Lowry O'Mahony

Well, the upcoming summer holidays mean many children will be heading off to summer camps.

They'll be starting GAA camps and soccer tournaments, athletics, summer programs and all the rest of it.

And chartered physiotherapist Larry O'Mahony is with me now to talk about why injuries spike during the school holidays and what we can do about it.

Well, maybe the clue is in everything that I just said there, Larry, that they're doing so much more, aren't they, in terms of physical activity in the summer?

Yeah, thanks for having me, Clare.

Absolutely.

So for a lot of children, they're going from maybe having a winter season where they do very little.

And then now suddenly back in February, March, they might be back to two trainings and maybe a match.

And then when the summer holidays come, what you see is an increase in structured activity.

And that's your camps.

They could be at that for a couple of hours a day.

And maybe they're doing now a summer league.

For some kids, they might be in academy training or development squads.

And they're also hanging out with their friends.

OK, and so they're doing the cycling and the trampolining and the swimming.

And one thing we don't take into account enough is actually they have then less recovery time.

So you see like later bedtimes, maybe more screen time and then also less routine and maybe more travel.

So you're asking a lot more of the body and the body doesn't have as much time to recover.

And I think sometimes we can get confused looking at teenagers because sometimes they look very grown up, but actually a teenage, an adolescent body is so different to an adult body.

Okay, and they're growing as well, sometimes at a pace, you know, depending on what stage they're at.