Sparring - A medical implication - Part 3

October 18th, 2007 at 22:23 · Filed Under Injuries, Karate, Medical, Sports · 19 Comments 

To continue from previous topic here and here. Now, let us focus on injuries in children. Children suffers greater risk of injuries than adult because they are in their tender growing age. Children and adults share the same risk for injury of the bones. However, child’s bones are subject to a unique injury called growth plate fracture. Growth plate fracture requires immediate medical attention because long-term consequences may include limbs that are crooked or of unequal length.

What is growth plate?

Growth plate or physis is an area of developing bone tissue often near the ends of long bones (such as femur), between the widened part of the shaft of the bone or the metaphysis and the end of the bone or the epiphysis.

The long bones of the body do not grow from center outward, instead, it grows at each end of the bone around the growth plate. The growth plate is the last portion of the bone to ossify or harden, which causes it susceptible to fracture. Because muscles and bones develop a different speeds, a child’s bones are weaker than the surrounding connective tissues or ligaments.

When a child is practicing free sparring or jiyu kumite in sports karate (or Tae Kwon Do) for example, the constant body bouncing introduces stress every each time the child landed on the ground. This may cause or retard the growth of the bones by injuring the growth plate. The child’s bones may become crooked due to the repetitive stress which the bones have to withstand.

Excessive kicking motion will further weaken or injure the already weak connective tissues or ligaments mentioned earlier. Take mawashi-geri or roundhouse kick for example, when the child misses the target, his/her leg will snap in the air. Without hitting a target, the momentum of the kick cannot be transferred and thus snapping of the leg will injure the knee by absorbing the momentum of the kick. All these injuries are long-term.

Children’s bones heal faster than adult’s. This gives two important consequences. First, it is important for a child with injury to see a doctor as quickly as possible to receive proper medical treatment before it starts to heal. Ideally to see an orthopedic particularly if manipulation to align the bone is necessary. Second, the immobilization period required for healing is shorter than adult.

Risk Factors

Who is at risk?

  • Children near the end of their growth period are particularly vulnerable compared to children of other age.
  • Boys’ risks are twice the girls’.
  • More than one third of growth plate injuries occur in competitive sports.
  • About 20% of growth plate fractures occur during recreational activities such as biking or skateboarding.

Are you willing to subject your children to such injuries for participating sparring or kumite and suffer long-term effects for their entire lives?

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Research on Sports Injuries

October 8th, 2007 at 0:40 · Filed Under Blogging, Injuries, Medical, Sports · Comment 

After reading many articles about sports injuries, kinesiology and other sports medicine related articles, it spurs my interest to know more about the medical implication of sparring (or kumite) in competitive martial arts such as karate-do. The injuries in children are most misunderstood amongst parents and martial arts instructors.

A lot of this medical knowledge has been known thousands of years ago by the Chinese martial artist without any sophisticated medical equipment. Today, we have all resources to learn about these injuries but people ignore the facts and the potential harms. Why? Read more about the medical implication on sparring here.

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Sparring - A medical implication

October 8th, 2007 at 0:10 · Filed Under Injuries, Karate, Medical, Sports · 6 Comments 

Last year, I wrote an article about injuries in karate. You can find the article here.

Many modern martial arts practice free sparring between two persons. In karate, free sparring or jiyu kumite, like many modern contact martial arts, such as Tae Kwon Do, Muay Thai and many more, are practiced widely as one of the training regime to strengthen physically and mentally and also often training for tournament. Free sparring events have been fabulous attraction. We can see sparring events are divided into three major age groups, children, teenagers and adults. In some sports martial arts such as TKD, protective gears are used to protect torso, shins and knees. But none can provide absolute protection from injuries.

Very often, we can see these tournament ‘fighters’ have got bruises on their limbs and sometimes on their bodies and heads. These bruises are actually internal hemorrhage where blood vessels have ruptured and cause bleeding. Together with the hemorrhage, there could be thrombosis or formation of blood clot along the wall of a blood vessel. Thrombosis can cause many medical complication, such as infarction and may also cause cancer over time when the thrombus is not cleared up by our body immune system. These medical complication will usually cause some other illness later in life which is difficult to trace back to the cause or injury suffered from a tournament many years ago.

In children, sparring is a very dangerous activities and extremely hazardous to their health. Children’s bones, joints and tendons are very soft and still in formation. An injury may cause serious health problem later in their lives.

IMHO, free sparring should not be practiced in martial arts as it causes destruction more than strengthening good health. Sparring is an evolved form of male chauvanism and the product of capitalism of commercializing tournament. Commercialization has become a key for a martial art to continue to survive in this capitalism world. Without a tournament, there will be no handsome income and publicity for the martial arts organization. Tournament has also become an instrument for marketing oneself and one’s training school if he has won many titles which highly sought after by ignorant and naive people.

Martial arts should be practiced in a non-violent way which encourages only growth and strengthening of oneself and partners. Sparring encourages violence and initiative to attack rather than defense which is contrary to the concept of olden martial arts teaching.

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