Overuse injuries are prevalent in sports of all levels, from youth to the pros.

In youth sports, overuse injuries generally are caused by growth-related conditions or repetitive movements. Examples include Osgood-Schlatter, Sever disease and growth plate injuries.

These conditions are easily identified on annual physical exams conducted by a medical physician before your sport begins.

Examples of injuries caused by repetitive movements are stress fractures and tendentious. Certified athletic trainers can identify risk for these injuries through movement assessments and flexibility and strength testing.

From these tests, we can see if there are muscle imbalances or whether muscles are overactive, tight, underactive or weak.

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An example of a movement assessment is the overhead squat, where we look for movement patterns occurring at the shoulders, hips, knees and ankles that could cause injury. Once a deficiency is seen, we can recommend exercises – such as flexibility, muscle activation and strengthening exercises or a core stability program – to prevent injury.

Examples of flexibility training are foam rolling and stretching.

Muscle activation techniques strengthens muscles, such as the gluts, which are typically underactive or weak in overuse injuries of the low back and legs. Core stabilization programs progress through increasingly demanding movements while you stabilize your core muscles.

Coaches can prevent overuse injuries with proper education on sport technique and workload monitoring. You should not increase your time, distance or reps that you complete in a week by more than 10 percent from the week before. You should also start working on your general fitness two months before games begin and progress to working on mostly balance, flexibly and leg strengthen during actual season.

The National Athletics Trainers’ Association cautions against early specialization in sports, encouraging all young athletes to participate in multiple sports. If your child is participating in a sport for the entire year, he or she should rest for two to three non-consecutive months.

Also, young athletes should only participate on one team if practice and play includes five days or more during the week with that team.

For more information on prevention management or treatment of overuse injuries, reference the National Athletic Trainers’ Association position statement on prevention of pediatric overuse injuries at www.nata.org.

Gordon Williams has been an assistant athletic trainer with the Cleveland Browns since 2010. Prior to that, he spent 2007-09 as an athletic trainer for the Philadelphia Eagles. Williams serves on the USA Football Committee, NFL Electronic Medical Records Advisory Group and NFL Combine Medical Advisory Committee. He earned a bachelor’s degree in movement science from Texas Christian University in 2003 and a master’s degree in athletic training from California University of Pennsylvania in 2006. He is a certified athletic trainer (NATA), certified strength and conditioning specialist (NSCA), performance enhancement and corrective exercise specialist (NASM) and a full-body A.R.T. provider.