Teen Girls Need Supervision To Avoid Injuries While Lifting Weights

Any fitness expert will tell you the importance of resistance training and lifting weights for building the body’s strength and endurance. So it is natural that teen girls who want to qualify to play in sporting teams such as volleyball, soccer and swimming, look to do weights to try and get picked.

Personal trainers however advise caution how teens lift and that the exercises should not be too challenging for growing bodies.

Bodies are still changing from month to month for teenagers and they are still “growing into themselves (and) finding their balance” according to Personal trainer Terri Whitmore.

The supervision of a trained individual or a fitness expert becomes vital here, because recent studies are showing that teen girls are injuring themselves at alarming rates when their lifting is not properly supervised.

According to research conducted by the Center for Injury Research and Policy at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio gym injuries on machines and from free weights rose 143 percent among teen girls in the years between 1990 and 2007.

Today weight training is far more important and a widespread activity for high school sports persons than it was before; it is in fact a major aspect of being on any team now according to Christy Collins, a co-author of the study.

In the study, there were more crushed fingers and sprained wrists among the girls and it is therefore the girls that need to be more careful when working out; with lack of proper supervision being the chief cause of the injuries.

Source: SF Gate