Osgood-Schlatter in Female Athletes: No, You Can’t Do a Few Stretches For Your Knee (You NEED a FULL PROGRAM!)

25 Jun Osgood-Schlatter in Female Athletes: No, You Can’t Do a Few Stretches For Your Knee (You NEED a FULL PROGRAM!)

“Do you have a few stretches for my knee?” – every young female athlete with knee pain.

This won’t work.

To solve stubborn knee pain during growth spurts, a young girl needs a FULL PROGRAM that addresses strength, flexibility, mobility, and proper load management of her sport.

However, I totally get that when a young girl feels pain in the knee, she wants to quickly resolve the issue, and she believes the tightness will be relieved with a magical stretch she can do a few times a week at home.

Sadly, I wish this were the case, but it isn’t.

With Osgood-Schlatter in growing girls, the solution is more multi-faceted.

It is a condition that affects girls ages 11-14 during their most rapid period of growth. Because the bones are growing much faster than the muscles and tendons, the quadriceps muscle becomes tight and the patellar tendon becomes inflamed.

During this time, girls are also increasing in fat mass and fat free mass, so they are learning how to control their bodies with extra weight.

The quadriceps and patellar tendon become more aggravated the more jumping, cutting, running and changing of direction a female athlete does in her sport.

In most cases, girls will experience the most pain after practices and games.

Solutions

This isn’t an issue to be brushed under the rug. Even if the pain is small, go seek out a professional who works with youth female athletes. Additionally, take inventory of when the pain is at its highest. If the pain is bad (6/10 or higher) after practices and games, then cutting back is your best bet. A young female athlete will not fall behind.

In fact, if she gets care immediately, she will not be out for as long as she would be if she waited and ignored the problem.

Too, taking the conversation back to the beginning: a female athlete can’t stretch her knee. She can only stretch the surrounding muscles (quads, calves) and work on mobility of the hips and ankles to help her pain. Too, she must also strengthen the muscles that safeguard the knee from the high forces in her sport.

To summarize, here are solutions for Osgood-Schlatter:

• Cut back on playing load (even if 1 practice a week, or less minutes in the game)
• Focus on strengthening quadriceps, calves, glutes and hamstrings
• Targeted quad and calf stretches to improve mobility and relieve the knee
• Improve recovery nutrition (protein and carbs for muscle recovery and Omega 3s to combat inflammation)

Here are some strength and recovery exercises I have in my menu for knee pain but keep in mind, they will look different for each individual athlete! Some will start with Wall Sits, Spanish Squats, or progress to single leg isometrics.

Lunge Hold

Banded Deadlift

SL Deadlift

Quad Foam Roll

Please do not wait to take care of this issue.

Begin prioritizing strength training, load management, and recovery. Too often, I have seen girls wait too long, only to develop more pain in their knee, as well as compensations that impact their overall explosiveness and change of direction speed. It’s a lose-lose.

Please work with a professional to get an individualized program based on your daughter’s age, training history, pain level, and sports schedule.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Erica Mulholland is a former college 3x All-American soccer player and now Hall of Famer from Johns Hopkins University. She holds a Master of Science in Exercise Science and has been helping female athletes of all sports with speed, agility, strength, power, and conditioning for over 13 years. She has worked with soccer, lacrosse, track, volleyball, softball, and basketball girls, and has inspired her athletes to strength train not just for sport, but for life.

Her athletes have gone on to play college sports at University of North Carolina, University of Maryland, Pittsburgh, University of Southern California, University of Detroit, Mercy, Northwestern, Eastern Carolina University, Georgetown, West Point, University of South Florida, University of Charleston, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, Rutgers, Towson University, and have gone on to play for professional various clubs in Europe.

Of course, she is proud of her athletes who made it to the college and pro levels, but she is most proud of her girls who stick with being strong and healthy for a lifetime. The training she does is about getting into good habits young, so girls can take these tools with them even after sports end.

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