Osgood-Schlatter's Disease

I had Osgood Schlatter's Disease myself in both knees as a kid. Mum entered some fun-runs in the 80's and we used to go running together. I was training more than I should have for cross-country in years 5, 6, and 7, and suffered terribly. Terrible night pain. I used to cry. Mum took me to a GP who confirmed the diagnosis with an x-ray and told me to stop running. Crazy sounding diagnosis. Absolutely bizarre to my 10 year old ears.

I ran less, and it eventually stopped hurting. I've still got decent bumps on my tibial tubercles to show for it.

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Osgood-Schlatter's is an overuse injury of the spot where the quadriceps muscle attaches on the front of the knee (tibial tubercle). It’s the tendon where the quad anchors onto the tibia. It gets sore with too much running, jumping, and kicking. Usually 9-12 year olds. Quite often if they’re having a bit of a growth spurt while they’re doing a lot of training. The body is busy spending its resources on the growing, and so the recovery between training sessions doesn’t keep up.

It’s usually sore after training when you cool down. It can ache in bed at night.

We say that it is self-limiting, which means it eventually gets better when you stop growing, but who wants to wait that long?

There’s no long-term problems from it. Once it stops hurting it’s all OK.

It doesn’t need an x-ray or a scan, or any injections or surgery. It's an easy clinical diagnosis and simple conservative management.

DO:

• Try and get to bed earlier. The knee hurts more if you've stayed up a bit later this week.
• Recover after training with a Sustagen or similar.
• Ice pack 20mins, 3/day, particularly when it's sore after training.
• The exercise for it is: hang on for balance > single leg squat (chest up, not leaning forwards) down to where it starts to be sore > stay there for 30 seconds > 3 reps of a 30 sec hold, 2/day (so 6/day).

DON’T:

• When it’s sore you’ve got to cut back on running / hopping / jumping / kicking. So that might mean drop 30mins from a training session. Or do a session or two less this week. Or avoid the sprint work and long kicks in a session - just jog around.

It’s really a matter of adjusting the running load day-to-day depending on how sore it is. If it’s sore - do less.

It's an injury that needs managing through the season. I try and get kids to do a bit less running at training and save it for game day.  If it's sore on game day and you need to keep playing, it's safe, in that, it's not going to snap or pop. But it will hurt more for longer if you push through, which is what just has to be done some times.

​Funny sounding name. Not funny at all when it's sore.