BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. — The coronavirus pandemic caused sports and other after-school activities to come to a halt.
Now, a board-certified chiropractor is warning that if children jump back into activities too fast, the impact could be damaging.
Lately, Dr. David Rudnick has been busy treating children with a variety of sports injuries that he said are associated with overuse.
Rudnick said the injuries could be traced back to the inactivity children experienced during the lockdown earlier this year because of the pandemic.
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"Going and doing nothing and picking up where you left off is a recipe for disaster," Rudnick said.
Dancer Makaila Menning,13, is being treated for a recent injury.
Makaila said she went from dancing 15 hours a week to suddenly a month of no dancing. When she resumed dancing, that's when problems occurred.
"I got really tight," Makalia said. "I could barely do like half of what I was doing."
Then she noticed knee pain.
"Three, four, five, six months of downtime, you're going through a growth spurt that you're not accommodating to with your activity that you normally would have been working through," Rudnick said.
He said it is essential for children and adults to schedule out time to be active.
"Play, whatever you want to do, just get up and move, just no sitting around. Even if it's just around the house, dance party, pull it up on YouTube," Rudnick said.
He said children shouldn't spend more than 30 minutes sitting at a screen without getting up and moving.
"The parents should watch for prolonged forward neck flection. You should not be in this bent down position. It puts a lot of extra load on the back of the neck," Rudnick said.
Makalia said it's a lesson learned.
"It felt like the world kind of froze for a minute … I had to keep working and keep going," she said.