Tailoring the load and type of exercise for individuals is vital to achieve optimal results. Exercise early in life establishes a foundation for late in life and it is known that Active Children become Active Adults. It is much harder to encourage sedentary children to exercise regularly in their adulthood.
However it is often in the teenage years that people join a gym or seek the advice and direction of a personal trainer. Motivating factors can be to lose weight, to exercise with friends or to build an attractive physique. Young males are particularly interested in developing muscular arms, chest and a washboard stomach as quickly as possible and will lift as much weight as possible and do as many repetitions as possible to achieve the desired result.
However as their skeletal system has not matured and often they have not finished growing, the bone tendon junctions in these athletes are vulnerable to injury.
Rapidly increasing the load or volume of exercise on the shoulder, knee and elbow often result in inflammation and injury to the bone tendon junction which can take months to settle and significantly impacts on the ability to exercise or play sport.
The other area that gets forgotten is spinal or core stability. Newcomers to the gym environment often exercise their upper and lower body without understanding the importance of spinal stability to optimise their performance.
If you have sons “Shredding for Stereo’s” or daughters fast tracking weight loss, keep a check on how their joints are responding and it may be worthwhile getting one of our Physiotherapists to oversee their program, check their spinal control and ensure that they are progressing their exercise appropriately for their skeletal symptoms to cope.
At Eastern Sports and Spinal Care we are performance focused and skilled in exercise prescription as well as injury management.