Children

Children have certain characteristics that you need to take into account when putting injury and accident prevention plans in place. Compared with adolescents and adults, children are flexible and muscularly weak. It may be because of their in-built flexibility and relatively low 'power output' that strain and sprain injuries are uncommon in children. This means it's of less practical importance to make children follow flexibility training programmes or to do extensive stretching work as part of a warm-up before sport. Children should be encouraged to take part in 'fun warm-ups' to help prepare their bodies for exercise and help develop good habits for later in their lives when warm-ups and pre-exercise stretching will be more relevant.

Another characteristic of children is their relatively short attention span. This means that training sessions where children to spend a long time practising a particular technique can be both ineffective and contribute to injury. In sessions like these, children get tired and - when combined with poor technique brought about by a wandering mind - the result can be injury. The golden rule when dealing with injury prevention in children is that children are not merely small versions of the finished product. Children's bodies are physiologically and physically different from those of adolescents and adults. The most important difference is that their bones and joints are not mature and should not be subjected to excessive, repetitive or prolonged loading.