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Guidelines to Prevent Cheerleading Injuries

Guidelines to Prevent Cheerleading Injuries

Cheerleading has evolved from leading the crowd in cheers at football games to a competitive, sport featuring  acrobatic stunts performed by a group of athletes– and as a result the number and severity of injuries from cheerleading has also surged.
Cheerleading accounts for 66 percent of all catastrophic injuries in high school female athletes over the past 25 years. Risk factors for cheerleading injuries include previous injury, cheering on hard surfaces, higher body mass index, performing complicated stunts, and inadequate coaching. As in other sports, cheerleading injury rates increase with competition level and age.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has made key recommendations for preventing injuries, including:

Fitness Routine of a CheerleaderThe target of a cheerleader’s fitness regime should be-conditioning, strengthflexibility and Joint range of motion.

Most injuries are sprains and strains to the lower extremities, followed by head and neck injuries, so fitness needs to be a top priority.

Ref:
The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 60,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults. For more information, visit www.aap.org.

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