Have you been hearing a lot about sports-related injuries lately? The CDC reports that in the US, 7 million sports injuries occur in youth between the ages of 5-24 each year. I’ve witnessed and experienced multiple injuries while playing sports and know how they can affect you in the long term.

Osgood-Schlatter’s disease is an example of a knee injury that can occur in adolescents due to year-round sports activity. Someone with this disease will feel sharp pain at the knob just below the knee cap. I play sports year round and have had the same pain that’s described with this disease, and bending my knee was extremely painful for a long time.

Pain from an overuse injury isn’t pleasant, and it’s one of the reasons you should give your body breaks to grow and develop. Stress fractures are also something you can experience if you don’t rest. However, I realize that it’s not easy to take off from sports – just like it’s not easy to stop anything else you enjoy. In school you can easily find people who become injured due to reasons out of their control, but you’ll also find people who just don’t take breaks.

I’ve gotten injured multiple times within the last year and continued to participate in sports, and I’ve paid for it. It’s not only right for you to take breaks, but it’s also good for your friends too. If you have a friend who is trying to participate through the pain, tell them to rest. It’s never good to see someone injured to the point where it will affect them permanently.

-Greg