From the Sidelines.
I spend a lot of time on weekends and some weekday evenings standing on the sidelines of youth sport venues in my ever-classy (sic) Emergency Medical Technician uniform, ready to help with all sorts of medical issues – both pre-existing and those which just happened.
Often, I am responsible for 4-8 basketball courts, or a couple football fields, or maybe 3-6 wrestling mats. Yes, I typically have the entire venue to monitor, but with the help of the Referees and Coaches I can be summoned quite quickly when needed.
A Day in the Life…
On one particular weekend, I had 9 basketball courts to monitor with about 250 athletes in the building at any one time. It was a 2-day tournament with 13 to 15-year-old boys.
While almost everyone wants me to be bored to tears (yes, it is a good thing for the athletes) I like people watching, so I am very interested in the athletes as well as the spectators. I watch people walk toward me and away, I watch the athletes stretch, warm up, and play. As a corrective massage therapist, I consider it training – to see if I can speculate on various issues a person may be experiencing just by their gate or how they stand, sit, and play.
Why Massage is Vital for Teen Athletes
For this event, I had at least a dozen patient contacts related to things I can treat in my clinic. Many of these conditions haunt the teen athlete through young adulthood. In this case, a basketball tournament, many of the issues were in the lower body from low back to feet:
Low back ache- Pain around the hip joint
- Pains in the glute region when running
- Patellar tendon issues above the knee
- Pain below the kneecap (Osgood-Schlatter)
- Aches in the lower leg
- Recovering from shin splints
- Tender ankles (twisted or torqued at some point in the past)
- Achilles Tendon issues
- Plantar fasciitis pains
Treatable in my clinic, if these boys were under my care, they would not have sought out me, the local on-site medical guy. Most of the conditions are also preventable with therapeutic massage therapy (manual soft tissue work).
How We Help Teen Athletes
While my weekend was interspersed with the occasional epistaxis (nosebleed) and a few abrasions, having the chance to put my clinical knowledge to work on a few teen athletes experiencing muscle pain gave them relief and introduced them to a new form of healthcare – manual soft tissue therapy!
Since most youth athletes know nothing about soft tissue therapy (or complementary/alternative healthcare in general), I hoped my attention to their muscle pain and the relief they felt would stick with them so they could explore this type of treatment once they got home.
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