shot up like a beanstalk. Great, they're taller than you now, aren't they?

As a thing to keep in mind, if your child is active or athletic, sometimes weird things with young people's physical ability can happen as they start to reach their growth spurts.

Imagine if your limbs were suddenly a foot longer than they were yesterday. It would certainly be weird. All that extra length on both your arms and legs and no idea how to handle it! It would probably be awkward, wouldn't it? Well, if you're finding yourself harping on your child's clumsiness, keep in mind that this is probably happening to them.

This. I think.

This being said, with drastic changes in body composition comes a challenge for a person's brain to maintain proper body awareness. While not being an area that is heavily studied, it is being found that adolescence is a time where proprioceptive ability and postural control fall behind in development due to the obvious reasons touched on above. And, as we know, with a lack of proprioception and inability to adjust joint control as needed, injury rates become much more common.

The risk here doesn't stop at the fact that your teenager has a tendency to trip (a lot!) or roll their ankles. Chronic back pain is even a rampant - and often under-reported - problem in young people!

And we haven't even touched on the high rate of tendon injuries that happen as a young person's muscles suddenly find themselves on new, permanent lengthening.

Let me be clear, however. This is not an attempt at fear-mongering to cause parents to either remove their children from sport or to feel like they now need weekly preventative trips to the therapist's office to stop injury from occurring! The majority of young people are going to grow up into healthy adults with minimal injury just fine!

The important thing, though, is to be mindful that there are these massive changes occurring with their bodies and that we should be attentive to any warning signs. Long-term aches and pains or even a new and noticeable struggle with coordination may warrant seeking help. Or, as an alternative, perhaps just look at diversifying that child's physical activity to allow them to get comfortable using their body in a variety of ways again. Also, appropriate rest.

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Coaching Sport, Coaching Confidence

As a coach to young athletes (track and field and cross country), I of course strive to see them succeed. I’m overjoyed when they win, I help pick them up when they don’t, celebrate a championship, and am sad to see the end of each season.

Spectrum Track and Field Coaches - 2017

However, there’s something above anything else that motivates me to return every year. Something that I celebrate long after the season ends. That thing is the confidence and sense of identity that sport – any sport – provides to individuals.

I’m sure we all remember that non-stop identity crisis that being a teenager entailed, trying to make it through high school while fighting battles of self-esteem and confidence. I sure recall it, and I remember that sense of invisibility and trying to find a way to identify myself as an individual. (Good grades weren’t exactly what I was posting on Facebook to brag about.) The fact that I was a runner was one of the main things that I rode on in order to feel distinguished from the crowd. Even though I wasn’t a particularly great runner (competitive-wise) during my teenage years, it was still a physical ability that helped me stand apart from others in order to feel accomplished.

Circa 2008. Gawwww....

I won’t pretend to be a psychologist by trying to delve into the science of human development, but I speak from experience. As I transitioned from athlete to coach, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing many parallels to my athletes and my own story. While I’ve had plenty of athletes routinely come out on top and enjoy award-winning success, there’s been an even more rewarding experience that’s come out of my time as a coach. Being a track and field coach, I’m able to offer a chance to participate in sport to students who have never been athletes before. This has allowed me to witness some very timid, meek, and unconfident individuals (potentially feeling that same sense of invisibility I mentioned) develop confidence and pride in this new activity and begin to use it as that identifying aspect of their character. (Not to mention how sport participation will help to combat problems with body-image. But that’s something to talk about in so many different posts.)

Asking The Expert

"As adults we want to be operating ideally from what is known as a 'congruent' state. This is where we respond to a situation and not react! There's a difference. Children tend to react, and we can find ourselves doing this in our adult day to day living. 

One of the methods [for helping clients progress in communicative and social ability] … is to bring the client to a place of congruence.  Congruence is achieved by addressing several layers of our lives. Picture that iceberg as it stands out above the water. What we see is pretty impressive, but icebergs have far more beneath the surface, literally!The top of the iceberg has functional behaviour and needs: bills, schoolwork, social engagements. But as you slowly work down the layers of the iceberg you eventually get to the ' under the surface ' areas that [are described] as core; our yearnings and our connection with our self and our creator.

