14 Jul Going too fast, exercising for too long or simply doing too much of one type of activity can strain your muscles and lead to an overuse injury 😳😳. This can happen to anyone and especially in children 👧🧑because children tend to become very focus in their sports of choice. ⚽️🏈🎾. To prevent overuse injuries in your child, consider mixing up the types of exercise your child does during the week and encourage your child to try different types of sports.

All exercise and physical activities fall into 4 basic categories—endurance, strength, balance, and flexibility. Each category of exercise has different benefits and doing them all will help to make exercising fun while reducing the risk of injury for your child 💪

1. Endurance Exercises
Endurance exercises increases your breathing and heart rate. They keep your heart, lungs, and circulatory system healthy and improve your overall fitness. Endurance exercises includes running 🏃‍♀️, swimming 🏊‍♀️, dancing 🕺🏻 and cycling 🚴‍♀️.

2. Strengthening Exercises
Strengthening exercises makes your muscles stronger. They keep your muscles and bones strong and healthy. Strengthening exercise include push ups, planking, chin ups, tug-o-war and rock climbing 🧗‍♂️.

3. Balance Exercises
Balance exercises improves coordination and balance to reduce trips and falls. They improve your body awareness and joint positioning to keep you upright. Balance exercises include hopping, jumping, walking on balance beams and gymnastics 🤸‍♂️.

4. Flexibility Exercises
Flexibility exercises stretch your muscles and helps to keep your joints looser. They prevent muscle tightness and injuries. Flexibility exercise include stretches, sit and reach, yoga 🧘‍♀️, Pilates and ballet.

Flexibility exercises tend to be the most neglected category of exercise for most adults and children. 😔

If your child is complaining of 😳 pain with exercise or after physical activities, the best thing to do is to reach out to one of our Expert Paediatric Physiotherapists on 📱 (02) 9790 4233 or DM us @myfavouritephysio to find out how Physiotherapy can help your child overcome their pain to get back to enjoying their games 🚀🚀🚀