Growing Pains, Sore Knees, and What's Normal

Somewhere around March, your goalie will start mentioning his knees.

Not dramatically. Just a comment on the stairs, or a stretch on the couch that wasn't there in January. And you'll find yourself trying to work out, from a kitchen doorway, whether this is the ordinary complaining of a body that's growing and training, or something that needs attention.

I want to be straight with you about what this article is. I'm a coach. I can't examine your athlete, I can't diagnose anything, and I'm not going to try. What I can offer is the pattern I see over seasons, and a clear short list of the things that are worth a call rather than a wait-and-see. The decision belongs to you and your athlete, and the person who actually answers the question is a clinician who can put hands on him.

The short version

Aches that move around, settle with rest, and don't stop him doing things are the ordinary background noise of a growing athlete in season.

The things worth getting looked at, rather than watching for another week: pain in one specific spot that's there every time he does a particular movement, pain that makes him limp or change how he moves, swelling, pain that wakes him at night, anything that follows a single identifiable incident, and anything that's still there after a genuine week of rest.

When in doubt, get it looked at. There is no prize for waiting.

What tends to happen over a season

Growth and training pull in opposite directions. Bones lengthen before the soft tissue around them catches up, which is why a kid mid-spurt often feels tight everywhere and moves like he's borrowed someone else's legs. That's also the stretch where his save mechanics temporarily fall apart, which is covered in its own article and is worth knowing about so you don't read it as regression.

The goalie position loads specific things repeatedly. Dropping into stance, driving off one leg, thousands of times. Any repeated pattern at an age when the body is changing tends to produce complaints somewhere, and the most common places are the ones doing the most repeating.

Fatigue accumulates from March. School season stacks practice on games on a heavy academic stretch, and by April a lot of athletes are running a deficit. This is where sleep stops being abstract — chronic short sleep across a season is associated with a meaningfully higher injury rate in adolescent athletes, and the pooled odds ratio in a 2019 meta-analysis was about 1.58.

And in-season volume is supposed to come down. That's the whole logic of periodization and it's why this program cuts session length during school season rather than adding to it. A body that's competing doesn't also need to be built.

Suggestions on what you can do

Ask better questions than "does it hurt." Where exactly, does it hurt doing one specific thing or all the time, is it worse during or after, has it changed in a week. Specific answers are what a clinician needs anyway, and asking them teaches him to notice his own body — which matters more at sixteen than at nine.

Track it for a few days, in writing. A note on your phone beats memory, and a pattern over a week is far more informative than a snapshot on a Tuesday.

Rest is a real intervention, not a cop-out. A genuine week off — not a light week, a week — resolves a great deal of this. It's also the thing families resist most in season, which is exactly when it works best.

Protect the sleep first. It's the highest-leverage thing in this whole article and it costs nothing.

Loop in his coach. Not for a diagnosis, but because a coach who knows he's sore can manage his reps, and because repeated pain in one spot sometimes traces back to something mechanical that's visible from the field.

Go to a clinician for the actual answer. A physician, a sports-medicine doctor, a physical therapist, or the athletic trainer if his program has one. Take the notes you've been keeping.

The short list worth a call

Any of these, sooner rather than later:

• Pain in one specific point that shows up reliably with one specific movement
• A limp, or any change in how he moves that he isn't choosing
• Swelling, warmth, or visible difference between one side and the other
• Pain that wakes him up at night
• Pain that followed a single identifiable moment — a collision, a landing, a twist
• Anything still present after a real week of rest
• Anything he's hiding, or that he's stopped mentioning while still moving differently

That list is about when to ask, not about what the answer will be. I don't know what's going on with your athlete, and neither does anyone else who hasn't examined him.

A few things worth avoiding

Try not to let "growing pains" become the family's default explanation. It's a real phenomenon and it's also the phrase that gets used to postpone a phone call.

Go easy on playing through it as a virtue. A goalie who learns that reporting pain costs him playing time will stop reporting pain, and the one that actually matters will arrive three weeks late and worse.

Try not to diagnose it from the internet, mine included. Symptom lists online will produce both false alarm and false reassurance, and neither is useful.

And don't let a tournament schedule make the decision for you. There'll be another tournament.

The thing I'd want you to take

Most of it settles. Genuinely — most of what a young athlete complains about over a season is the ordinary cost of growing and training, and it resolves with rest and time.

The skill isn't knowing which is which from a kitchen doorway. It's having a low enough threshold for asking somebody who can actually tell.

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Rest is scheduled into this program every week, and in-season volume comes down rather than up — by design, on the ADM ladder. Three real days of a fifth-grade week are open on the site, no signup. Take a look at the free week.

Coach Greg — LAX Goalie Hub

This is general information from a coach and is not medical advice, a diagnosis, or a substitute for examination by a qualified clinician. If you are concerned about your athlete's pain, injury, or any persistent symptom, seek medical care — and do not let anything written here delay that.