Being alive to those deeper often buried yearnings has a direct correlation with our communication style and our congruence! Remember congruence is the goal! Sport is often an area that can enrich a person's life significantly. Self-confidence, physical strength, endurance and appearance all improve with sport participation."

Sasha Tanoushka (Bio listed below)

For these reasons, when coaching youth sport, I put particular effort in this area of development. The athletes who regularly come 1^st and 2^nd in their races aren’t the ones that have the most to gain and in fact, the reason that I love coaching track and field more than anything is because I can attract those individuals who are brand new to sport and exercise altogether. This allows me to provide some sort of intervention in that potential identity crisis. I’m never going to try to change who they are, but I see building confidence in an ability to physically to perform (even if it’s not to a first-place title) as an avenue to help these young people feel like they have enough distinctiveness and individuality that it can allow them to feel a sense of belonging – without abandoning their existing core personalities.

Lastly, I don’t believe that if I miss these kids before they grow up that it’s too late. I firmly believe that any age is a good age to begin building on that value of confidence in one’s physical ability; I see it happen all the time, in fact. The 40 year old lady who becomes a runner, the previously-overweight man who now loves recreational baseball, or the retiree who fell in love with hiking – they all instill that sense of identity in who they are as a person and help to allow them to love and be confident in themselves as a whole. Physical literacy plays such a huge role in our personal wellbeing, and being able to tap into that, whether for ourselves or as a professional to others, makes the world of difference.

And that’s the reason I coach.

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Sasha Tanoushka is a member of the BC AMFT and AAMFT  ( American Association of Marriage n Family Therapists  ). She's completing her MA in Marriage And Family Therapy through Northcentral University. She's worked extensively with families and individuals over the years in both community sports, martial arts, kids' clubs and ladies' community groups.

She has a particular interest on neuropathy and works with several therapeutic modalities but has a particular leaning towards Satir, Bowen and Gestalt.

She can be contacted at: birdibost@gmail.com 

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Building Confidence in Ability

Back when I was in high-school, I took a class that involved a weekend practicum in the role of an outdoor camp counselor. There were a few typical rules asked of us in this position: Don't flash your cellphone or other technology around, don't swear in front of the kids, etc. One rule resonated as being particularly important to me, though.

"Girls, please no Lulu's or yoga pants. Boys, don't wear beaters. We want the kids attending camp to be motivated to do the things you're teaching them, not to aspire to look like you."

 

"You kids go canoeing while I stand here looking fabuloussssss!"

This was one of my earliest impressions that paved my philosophy as I became a professional with health and fitness. I heavily emphasize ability and performance over aesthetic regardless if I'm teaching a fitness class or rehabing a client. I find a much greater sense of achievement when my clients tell me they were able to run without pain that week than I do when they tell me they dropped a waist size.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking the importance of developing healthy body image and allowing people to feel beautiful. I'm just not the best person for that job. As the "tiny" kid while I grew up, I quickly came to the terms with the fact that I'd never be the large, flashy muscle-dude in the magazines, but would always find solace in my ability to outrun my peers. For this reason, I find a particular speciality when it comes to training and coaching young people in their confidence in physical capability. Even more fulfillment comes when I'm able to guide someone to a physical achievement that they always assumed was out of their reach, such as introducing a previous non-athlete to success as a runner.

Pictured: A lot of runners who had never done a sport one year ago.

Training ability and function, I find, will leave an individual with a much more sustainable confidence and sense of identity than simply training towards a certain aesthetic. Especially when considering the toxic ideals instilled by modern media, training for an appearance involves a very different type of anxiety and mental coaching that I can't call myself experienced with. In fact, when asked on whether I still do personal training on the side with my rehab business, my answer is usually "no". With the exception of youth and sports-specific training (mostly speed and sprinting), I don't have a particular love for that kind of work these days. There are plenty enough workers who can focus on the aesthetic or coach someone in believing in their body image, but I'll use my time the way that I use it best.

Focus on what you can do rather than how you look while doing it.