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 down,” Daly says.
Yet for all the early and excessive wear and tear caused by team sports, damaging your health while chasing a ‘perfect body’ is also an issue. Just this year, the Health Products Regulatory Authority revealed that anabolic steroids were the second-highest category of medicine seized in 2023, with Grainne Power, the HPRA’s director of compliance, telling the Irish Times: “We believe young men, in particular, may be sourcing anabolic steroids for body enhancement, while being unaware of the serious health complications posed by these products.” Brian Keane is an online personal trainer and nutritionist, who has spent the past 12 years working primarily with two groups: Those aged between 40 and 50 who want to lose weight; and a younger group of men, aged between 18 and 24, many of whom are athletes, playing GAA and rugby at a high level.
The latter is a group, he says, “who are in to the gym and looking to get fitter, stronger, and faster”. Keane says there has been a “massive” change in how some young men approach training, adding: “Six to seven years ago, things started to skew away from fitness and more towards the look: building muscle.” He focuses on ensuring that people do not get injured.
“I get so many players doing way too much and getting these soft-tissue injuries, because they are over-trained and under-recovered.” Exercise programmes promoted on social media can do more harm than good, says Keane. He sees between 300 and 400 clients yearly and says a one-size-fits-all approach would never work.
Instead, a more personalised, tailored approach to fitness, based on the person’s size and shape, is needed. “If it [social media] is big enough to direct electoral campaigns, it can definitely influence how someone trains,” Keane says. “If you are following a random influencer copying [their movements] it might be completely different to [your requirements].
” Even among modern-day athletic role models, it’s essential to see the nuance, he says. For example, just because the all-conquering (until this year, at least) Limerick hurlers are imposing physical specimens, it doesn’t mean everyone should run off to the gym and begin furiously pumping iron. Those hurlers are surrounded by a team of specialists and nutritionists, taking each player’s physical attributes in to account regarding how they train and recover.
The regimen that suits the guy who is 6ft 4ins will not suit the guy who is 5ft 6ins. Quest for ‘perfect’ body While body image affects people of all ages and backgrounds, Ellen Jennings, communications officer at Bodywhys, says, “Research tells us that most young people in Ireland are not happy with how they look and that this is causing them difficulty in their lives.” She refers to how the search for the “perfect body” can be related to body dissatisfaction, which can lead to disordered eating or worse.
“On a recent Bodywhys webinar, titled ‘Body Image: A Male Perspective’, we heard the same factors come up a few times as key influences by all participants,” Jennings says. “It’s so important to raise awareness that body image issues are common in men.” She adds: “Lads’ banter was a big influence, too.
It can prevent friends talking sincerely to friends about body-image concerns, which can exacerbate the issue.” Aggressive cross-platform marketing of the ideal muscular male body is putting boys and young men under pressure. “Particular body ideals and beauty standards are widespread in social-media content, mainstream media, and advertising,” says Jennings.
“These ideals are often unrealistic and unattainable and follow a very narrow illusion of ‘perfection’. Excessive exposure to this type of content can lead to self-doubt, self-consciousness, and body-image concerns. “Social media posts tend to be about showing our very best selves and the very best of our lives.
We are bombarded with picture-perfect images of everyone else, and that can lead to a feeling of being ‘not good enough’.” Jennings says that fitness-related social media accounts may promote and contribute to unrealistic and unhealthy body shapes, sexualisation, objectification, exercise addiction, excessive control of eating habits, body dissatisfaction, and appearance-related anxiety. “Negative body image and feelings of shame, discomfort, or embarrassment in relation to our bodies may spill over in to other areas of our life and prevent us from pursuing activities or goals that are important to us,” she says.
“However, it is possible to become mindful of unhealthy patterns of thinking or negative influences on body image and choose to lessen our exposure to these.” Food supplements That push for perfection and constant pressure from peers and social media can result in an a-la-carte approach to online shopping for food supplements that aid muscle growth. Yet, according to SafeFood, supplements are really only needed for certain age groups, such as folic acid for pregnant women and vitamin D at certain times of the year.
Many supplements simply get washed out of the system, negating any possible value in taking them, and that’s before looking at the reputability of supplements plucked from the internet. Fortunately, that fad may have peaked. According to Keane, “It has definitely eased off in the last few years.
Five to six years ago it was a huge thing, people almost took a supplement-first approach.” Daniel Davey, who runs Davey Nutrition, has worked with elite athletes for the past 12 years and argues that telling people not to take whey protein can be like telling people not to vape. Instead he says there is “a real lack of understanding about what the products are and their viability and what the process is”.
Whey protein is a practical solution to help people meet their protein requirements, he says, “but it doesn’t do anything else. A food first component needs to be the foundation for nutrition.” Whey protein and similar solutions are, he argues, “the apex” of the nutrition pyramid, not the foundation, and the athletes he works with buy in to that view and reap the rewards.
It is a matter of educating people, he adds, rather than encouraging younger people to use such products when they are typically unnecessary. Bodywhys advises teen boys and young men to consider the negative influences on their body image and actually write them down. These could include the use of fitness-tracking apps, exposure to ‘fitspiration’ or similar body content online, media ideals, gym culture, and friendship groups where similar conversations are prevalent.
It also advises talking to a dietitian or health professional to foster a more balanced approach to exercise and eating, which will promote wellbeing, and limit how much social media you look at each day, so as to avoid negatively comparing your body. The internet and social media are full of fitness influencers who sing the praises of what has worked for them, preaching from the proverbial mountaintop, even though there is no guarantee it will work for everyone else. As ever, it is a simple mantra: Stick to the basics.
And maybe leave your body with more time to recover and leave the heavy deadweights alone. As Lane ponders the shrinking size differential between the fathers and sons, he adds, “You’re looking at their date of birth, and then looking at them, and then at their parents, and you’re saying, ‘this is scary’.”.
