Gymnastics is one of the most popular sports in the world, especially when it comes to female participation rates. While there are various gymnastic sports, such as rhythmic, acrobatic, aerobic, trampoline, tumbling, and so forth, artistic gymnastics has the highest participation rate.
Many parents start their children off in recreational gymnastics shortly after the child learns to walk. Overall, gymnastics is predominantly a youth sport, with more than 600,000 U.S. children participating in some form of club or school gymnastics. Even most elite competitive athletes only have careers spanning into their early to mid-twenties. Although gymnastics is an activity appropriately touted to increase flexibility, strength, coordination, balance, agility, grace, and stamina, it also simultaneously has the potential to cause injuries.
How Do Gymnastics Injuries Occur?
Most parents and participants don’t view gymnastics as a dangerous sport, but the increasingly difficult skill levels being introduced to children of younger ages; lengthy, high-intensity, and high-impact training sessions; and innumerable aerial events make gymnasts very prone to both overuse and traumatic injuries.
Data from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System estimates that yearly gymnastic injury rates are 4.8 per 1,000 gymnasts under 12-years-old and 7.4 per 1,000 gymnasts between the ages of 12 and 17. And, these injury rates only represent injuries treated within an emergency room. Countless unreported injuries are treated at home or by the gymnast’s coaching staff.
What Are Some Of The Most Common Injuries In Gymnastics?
Wrist Sprain
Gymnasts place a great deal of pressure on their wrist. Some tumbling routines exert forces two times greater than the gymnast’s body weight upon the wrist. Such forces often stretch or tear the tough bands of connective tissue in the wrist, called ligaments. In the wrist, there are several ligaments that connect the many tiny wrist bones to one another and that connect the wrist bones with the ulna, radius, and metacarpal bones. A wrist sprain is the medical terminology used for a stretched or torn ligament. Sprains are graded based on the degree of injury as follows:
Grade 1 - stretching or microscopic tearing of the ligament fibers.
Grade 2 - moderate tearing of the ligament fibers.
Grade 3 - more than 90% of the ligament fibers are torn.
Grade three sprains may also be accompanied by another injury called an avulsion fracture. This injury occurs when the ligament fibers are completely torn away from their bony attachment and pull a small piece of the bone off with it during the process.
SLAP Lesions
SLAP stands for “superior labral anterior posterior,” which is representative of a front (anterior) to back (posterior) labral tear at the top (superior) of the glenoid labrum. The injury is basically a tear or lesion to the fibrocartilagious rim around the glenoid cavity in the shoulder. Anatomically, it’s important to note that the glenoid labrum is thought to be cartilaginous extensions from the biceps brachii tendon. Therefore, the biceps brachii muscle-tendon unit may also be involved in severe SLAP lesions.
SLAP lesions may occur after a gymnasts misses a landing or otherwise falls with their arm outstretched, but it’s most often a repetitive use injury sustained during ring work.
SLAP lesions symptoms include the following:
* deep aching pain in the shoulder
* decreased range of motion
* shoulder weakness and instability
* shoulder swelling, redness, heat, and tenderness
* possible clicking, catching, or popping sensation (especially with overhead shoulder motions)
Menisci Injuries
Menisci injuries are often called torn knee cartilage. Menisci are rubbery crescent-shaped pieces of cartilaginous tissue. The knee has two menisci, one on the lateral side of the tibia and one on the medial side. They serve to cushion the ends of the tibia and femur bones inside the knee joint. The meniscus on the medial side is more apt to be injured since it's less movable by being attached to the medial collateral ligament. This attachment also makes menisci injuries more likely to accompany knee sprains.
The menisci may wear away or degenerate as a result of the repetitive jumping and sprinting knee movements involved in gymnastics. It can also become irritated, stretched, and suffer microscopic tearing when a gymnast doesn’t “stick” their landing or when the knee over-rotates during a tumble, dismount, or vault activity. Symptoms of a menisci injury include:
* localized pain, swelling, tenderness, redness, and heat
* a popping or clicking sensation as the knee is bent
* the knee joint may have limited range of motion or lockup if a piece of the torn cartilage is impinged within the joint
