For the second time in as many years, my daughter is feeling pain in the Achilles area. The first time was last year after the last cross country race of the season. It went away by itself after a few weeks. This year, it happened in training a few weeks ago. She did a kids track program in the summer as well as Junior Guard with no issues. Trying to understand why she was OK in the summer but seems to have issues in the fall, it occurred to me that she takes ballet classes that time of the year but not in the summer (and she also swims year long). That leads me to wonder whether there are incompatibilities between those 3 sports, or at least, an increase chance of Achilles injuries when combining those 3 activities? She has stopped running for now (an activity that she loves and is good at) and I don’t want her to resume it until we get a handle on what is going on. Can anybody recommend a doctor who understand those issues in kids in the Bay Area?
Achilles issues are common in young dancers (my daughter is 10 and there have been 2 girls in our studio with achilles issues).
But, more commonly in a girl that age: google Sever’s disease or calcaneal apophysitis. Very common.
I thought that the UIL didn’t allow kids to compete in cross country until they were in 7th grade… regardless, considering that she’s only 9 and running cross country and training for it I guess it could be Sever’s disease or calcaneal apophysitis from running so much, however you might look at her shoes. Two years ago when my daughter was 12 she began to complain about her Achilles during summer track. I’m extremely conservative in my approach with my children, and having suffered from an Achilles injury myself, I stopped her running altogether for two weeks. Then one day, out of curiosity, I checked out her shoes and discovered that her toes were almost to the end of the shoe and the back of the shoe (heel cup) was pushing against her achilles. I tossed those shoes, got her some new ones (a whole size larger!) and within a couple of more weeks her pain disappeared. It seemed that the tenderness was from the constant pressure of the shoes on her Achilles, and when that was relieved her pain disappeared. She runs year-round now and has run injury-free since then.
Just a thought.
She was doing the local USATF kids races. Training seemed moderate, twice a week. Thanks for your thoughts, I’ll check her shoes.
When you hear “cross country” you think high mileage… two days a week shouldn’t be a problem. Hopefully the shoes might be the culprit. In my daughter’s case once we changed shoes it took about three weeks for her pain to go completely away so be patient.
Is the term Sever’s disease still used?
Is the term Sever’s disease still used?
Sure. Same with other growth plate enthesopathies and developmental issues like Osgood-Schlaters, Legg-Calve-Perthes, etc.
Ok, we were taught to drop the term and use calcaneal apophysitis.
Not sure if that was the certain prof, or general consensus.
Also not really my area of expertise,
Thanks
Just to touch on the idea of the sports being incompatible, I would say a big fat no! I was a semi-professional ballet dancer and competitive runner when I was younger (started dancing at 3 and running at 8). If nothing else, they really complemented eachother. Definitely one thing I can say now that I’m not dancing anymore is that the ballet really helped with muscle balance. That said, the one injury that kept popping up for me was shin splints. Ballet does some goofy things to the feet/ankles and now as an adult I find that while the shin splints are extremely rare, achilles problems do pop up now and then and can be partly attributed, in my opinion, to dance - I have VERY loose ankles.
Ballet and running are a really uncommon combo (so far I’ve never met anyone else that did the two to the extent I did as a kid/teen), but a fantastic one!