WAG ankle injuries- Should I be worried?

[juststartingout]

My daughter's gym seems to be plagued with ankle injuries lately. In her group of about 14 girls we have had 5 or more ankle injuries. We have a 7 yo who fractured hers doing backhandsprings on a tumble track (this girl could do them on floor) and has reinjured hers 3 more times since. The original injury had her out all last summer and then she has been out wks at a time with every reinjury. We had another girl 9yo injure hers doing a layout on floor and is still wearing a brace and needing to sit out periodically because it's bothering her. The last incident was on Tues. we had a girl 8yo roll her ankle doing leaps. She has to wait a day or so for the swelling to go down before they can determine if there is a fracture. While these girls warm up every day I never see them roll their ankles or do anything to stretch or strengthen their ankles. I would think after so many injuries that the coaches would be extra careful in this area. These injuries have all been in the last year. Is this normal or is it too many?

 

[SurpriseGymMom]

I would be wondering about them not warming their ankles up too, that seems necessary.... But our gym DOES warm up ankles and we have five girls in boots right now. Two of them were just freak accidents that happened in gym with everyone watching.
Two weeks ago my older daughter rolled her ankle doing a leap in dance class, after 2hrs of ballet. Her ankles were most definitely warmed up, lol! She was fine after a few days of RICE though, luckily.
I would be concerned if there are clear indicators that the coaches are having them do way too many reps of stressful things (ok, everything in gymnastics is stressful to the body...) and that's resulting in injuries.
Accidents can happen anywhere. Overuse and stress injuries are a different matter...

 

[Gymishome]

To the girls that kept injuring the same ankle, it shows that they are not following through with correct rehabilitation exercises. When you sprain an ankle the ligaments get stretched and when they heal, it's more likely to happen again since it gets wobbly and unstable. It needs to be strengthened by resistive exercises like thera band work. It's seems to me like the coaches aren't enforcing any rehabilitation which is resulting in these repetitive sprains.

 

[Deleted member D3987]

My daughter's gym seems to be plagued with ankle injuries lately. In her group of about 14 girls we have had 5 or more ankle injuries. We have a 7 yo who fractured hers doing backhandsprings on a tumble track (this girl could do them on floor) and has reinjured hers 3 more times since. The original injury had her out all last summer and then she has been out wks at a time with every reinjury. We had another girl 9yo injure hers doing a layout on floor and is still wearing a brace and needing to sit out periodically because it's bothering her. The last incident was on Tues. we had a girl 8yo roll her ankle doing leaps. She has to wait a day or so for the swelling to go down before they can determine if there is a fracture. While these girls warm up every day I never see them roll their ankles or do anything to stretch or strengthen their ankles. I would think after so many injuries that the coaches would be extra careful in this area. These injuries have all been in the last year. Is this normal or is it too many?

either they have had some really bad luck or the problem is systemic.

 

[juststartingout]

They don't do lots of reps of anything so I wouldn't think overuse. As a matter of fact they only tumble on the spring floor 1 day a week and not always then. Usually they tumble doing just the round off on the spring floor and then the handspring and layout onto a mat. So to me it just seems like weak ankles. These girls are just so young and they aren't working high level skills yet, it just seems crazy for so many to be injured.