Good: Are gawky young people more injury prone?

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Makes early puberty more clumsy a young athlete? Many of us, especially the parents of the aspiring young people, would with resounding yes answer. But it is a question that has fascinated and vexed scientists and a coach for some time, and it has implications for how young athletes should be trained.

Children long have thought suffering through a physically gawky stage during the so-called Tween years, starting around age 11 or 12. It is a time when most parents ensure that their children are hurt most high risk even on the pitch, and there is some evidence, although limited, that sports injuries at this time spike. A nationwide study of the last year of running injuries in young people aged 6 to 18 found that were most likely 13-year-old risk of injury, and is that generally their injuries; caused Tripping over their own growing feet seemed to young people. Similarly, epidemiological studies of knee injuries in female athletes have found that they occur far more frequently after a girl has been entered puberty and a surge.

But others the last exercise science, something amazing, wouldn't the existence of young awkward early can confirm. A few years ago, when scientists at the State University of New York at Buffalo found 60 adolescent boys and girls on a series of tests which tested motor skills, they, that young people, the puberty had begun consistently, performed better than the children, which did not have. You were faster, further jumped and threw a ball to a greater distance than the less physically mature children. The researchers concluded that there was no evidence of a physically awkward developmental period during puberty, only by consistent physical improvements.

Now, lit a review article in the British Journal of sports medicine new why scientists see the embarrassing teenage phase can be so difficult. Can it effects - a result of the sophistication of the growing season and reflect the fact that it includes not only the changing adolescent body but more mutable adolescent brain.

For the review, researchers from the Cincinnati Children collected's Hospital Medical Center and the Ohio State University, dozens of studies adolescent development. Most directly study exercise or sport. Instead, she saw how children, young people and adults learn to control and to position their bodies. The process is surprisingly complicated, with vision, touch, hearing, several sets of muscles and many different areas in the brain.

Cited by the review, an interesting experiment showed that when children age were 9 to 11 with infrared sensors to capture their movements and then confronted hiking trail with a cone in their it to the obstacle differently as adults edges. The adults just before the cone, tended her body in a fluid, realignment, extended movement, change to achieve their stride length and the direction of their feet well in advance of the cone. The children, on the other hand, the obstacle, sighting start before the direction of their feet would turn their heads and trunks. As a result their bodies displayed significantly more "Lust, pitch and roll," in the successful phrasing of the researchers, as adults, and they were closer to the cone before they readjust to their feet and turn away from him could manage.

"Children need to learn proprioception," or how to orient their bodies in the area, said Timothy Hewett, the senior author of the review.

Apparently research fellow at the Cincinnati Children said's Hospital and lead author of the review as part of this process, "it seems a shift at some point during adolescence the brain processes information" about body position, Catherine Quatman-Yates, postdoc. The last functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of people on the move, cited in the report found that before puberty, children first and foremost their brains show activity in subcortical regions if, for example, reach for an object, while adults primarily rely on more complex cortical regions of the brain to guide and integrate movements. This shift in the function of the brain most likely occurs when young people so how they shoot in size are. "The body changed and so is the brain system", that controls movement of body, said Dr Quatman Yates. "It is hardly surprising, this balance and postural control could be adversely affected."

A period in the young people, even those, the always excellent small athletes, travel on their own feet go much which available science about young people is development, in other words.

How can you say but if your child has taken the gawky phase, and you do, you can to help?

"Her child a drop-jump test to do have," Dr. Hewett proposed. One of the fingers of the child chalk and have it jump as high as he or she can out of the ground, marking the wall with the chalk. Then you have an a-foot box and jump to fall immediately after touching the ground. "A well-established child later is after dropping out of the box jump," said Dr. Hewett. A young person in his or her difficult stage not is probably. In this case questions training in warm-ups and exercises, integrate your child's coach, balance, Dr. Hewett said. But don't panic. "The most children," he said "Customize."

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