Evidence Hub
Evidence-based articles on youth rehab and performance.
Evidence-informed summaries of what the research actually says about adolescent injury, rehabilitation and strength & conditioning - written for parents, coaches and athletes.
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71 articles
Why Do Growth-Related Injuries Happen?
Growth-related injuries are not bad luck. They are the predictable result of demand outrunning capacity at a specific point in development.
The Menstrual Cycle and Sports Performance: What Parents and Young Athletes Should Know
Cycle-related symptoms affect a large proportion of young female athletes, and are still rarely discussed with coaches.
Plyometric Training for Young Athletes: When Should They Start?
Children start plyometrics the first time they skip in a playground. The question is not when to begin, but how to progress it deliberately.
How Growth Spurts Affect Strength, Speed and Sports Performance
A growth spurt temporarily scrambles coordination and can flatten performance for months - then hands back a bigger, more powerful athlete if training is handled well.
Osteochondritis Dissecans: When Joint Pain in a Young Athlete Is Coming From the Bone
Osteochondritis dissecans affects the bone just beneath the joint surface. It behaves differently from growth-plate pain, and catching it while the growth plates are still open matters.
RED-S in Young Female Athletes: What Is Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport?
RED-S is what happens when a young athlete does not take in enough energy to cover training and growth. It affects far more than performance.
Why Are Girls More Susceptible to Certain Sports Injuries?
Adolescent girls carry a higher risk of several specific injuries, and most of the reasons are modifiable rather than fixed.
Juvenile Inflammatory Arthritis: What Parents of Active Children Should Know
Most joint pain in active children is load-related. Occasionally it is not. Juvenile inflammatory arthritis has a different pattern, and knowing that pattern matters.
Slipped Upper Femoral Epiphysis (SUFE): The Hip and Knee Pain No One Should Wait On
SUFE is uncommon, but it is one of the few growth-plate problems in young athletes that is a genuine time-critical issue - and it often shows up as knee pain, not hip pain.
How Can We Reduce ACL Injury Risk in Young Female Athletes?
A specific, well-tested programme exists. This is what it contains, how often it needs doing, and how to make it actually happen.
Can You Prevent Growth-Related Injuries in Young Athletes?
You cannot prevent growth. You can meaningfully change the odds, and the things that work are simpler and cheaper than most parents expect.
LTAD vs Early Specialisation: What Is Best for Young Athletes?
Early specialisation offers short-term gains in one sport. Long-term development trades those for durability, breadth and a longer career.
How to Improve Speed and Power in Young Athletes
Speed responds well to training in adolescence - but only if it is trained properly, which most young athletes never do.
Sever's Disease in Young Athletes: Symptoms, Treatment and When to Worry
Heel pain in an 8–14 year old is usually Sever's disease. Here is how to recognise it, what treatment actually works, and the signs that need assessment.
Why Young Athletes Shouldn't Train Like Mini Adults
Young athletes are not scaled-down adults. Their tissues, hormones, recovery and motivation all work differently, and their training should reflect that.
Ankle Sprains in Young Athletes: Recovery Timelines and Return to Sport
Ankle sprains are the most common injury in youth sport and the most likely to be rushed. The first one is manageable, and how it is handled decides whether there is a second and a third.
Adolescent Knee Pain: Red Flags That Need Assessment
Most adolescent knee pain is load-related and self-limiting. A short list of features should prompt clinical assessment instead.
Periods, Performance and Injury: Why Menstrual Health Matters in Young Athletes
A regular cycle is a sign that a young athlete's body has enough to work with. Losing it is one of the clearest warning signals in youth sport.
How Much Sleep Do Children and Teenagers Need for Sports Recovery?
Most teenage athletes get well under the recommended amount, and the association between short sleep and injury in this group is one of the more consistent findings in youth sport research.
Growing Pains or a Sports Injury? How to Tell the Difference
True growing pains and sport-related growth plate injuries look nothing alike once you know what to compare, and the distinction changes what you should do.
How Long Does Osgood-Schlatter Disease Last?
The honest answer has two parts: how long until your child is playing comfortably, and how long until the condition is gone for good.
Knee Pain in Children: The Common Causes and What to Do Next
Where the knee hurts tells you most of what you need to know. This is the parent's map of the four or five things that account for the vast majority of knee pain in young athletes.
