Muscles, Joints & Bones

Ankle sprains are the most common single injury in high school sports, accounting for one in six of all high school sports-related injuries, finds a new study.

When people think of back pain in athletes, they mosty think of pain in the neck or lower back. As a result, the middle part of the spine, called the thoracic spine, is commonly overlooked. But just as other regions of the back, the mid-spine can negatively impact a young athlete's performance and risk of injury.

The spring sports season is in full swing, and summer preseason practices, camps, and all-star league games are just around the corner, but safety comes first, no matter what the sport or the season. Here's a sixteen-point safety checklist to keep athletes in the game.

The most important way to reduce the short- and long-term affects of poorly positioned kneecaps (patellofemoral dysfunction) is early intervention: physical therapy to strengthen the quad, teach stretching exercises, and guide appropriate biomechanics. Allowing knee pain to persist only decreases the potential for return to pain free sport.

There is good news and bad news on the youth sports injury front. The good news is that sports and recreation musculoskeletal injuries declined 12.4 percent in the U.S. over the past 10 years for children ages 5 to 14 years. The bad news: injuries in football and soccer went up, says a new study.

Shoulder injuries and pain are common in a variety of sports. Whether it is in throwing a pass in football or a pitch in baseball, athletes need tremendous shoulder strength and coordination to achieve athletic excellence. But the constant strain and pressure on the shoulder often leads to irritation and can result in an overuse injury.

Pre- or early adolescence appears to be the best time to start a neuromuscular training program in order to reduce the number of injuries female athletes suffer to their anterior cruciate ligaments, says a new study.

Most soccer players are able to return to play after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction surgery (ACLR), but one in eight who return end up having additional surgery, with females and those whose first surgery was on their non-dominant leg most at risk, a new study finds.

Female adolescent soccer players who followed a 15-minute neuromuscular warm-up program twice a week in training over the course of a season experienced a 64% reduction in the rate of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury compared to players who did not follow such a program, according to a 2012 Swedish study.

Neuromuscular and educational training programs designed to prevent injuries to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) among young athletes appear to cut the risk of ACL injuries in half, according to a new study, although researchers were unable from a review of 14 studies to determine which components of the training interventions were most or least effective.