Heel pain in 12yo DS when doing sport

[goldenticket]

DS usually does quite a bit of sport but has not been doing much over the summer. Now the football season's started, he's back playing but is finding he's pulling up virtually every time with terrible pain in his heels (at the back rather than underneath).

Googling seems to suggest this is quite common, so I'll go and see the doctor next week, but does anyone have experience of this and what was the treatment? Should I stop him attempting sport or will that make the problem worse? Is there anything I can do to help in the meantime?

TIA

Seen a programme last night I think, apparently we should be running on the ball of our feet ( this is what we did before shoes were invented), running this way does not put any stress pressure on the joints - but modern trainers make us run heel toe, so heels/joints are taking stress that our muscles should be - I think ( disclaner - just a telly watcher not an expert) !

Advice given to the runner in the show was to toe heel run and it worked for him !

Oh thanks, that's interesting. Was it on a terrestrial channel can you remember? Will try and find it.

That sounds just like it! Thanks herbietea.

Really hope it goes away soon and for your cross country runner Scribbler

ds had this when he went back to running training after the long summer holiday a couple of years ago - can't remember the official name for it, but it's something to do with the achilles tendon - caused by doing too much, too soon and worse after the summer holidays as the ground is usually harder than later on in the year

treatment was no running for a couple of weeks and ibuprofen, and then going back into it gradually - he's really a swimmer so managed to stay fit as it's only weight-bearing exercise which caused pain

it's not happened again since then (touch wood)