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Age and Running: Children and Adolescents, Elder People

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The Running Athlete

Abstract

Like any sport, running is affected by biological development, the body process of maturity and degeneration. Each phase of our lives, childhood, adolescence, and old age plays an essential role in this physiological development—lifetime effect. Therefore, to evaluate the development of sports skills, the sports physician must systematically assess the neurological, cognitive, somatic, and psychological functions before classifying a runner or athlete as a sports talent without considering the individual’s maturation phase. For most runners, the passion for running is born after overcoming their own physical limits for the first time. However, some of them will go beyond, dreaming of new physical challenges and, consequently, developing a trigger to adopt a non-stop behavior of faster-increasing training and running to reach their self-imposed goals—the “perfect” scenario for injuries. It may affect children, adolescents, and elderly runners indistinctly, where lower limb injuries are prevalent. The sports physician should be aware of inadequate running program regarding the volume, intensity, frequency of training, and muscle imbalances. Moreover, injuries prevention should identify runner’s biological body development, physical and psychological stress related to running or other sports practice, and its mental balance status—“Forrest Gump” runner’s behavior syndrome”.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Exercise and Sports Medicine, Department of Orthopedics, Rheumatology and Traumatology, School of Medical Sciences, University of Campinas —UNICAMP, Campinas, SP, Brazil

    Sergio Rocha Piedade

  2. School of Medical Sciences, University of Campinas—UNICAMP, Campinas, SP, Brazil

    Larissa Oliveira Viana & Bruno Paula Leite Arruda

Authors
  1. Sergio Rocha Piedade
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  2. Larissa Oliveira Viana
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  3. Bruno Paula Leite Arruda
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sergio Rocha Piedade .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre of Sports Traumatology, Koelliker Hospital, Torino, Italy

    Gian Luigi Canata

  2. Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Clinic, Montijo, Portugal

    Henrique Jones

  3. Sport Docs Franken, Nürnberg, Germany

    Werner Krutsch

  4. Centre d’Investigations en Médecine du Sport, Hôpital Hôtel Dieu – APHP, Paris, France

    Patricia Thoreux

  5. Policlinico Città di Udine, Udine, Italy

    Alberto Vascellari

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Piedade, S.R., Viana, L.O., Arruda, B.P.L. (2022). Age and Running: Children and Adolescents, Elder People. In: Canata, G.L., Jones, H., Krutsch, W., Thoreux, P., Vascellari, A. (eds) The Running Athlete. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65064-6_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-65064-6_5

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