Young athletes should take care to avoid spine damage
Thinking back on his days as a high school wrestler in Ohio, Dr. David Wootton still cringes at the thought of the abuse he inflicted on his spine, especially his neck.
“There’s an exercise we did called ‘The Bridge,’ where you hold your body weight up for as long as possible with your neck by arching your head backwards on the mat,” Wootton says. “With what I know now after 35 years as a chiropractor, that’s not something I would not have done.”
Wrestlers are in full attack mode this time of year, while football players are getting back into the weight room to prepare for spring practice and the season to come. How they prepare is also a concern to Wootton, especially when it comes to younger athletes.
“Coaches are working spines way too hard, with kids lifting way too much weight for their spines to handle,” Wootton says.
But how much weight is too much?
“That can vary, because you have 300-pound individuals and 110-pound individuals lifting,” he says. “But — especially at the high school level — no athlete should ‘max out’ — by that I mean lifting as much weight as they can stand getting in one rep. Squads, dead lifts and leg presses are especially dangerous at that level.”
Wootton says this practice puts way too much stress on the spines and joints.
“Even worse, you can separate the growth plates from the vertebra in a still-developing spine. You put enough pressure on the spine with squats or dead lifts, the front half of the vertebra slides forward and the back stays put … never to reunite again,” says Wootton.
When does a spine lock into “adult mode”? Wootton says it usually happens between the ages of 18 and 22.
“As an athlete gets into college, it’s likely the vertebrae have developed and fused to the point where you can do more,” Wootton says.
He adds that a better rule of thumb for any weight program is to think reps instead of pounds.
“Instead of lifting max weight eight times, which is the usual length of a repetition in a weight program, find a weight you can lift 25 times. That takes a lot of the pressure off,” Wootton notes.
But Wootton adds that he doesn’t have to go to a weight room to cringe at the stresses young people are putting on their spines. Seeing a line of little kids getting off the school bus for kindergarten or primary school can also give him pause. And cause for alarm.
“You see these kids hauling around backpacks with five to 10 books inside. Some really little kids are toting 20 to 30 pounds on their back every day and really doing damage to the spine,” Wootton says. “I would never put more than 20 percent of a child’s body weight in a backpack.”
This story is provided and presented by The Wootton Clinic.