Making plans for your child to attend summer camps for sports or a summer dance intensive? Many kids take the "Summertime, and the living is easy" route from a popular song. No worries about school, homework, projects or tests. Several other  young people test themselves over the summer...

Sports physicals offer golden opportunities to share information and listen to young patients. Sure, they frequently are viewed by parents and young athletes as more annoyance than necessity. It’s easy for sports physicals to turn into automatic answers to a list of questions. Those long checklists on sports...

Great to have master physical therapist Ziad Dahdul DPT, OCS back to share his thoughts on preventing kids shoulder pain. Ziad writes on kids shoulder pain as an orthopedic physical therapist and owner of Ignite Phyzio & Sports Performance, serving Orange and Los Angeles Counties. He...

Young athletes can be bombarded with many performance enhancing supplements that claim to build strength and assist in recovery. Use of some supplements can be clouded by lack of true scientific support, side effects, and financial cost. Like athletes have found for centuries, the quest for better...

Dance discomfort- comes with the territory of doing the usual hard work on the dance floor. Muscles hurt, toes feel cramps, the back is sore. Then there is the mental discomfort- am I jumping as high, as often, as well as I could be? These are common, everyday...

I often hear teenagers and families asking about protein to help build muscle. Damaged muscles occur during exercise, and protein is an essential muscle component that can help with repair and rebuilding. Every day, athletic teens need 1.2-1.5 grams per kilogram of weight. Lower amount is for endurance athletes,...

Deciding when to have a child specialize- playing just one sport or joining a higher level travel team- is a challenge faced by many families. It might mean stopping or limiting other sports or activities. There's definitely a time and financial commitment. Not to mention the worry about...

ActiveKidMD thanks Dr. Cale Franklin, pediatric resident at UCI/CHOC and future sports medicine physician, for his insight on strength training. Many concerned parents pose the questions, “should I allow my child to start lifting weights” or “how old can they start strength training?” I would like to...

Should dancers take PE class? Must be the start of a new school year. The questions (and request forms) are coming in. How does this pediatric sports and dance medicine specialist view dancers and Physical Education (PE) class? The benefits of having dancers take PE class Get outside to soak...

My dancers with foot, ankle, knee or even hip pain have taught me that the root cause often starts with abnormal motion of the big toe. Dancers however aren't the only ones who suffer from this problem. Recommend that any athlete, dancer, or other type of performer with ankle,...