How to Develop Strong, Fast and Resilient Young Athletes
Strength, speed and resilience are trainable qualities, developed in a specific order over years, not by-products of playing more matches.
Growth Spurts and Sports Injuries: Why Do They Happen?
A growth spurt changes an athlete's body faster than their tissues or their coordination can keep up. Injuries cluster in that window for good reason.
Why Do Growing Children Get Knee and Heel Pain?
Knee and heel pain cluster in growing athletes for a specific, well-understood reason - and once you understand it, the management makes sense.
Why Sport Participation Matters for Children's Academic Performance and Development
Beyond fitness, regular sport shapes bone density, motor skill, social confidence and school engagement, and dropout in adolescence costs more than most families realise.
Sever's Disease Exercises: A Staged Approach for Heel Pain
Calf strength is the backbone of managing Sever's disease. This is the order to build it in, and how to get impact back into a young athlete's week without repeated flare-ups.
Osgood-Schlatter Disease: What Is It and Can My Child Still Play Sport?
Osgood-Schlatter is the most common cause of knee pain in growing athletes - and in most cases, stopping sport completely is the wrong answer.
Growth Spurts and Injury Risk: Why Injuries Cluster at Peak Height Velocity
Injury rates rise sharply around peak height velocity. Understanding the mechanism lets you adjust training before symptoms appear.
How to Manage Training Load When Children Play Multiple Sports
Multi-sport participation is good for development, but only if someone is adding up the total. Usually nobody is.
How Much Training Is Too Much for a Young Athlete?
There is no universal number - but there are reliable thresholds, warning signs and a simple way to keep track.
Flat Feet in Children: Does It Need Treating?
Most children's feet look flat, and most of those feet are perfectly healthy. The question worth asking is not how the arch looks, but whether the foot is strong, mobile and pain-free.
The Female Athlete: How Hormones, Growth and Development Affect Sports Performance
Puberty changes a young female athlete's body substantially. Understanding what changes, and what to train, turns a difficult period into a productive one.
How to Build Athleticism in Young Athletes
Athleticism is not a personality trait. It is a set of trainable qualities, built through variety, repetition and time.
Strength Training for Young Athletes: Is It Safe?
Yes, and the evidence suggests the bigger risk to a young athlete is not strength training at all.
Returning to School Sport After the Holidays: How to Safely Build Training Back Up
The first three weeks back are the highest-risk period of the school year. A short ramp-up before term starts changes how that period goes.
Stress Fractures in Teenage Athletes: Warning Signs and Causes
A stress fracture is the one injury in this group where pushing on genuinely makes things worse. Recognising the pattern early turns months out into weeks.
Rest vs Load Management: Why "Just Rest It" Fails for Apophysitis
Complete rest settles pain and then hands it straight back on return to sport. Progressive loading is what builds tolerance.
Hypermobility in Children: What It Means for Sport and Training
Plenty of children can bend their thumbs to their forearms and hyperextend their knees. For most it is simply how they are built, and strength work is what turns flexibility into an advantage.
LTAD Explained: How Should Young Athletes Develop Over Time?
A stage-by-stage view of what should be prioritised at each point in a young athlete's development, and why the order matters.
Shin Splints in Young Athletes: Causes, Load and Recovery
Shin splints is a symptom, not a diagnosis. In young athletes it almost always means running volume has outrun the leg's current tolerance, and it responds well to a structured rebuild.
Concussion in Youth Sport: What Parents and Coaches Must Know
The rule in UK youth sport is simple: if in doubt, sit them out. What comes after that decision is where families most often need guidance.
Why Do Some Young Athletes Develop Faster Than Others?
Genetics, maturity timing, birth month and training history all shape how quickly a young athlete develops, and only some of those are worth acting on.
How Many Days a Week Should a Young Athlete Train?
The right number depends on age, growth and what else is in the week, but there are two ceilings worth knowing.
Growing Pains in Children: What They Are and When It's Something Else
Most families use 'growing pains' to describe any ache in a child's legs. Some of it genuinely is harmless, and some of it is a load-related injury that responds well to being managed properly.
What Is Long-Term Athletic Development (LTAD)? A Parent's Guide
LTAD is the idea that young athletes should be developed over years, in stages, rather than optimised for this weekend's result.
Should Young Athletes Play One Sport or Multiple Sports?
