White Rock Chiropractor Presents: “Injury to Our Youth As Back Pain in Surrey in the Good Ol’Gam
As a White Rock Chiropractor I have noticed that there is no other game in Canada that creates so many political issues as hockey. The game is exciting, rewarding, frustrating and has parents €duking€ it out in the stands. More importantly it has young children at high risk of being seriously hurt. What I am talking about is a recent decision by the Canadian Hockey Association to lift a ban on full body contact in children's hockey leagues.
This is a highly contentious issue that has been in the press recently. It is a bad decision by those that run the league to lift a twenty year ban on body checking for young players. Allowing body checking for players as young as nine years sounds pretty strange to me! In South Surrey, we see lots of back pain related to hockey amongst the younger players.
Those that run the Canadian Hockey Association decided to do (or have done for them) some €unbiased€ research to prove that in young children the risk of injury did not go up between hockey without body checking and hockey with body checking. The CHA presented this as being the case. Unfortunately their data was biased. The truth is that injuries went up four times when body checking was introduced.
Children at nine and ten are just starting to mature in bone formation, joint formation and ligament growth. Actually, this process does not really get going until puberty. It will not stop until the child fully matures which could be sixteen to eighteen years of age. A child at the 9, 10 or 11 could have bone and joint damage that could affect growth and body stability, having lifelong effects.
I talked about athletics and children in previous articles before. Body contact or even the act of non contact sport can have enormous influence on abnormal growth of bones and joints. Tearing of ligaments that hold joints together is not as uncommon as we used to think. This also has permanent effects on the function of the joints. All this can lead to degenerative wear and tear throughout the individual's life. This can then lead to osteoarthritis.
As a White Rock Chiropractor, I believe that body checking shouldn't be allowed until at least 16 when the teen has maturity in bones and joints along with muscular strength and hockey skill. Some of you will disagree believing that players should be able to check at a younger age or that they should not be able to check at all during minor, amateur hockey. Whatever your opinion, it certainly makes no sense from a physical health perspective to allow it in the very young athletes. We need to avoid the back pain we see in South Surrey and other cities related to hockey injuries.
This is a highly contentious issue that has been in the press recently. It is a bad decision by those that run the league to lift a twenty year ban on body checking for young players. Allowing body checking for players as young as nine years sounds pretty strange to me! In South Surrey, we see lots of back pain related to hockey amongst the younger players.
Those that run the Canadian Hockey Association decided to do (or have done for them) some €unbiased€ research to prove that in young children the risk of injury did not go up between hockey without body checking and hockey with body checking. The CHA presented this as being the case. Unfortunately their data was biased. The truth is that injuries went up four times when body checking was introduced.
Children at nine and ten are just starting to mature in bone formation, joint formation and ligament growth. Actually, this process does not really get going until puberty. It will not stop until the child fully matures which could be sixteen to eighteen years of age. A child at the 9, 10 or 11 could have bone and joint damage that could affect growth and body stability, having lifelong effects.
I talked about athletics and children in previous articles before. Body contact or even the act of non contact sport can have enormous influence on abnormal growth of bones and joints. Tearing of ligaments that hold joints together is not as uncommon as we used to think. This also has permanent effects on the function of the joints. All this can lead to degenerative wear and tear throughout the individual's life. This can then lead to osteoarthritis.
As a White Rock Chiropractor, I believe that body checking shouldn't be allowed until at least 16 when the teen has maturity in bones and joints along with muscular strength and hockey skill. Some of you will disagree believing that players should be able to check at a younger age or that they should not be able to check at all during minor, amateur hockey. Whatever your opinion, it certainly makes no sense from a physical health perspective to allow it in the very young athletes. We need to avoid the back pain we see in South Surrey and other cities related to hockey injuries.
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