Stress Fractures in Youth Athletes: Common Causes and Prevention

Stress Fractures in Youth Athletes are unfortunately common but understanding its causes and prevention methods are key. HOI-affiliated sports medicine surgeon Dr. Herbert Eidt at our Aliso Viejo and Mission Viejo locations shares more common causes, risk factors, which sports are most affected and prevention methods for stress fractures in youth athletes.

• Risk Factors: Risk factors for stress fractures include specializing in a sport at a young age. Girls are more prone to stress fractures than boys. Additionally, any sudden change in training regimen, a previous history of stress fractures, bone density or bio mechanical issues are also risk factors for stress fractures.
• Most common sports that face bone stress fractures: Running sports like cross country, track and also field sports with running like soccer, lacrosse, football are the sports most commonly causing stress fractures. Many stress fractures in these sports injuries typically have to do with overtraining or a change in the intensity of training.
• Causes: More than 90% of stress fractures are found with people who have trained more than an hour a day, but there are many additional factors mentioned above and some athletes can train more than one hour per day with no issues.
• Prevention: The first thing you can do to prevent stress fractures injuries is to manage your training level. You can do this by slowly increasing the intensity of your training over time. The second thing is not specializing in one sport too young, and also increasing the cross training or strength training to augment the sport the you love, and increase your bone strength. For people with preexisting medical factors, it’s important to work with your doctor and also your coaches and trainers to identify additional risk factors to help prevent injury and also to be aware of the risk factors.