When Is Too Much Really Too Much?

This season sees our youngest son entering secondary school, he has also decided to embark on a football career on the side of his rugby journey.

He has gone from doing one session of PE a week and the odd school fixture plus his club rugby commitments to five club commitments a week and school rugby and football plus PE. That is six days out of seven he has an after school or weekend commitment to sport. An extra six hours a week on top of his norm. Now, this may seem very little but add to that the transition to secondary school. That is some jump.

 If I was to say that all through primary there was never a sickness absence nor an injury through any sport would you believe it? Well I can proudly say that this is the case.

 Jump to the first seven weeks in secondary...

 

We have had an instance, where he made captain of the A team for the school rugby team, he woke that morning and said he wasn’t feeling great. Off he went to school feeling rather rubbish but said he thought it may be nerves. We all set off to watch the game after school and as I walked over to the pitches I could see a very green looking young man under his scrum cap. Another of the boys gleefully informed me that my son had had to have a snooze at lunchtime as he felt so rough, he bedded down under the table tennis tables for twenty minutes!  

He captained his team and they won but he was exhausted. Not even time to get in the shower by the time we arrived home. Straight to bed.

We have had coughs, colds, splutters and the dreaded Norovirus all in the space of seven weeks. We have also had a first on the injury side of things, my son is well known at his club for being the only player to never suffer injury. He puts his body on the line week in week out and has never complained that something hurts. He has had black eyes and bruises that we haven’t even noticed until after bath time, once the mud and grime reveal the true extent of his play for that day. Not once has he complained that he hurts.

Fast forward to this week. A thigh strain... on a scale of 1 to 10 it is 6!  I can’t remember the last time we used a painkiller, I have had to replenish the medicine cabinet with ice packs, Deep Heat, Cooling sprays and Ibuprofen.

So, when is too much sport really too much?

There have been reports in the past that recommend 14 hours a week and no more, any more could be just as damaging as no sport at all.

 

Too much time spent playing sports can be as bad as too little time for teens, a new study finds.

Swiss researchers found the greatest benefit seemed to be associated with 14 hours of sports a week. That's higher than European, American and World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations of at least seven hours of physical activity a week for adolescents.

Researchers Arnaud Merglen, at the University of Lausanne, and colleagues reported their findings online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

They asked more than 1 200 participants aged 16 to 20 in Switzerland about their levels of sports participation. In addition, they assessed the participants' physical and mental well-being using a WHO scale of zero to 25. Scoring below 13 indicated poor well-being.

Participants were evenly split between males and females and their average age was just under 18. About 9% were overweight or obese. The average well-being score for all the teens was 17.

Mental and physical benefits

Weekly sports participation of zero to 3.5 hours was considered low and seen in 35% of teens. Between 3.6 and 10.5 hours was considered average and seen in 41.5% of participants. High levels of 10.6 to 17.5 hours were reported by 18.5% of participants, and very high levels of more than 17.5 hours were reported by 5% of tens.

Teens in the low and very high groups were more than twice as likely as those in the average group to score below 13 on the well-being scale, according to a journal news release.

Peak scores of well-being were seen among teens who did about 14 hours of sports a week. However, the protective effect was reversed after more than 17.5 hours of sports a week.

Regular exercise is known to provide mental and physical benefits by reducing stress and anxiety, and by boosting self-esteem and brain power, the researchers said.

Although doubling the recommended weekly time spent playing sports to 14 hours seems to be good for the mental and physical health of teens, going beyond this seems to be harmful, the researchers concluded.

 

What do you think?