They limp in to work on Monday morning, hurting from a bad move on the softball field, a twisted ankle on the basketball court, a dive on the ski slopes.
If they’re lucky, their injuries are mild and will heal quickly. But for thousands of “weekend warriors” each year, doctors and industry experts say, the damage is serious, requiring emergency-room visits, specialist treatment, and even surgery.
In fact, doctors say, weekend warriors are far more prone to injury than regular athletes, who tend to be leaner, stronger and more limber and resilient. And two trends are reshaping the world of sports medicine: baby boomers are staying active – and getting hurt – well past middle age, and the ranks of seriously injured women are growing.
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“My practice has changed dramatically over the last 15 or 17 years,” said Dr. Paul Fadele, head of sports medicine at University Orthopedics in Providence. “I used to see just big fat football players, and then all these women started to come in – not just teenage girls, but also women in their 50s who want to ski and blow their knees out.”
Fadele recently did knee surgery on a 61-year-old man who plays on a Rhode Island softball team that competes nationwide.
“Who in the world would have expected that?” he said. “Sports has dramatically increased. People now well into their 70s are skiing. People in their 60s want their knees reconstructed so they can keep going. I couldn’t have dreamed that. When I started, if you treated someone over 30, it was rare.”
The rise in recreational athletes has fueled a steady growth in the U.S. sports product market, now estimated at $70 billion by SGMA International, a trade group. It has also boosted the first-aid and sports medicine markets, now at about $1.5 billion each, with healthy growth in everything from pain relievers to knee braces.
And at practices like University Orthopedics, where the waiting rooms were once full of lean, muscular athletes, there’s now a whole other set of patients whose daily exercise consists of walking from the desks to the water fountain.
“We are just getting busier and busier and busier,” Fadele said. “We have a very sedentary lifestyle in America, so it’s hard to get people getting up at 5 in the morning or working out every day to stay limber. And then they go out and they go crazy.”
Baby boomers, once again, are leading the pack.
In 2000, a U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission study showed that sports injuries among people ages 35 to 54 had increased by about 33 percent from 1991 to 1998. Boomers’ injuries in 16 sports produced more than 365,000 emergency room visits in 1998, the commission found. When regular doctor visits are included, the group estimated, boomers were treated for more than 1 million sports injuries, at a cost of more than $18.7 billion.
And sports participation, regular and casual, has continued to rise. Last month, SGMA International’s “U.S. Trends in Team Sports” report showed that 35.4 million Americans played basketball, for example, including a large number of adults. The average male beach volleyball player is 33; slow-pitch softball players’ average age is 29.
The influx of women is also visible. Health club memberships have almost doubled since 1990, to 39.4 million, another recent SGMA International study found. Women make up more than 60 percent of participants in fitness activities, the trade group reported: aerobics, yoga, fitness walking, cardio kickboxing, etc.
A recent study by insurer Kaiser Permanente found football, baseball, soccer, skiing and basketball – mostly male-dominated sports – accounted for up to 78 percent of sports injuries. But while women’s choices may seem less risky, they too often end up at the doctor as well, especially when they go from zero exercise to overexertion.
When one popular fitness center opened not long ago, “I was inundated with people who got injured,” said Dr. Michael J. Belanger, a sports medicine specialist at the Center for Rehabilitative Medicine, Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island.
Women are also more prone to one serious problem: ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) injury, the most common serious knee injury, and one that often requires surgery. Overall, about 200,000 ACL injuries occur annually in the United States, one study found, and 60,000 to 75,000 ACL reconstructions are performed each year.
Older “weekend warriors” are also disproportionately prone to serious injuries, Fadele said. For example, “when you’re younger, you might injure your shoulder with a dislocation,” he said. “As you’re older you injure it with a rotator cuff tear.”
Weekend warriors can get some protection by buying high-quality gear for their sport of choice, or when applicable, protective gear such as helmets – increasingly common among skiers, Belanger said. But some popular items, such as knee wraps, are nowhere near as effective as common-sense precautions, doctors say.
“Warming up and stretching is dramatically more important,” said Belanger.
Most of all, Fadele and Belanger said, athletes can reduce their injuries by getting in better shape. A recent tip sheet for baby boomer athletes from the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine specifically warns against “weekend warrior” habits.
“Compressing your physical activity into two days sets you up for trouble and doesn’t increase your fitness level,” the tip sheet says. “Try to get at least 30 minutes of moderate physical activity every day.”
