omg,
It may be that the parents of most new gymnasts don’t appreciate the prevalence of injuries in the sport. Some few—like littlegymchampsmom, who inquired regarding the best way to help her daughter with the injuries that she expects her to accrue—clearly understand some of the risks, but I suspect that the majority of starry-eyed parents may not have heard that, say, gymnastics has one of the highest injury rates among NCAA sports, that spinal injuries are a serious problem among girls who remain healthy enough to advance to higher levels in the sport, or that medical studies indicate that at any given time half of female team-level gymnasts suffer from wrist pain (and that most of these girls suffer for long periods—although they may not tell their coaches or their parents).
It may not matter all that much: USA Gymnastics data suggest that half of the girls who begin to compete are gone before Level 6, perhaps before they can endure too many injuries. However, it doesn’t seem at all clear why so many girls leave so early. The exodus from the sport may be ascribed to the development of “other interestsâ€, but I wonder if some or much of that attrition is injury related: For example, studies show that , as I indicated, half of the girls have wrist pain, and that girls who have painful wrists can’t train as effectively as their uninjured teammates; the combination of painful workouts plus slow advancement compared to her peers might, I think, make those “other interests†seem relatively more attractive to an adolescent gymnast. Surprisingly, though, nobody seems to keep track of why girls really leave the sport, of their health at the time they exit, or of the long term effects of their training. It’s equally surprising that parents of young gymnasts don’t demand that information before committing their dear daughters to long training hours at a young age.
All we have, then, are snapshots. You might be interested in the December 2004 articles in the Orange County Register, for which about half of the roughly 300 members of the 1984-2004 Junior and Senior women’s national teams were interviewed. It’s painful reading: Almost all (93%) of the women who were interviewed reported breaking bones or requiring surgery for their gymnastics injuries, and three-fourths of those women continued to experience health problems related to gymnastics. Other medical studies suggest the risks related to gymnastics: for example, 12 of the 19 gymnasts invited to a recent national training camp had spinal problems such as degenerative disk disease. Oops.
The present situation is bad. The parents of most young gymnasts are either unaware of this or blithley accept it.