Phase 01
Pain
Calm it down, and explain it.
Hands-on work settles the irritated tissue, and your athlete hears in plain language what is actually hurt and what is not.
What We Treat
Teen Sports Injuries treatment in North Liberty.
An injury isn’t only an injury. Your athlete loses the thing they’re known for and the room they’re known in, and “rest it and see” gives them nothing to hold onto. A cause-first evaluation gets them a plan with milestones they can see.
Sound Familiar?
Does this sound like your athlete?
- They’re playing through pain and not telling their coach
- The same knee or ankle flares up every single season
- Pain on the stairs, swelling after practice, and a shrug when you ask
- They’ve gone quiet since the injury and stopped showing up to games
- Somebody already told them to just rest it, with no plan after that
- There’s a tryout, a camp or a season on the calendar and nothing lined up
Two or more? Keep reading.
Why It Happens
A sidelined athlete is carrying more than a sore knee.
A teenage body is a moving target. Growth outpaces strength, so tendons and growth plates absorb load the muscles aren’t ready for yet. Add a year-round schedule, one sport, and off-season lifting with more enthusiasm than technique, and the same joint keeps paying the bill.
The part that gets skipped is what being hurt does to a teenager. Sport is where their identity lives, and most of their friendships with it. Pain and time away affect mood and confidence, and the pressure to come back early is real: from coaches, from teammates, and loudest of all from themselves. We are not mental health providers, and this is not therapy for anxiety or depression. What we do is account for it. Your athlete gets the injury explained in plain language, one-on-one with a licensed physical therapist, and a cause-first evaluation that looks at why this joint keeps losing. Push through it instead and the trade is a few weeks now against a bigger injury and a longer absence later.
The Honest Truth
Waiting doesn’t make it wait on you.
If you keep waiting
- The rest of your body starts compensating, and the compensations start hurting too
- Flare-ups get closer together, and take longer to settle each time
- You move less to avoid the pain, which weakens the exact things that were protecting you
If you start this week
- Visit one is a cause-first evaluation, and you leave knowing what we found
- Hands-on treatment starts the same day, not after a second appointment
- You get a plan with an endpoint: a real one, not an open tab of visits
Nobody regrets starting too early. Plenty of people tell us they wish they had come in sooner.
How We Fix It
The same four phases. Built for their sport.
You’ve already asked around and collected four different answers. That’s exactly the kind of parent who does well here. Natalie Johnston, MPT, is a Fellow in Pain Sciences with 24 years behind her, so your athlete gets their pain explained, not waved off. Every plan has an endpoint.
Phase 02
Prime
Restore the motion.
Mobility and control return in the injured joint and the ones above and below it, which is where the real problem often started.
Phase 03
Perform
Rebuild for the game.
Strength, landing, cutting and lifting technique, trained at the speeds and loads their sport actually asks for.
Phase 04
Prevent
Return on milestones, not hope.
They clear measurable checkpoints before full participation, so going back is a decision you can defend to a coach. That’s the endpoint.
My son injured his knee during a weight lifting incident while training in the off season. I reached out to Natalie Johnston’s office in hopes of getting him seen quickly before summer lifting and conditioning began. He was experiencing pain, mostly when using the stairs and some swelling. Not only was Natalie able to accommodate our schedule very quickly, she provided some easy to understand exercises for him to work on in clinic and at home. Overall, the experience was great and my son really benefited from her instruction. Thank you Natalie!
Shared by Ashley C. · Parent of a teen athlete
Knee pain on the stairs and swelling after an off-season lifting injury
Seen quickly, with exercises he could do in clinic and at home
Teen Sports Injuries
In her own words
Questions, Answered
What parents ask before booking.
Sometimes yes, sometimes not yet, and the honest answer depends on what is injured and what their sport asks of it. At the evaluation you find out which activities are safe to keep, which need modifying, and which need to wait, with the reasoning attached so your athlete is not simply being told no. Where we can keep them involved with the team, we do, because staying connected to it matters.
Rest can settle an angry tissue, but rest does not build anything. Strength, control and load tolerance only come back when you train them. If your athlete goes straight from resting to full practice, the tissue meets the same demand that hurt it in the first place, which is how one injury turns into a pattern. Rest and then rebuild is a plan. Rest on its own is a pause.
Not clinically. We are not mental health providers and this is not therapy. What we do is take it seriously. Your athlete gets the injury explained in plain language, milestones they can watch themselves clear, and a say in their own plan, because being sidelined with no end in sight is discouraging for anybody and visible progress helps. If they need more support than that, we will say so and encourage you to loop in your pediatrician or a counselor.
Book Your Visit
Ready when you are.
Request a time and a real person calls you back. No phone tree. No ‘someone will reach out.’ Just a plan.
- Hours Mon-Fri: 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
- (319) 382-2743 Prefer to talk now? Call us.
- No referral needed in Iowa
4.9 · 79 Google reviews
Typical response: under 2 business hours
Step 1 of 5
Request sent.
That’s the hard part done. We’ll call during business hours to lock in your time.
Visit Us
Care this good, this close.
Motion Matters Physical Therapy and Wellness
- 660 West Cherry St. Suite 2, North Liberty, IA 52317 (opens in a new tab)
- (319) 382-2743
- Fax: (319) 359-4114
- natalie@ptmotionmatters.com
- Mon-Fri: 8:00 am - 5:00 pm