Colin Lane saw a range of injuries in his 18 years as a physio for the Cork senior footballers. But, recently, there was “an outlier”: A client in his mid-20s going for hip-replacement surgery due to wear and tear. That injury says something about the physical pressure that some young athletes place on themselves.
He has another example: The strenuous bodybuilding that some teenage boys take on. “You’d have a dad bringing his kid up to me and they would be at the door waiting for me and I’m saying, ‘Which is the father and which is the son?’ Some of these rugby guys, in particular, are big guys.” Are teenage boys and young men exercising too much in the sheer amount of training and gym work they do, sometimes just to look good? Lane, who runs Physio Active in Cork and is a member of the Irish Society of Chartered Physiotherapists, says: “The most critical age, from a childhood-development perspective, is that 12-to-16-year block, stepping up in terms of requirements in sport,” he says.
“Their growth plates within their bones, and their hips in particular, have not fused yet, so they are very vulnerable to distortion as a result of excessive twisting and turning and the loads that come with sport.” Ben Daly, a senior strength-and-conditioning coach with UMPC Sports Surgery Clinic and Sports Medicine, in Dublin and Mayo, has also seen his share of “overuse” injuries. “Some of them are out six nights a week [training], and their bodies are breaking .