Children’s Heel Pain vs Screen Time
With young people, the idea of trying to keep them as active as possible, is really exciting for parents, and important for their general health, both physical and mental.
So when they develop an injury, and they’re prescribed retirement for a period from their sport, that’s pretty gutting for both them and for the parents.
We want to keep them as active as is practically possible. Severs, or children’s heel pain is probably the most common thing that we would see that would do this for young people. And the frustrating thing for me is that this doesn’t necessarily always need to be the case, we don’t need to be able to just prescribe total rest.
All we need to be able to do is implement a well-structured treatment regime that involves stretching the tight tissue down the back of the leg, educating about what the problem is and how it is best managed, making sure that the footwear is appropriate, and sometimes being selective about the amount and type of exercise that’s done.
Obviously, this is a continuum and some presentations are a lot more severe than others. So we can’t generalize too much. But I would estimate that in 90% of cases, if we follow some basic rules, we can allow the kids to still continue to play sport and work around this heel pain.
One of the main tools that I see that is very useful in this situation is the Asics Lethal range of rugby boots and football boots.
This positive pitch here equates a lot closer to a running shoe in that it has a positive elevation in through the back here. When the ground is soft, the heel tends to drop down, and that can increase the tension on the back of the heel which will be aggravating with the growth plate problem which is Severs.
So one of the steps that we can do is get into a positive pitch boot, such as the Asics Lethal range, have the condition diagnosed accurately and have a well-structured treatment regime.