The evidence leans clearly towards variety through to mid-adolescence, and it does not cost long-term performance in most sports.
Recovery for Young Athletes: The Best Strategies After Training and Competition
Sleep, food and rest days do almost all the work. Ice baths, compression garments and foam rollers do far less than the marketing suggests.
How to Tell If a Young Athlete Is Recovering Well Enough
You do not need wearables or software. Three questions, asked consistently, will tell you more about a young athlete's week than any device on their wrist.
Knee Pain in Young Footballers: Common Causes and What to Do
Football concentrates kicking, sprinting and cutting into the same knee, week after week. Here are the causes that actually turn up, and how to tell them apart.
Heel Pain in Young Footballers: Is It Sever's Disease?
Heel pain in a young footballer is usually Sever's disease - and football boots, pitches and fixture congestion all make it more likely.
How Do You Know If a Young Female Athlete Is Eating Enough?
There is no simple calorie number, but there are reliable practical signals that tell you whether intake is matching demand.
Recovery Strategies That Help Prevent Injury in Young Athletes
Most growth-related injuries appear in weeks where the training went up and the recovery did not. Recovery is not ice baths and foam rollers, it is sleep, food, spacing and honest scheduling.
Early Sport Specialisation: What the Evidence Says About Injury and Burnout
Highly specialised young athletes carry a measurably higher risk of overuse injury. Diversified participation is protective.
From Injury to Performance: A 3-Phase Approach to Youth Athletic Development
The same three-phase structure takes an athlete from painful to playing, and then from playing to performing better than before.
Strength Training During a Growth Spurt: What Should Change?
A growth spurt is not a reason to stop strength training. It is a reason to change what you emphasise within it.
Does Strength Training Stunt Growth in Young Athletes?
The evidence is clear and consistent: supervised resistance training does not damage growth plates or reduce final height, and it lowers injury risk.
Osgood-Schlatter Exercises: Where to Start and How to Progress
The exercises that help Osgood-Schlatter are not complicated. What matters is starting at the right level, progressing in the right order, and judging the dose by how the knee feels the next morning.
When Is a Young Athlete Ready to Return to Sport After Injury?
Time since injury is the least useful readiness criterion. These are the tests that actually tell you whether a young athlete is ready.
Strength Training for Young Female Athletes: Why It Matters for Performance and Injury Prevention
Young female athletes gain more from strength training than almost any other group, and receive less of it than almost any other group.
Growth vs Maturation: What's the Difference and Why Does It Matter in Youth Sport?
Growth is how big a child is getting. Maturation is how far through the process they are. Confusing the two is one of the most common mistakes in youth sport.
Early Sport Specialisation: Is It Helping or Hurting Young Athletes?
Specialising early buys short-term progress at a measurable cost in injury, burnout and dropout, and usually no long-term advantage.
ACL Injuries in Female Athletes: Why Are Girls at Higher Risk?
Most ACL injuries in young female athletes happen without contact, in a moment that is predictable, and therefore trainable.
When Do Growth Plates Close? What Parents and Young Athletes Need to Know
Growth plates close at different ages in different bones, and the window before closure is when most growth-related sports conditions appear.
10 Common Myths About Youth Strength Training
Almost everything parents worry about with youth strength training turns out to be either outdated or simply untrue.
The Link Between Sport and Academic Performance: Can Exercise Improve School Results?
The evidence says physical activity does not harm academic results and probably helps cognition, but the size of the effect is smaller than the headlines suggest.
The Best Exercises for Young Footballers
Football is a sprinting, cutting and kicking sport. These are the exercises that build the qualities it actually demands.
Low Energy Availability in Female Athletes: The Warning Signs Parents Should Know
Low energy availability rarely announces itself. It shows up as tiredness, niggles and a season that never quite gets going.
How Should Young Athletes Actually Train?
A practical framework for what a young athlete's training week should contain, and how it should change as they mature.
Heel Pain in Children: Causes Beyond Sever's Disease
Sever's disease accounts for most heel pain in active 8 to 14 year olds, but not all of it. Here is how to recognise the usual pattern and what else to keep in mind.
Youth Strength Training: What Should a 10, 12 or 14-Year-Old Be Doing?
Age is a rough guide at best, but the priorities do shift as a young athlete matures. Here is what each stage should look like.