Stop by the waiting room and you’ll see them—ballerinas hobbled by bad hips, pitchers pained with Little League Shoulder, soccer players who cringe when they kick.
These kids may have been taken out the ballgame on a stretcher, but they hit the ball out of the park when they landed in Dr. Jordan D. Metzl’s waiting room. He’s a national all-star of doctors who specializes in sports medicine and not only enjoys sports but is also an accomplished athlete.
Dr. Metzl—a former college soccer player, 25-time marathon runner and sixtime Ironman triathlete—cares for more than 20,000 patients in his practice. 
In 2002, co-founded the Sports Medicine Institute for Young Athletes—one of the country’s first comprehensive centers to treat young athletes—at New York City’s Hospital for Special Surgery, an international beacon for orthopedics, rheumatology and rehabilitation.
“It’s a really busy practice, but it’s nice because I enjoy what I do,” said Dr. Metzl, who serves as the program’s medical director. “I get to combine what I love to do at home with what I do at work.”
It’s a win-win for New York City’s young athletes who seek medical attention. Dr. Metzl is easily one of the best in the business. Physicians named him as one of New York magazine’s top doctors, a feat that few other sports doctors in the country obtained. Dr. Metzl also happens to work at one of the best hospitals around; HSS – as the hospital is called – is the No. 1 orthopedic hospital in the country and one of the top 5 in rheumatology, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Kids aren’t the only patients coming to Dr. Metzl’s office. He specializes in sports medicine for all ages and levels, including pre-Olympic gymnasts and figure skaters. Even if you don’t recognize them in the waiting room, you may recognize other celebrity patients wandering around the hospital halls. HSS has several sports medicine orthopedic surgeons and non-surgical physicians on staff, as well as team physicians and athletic trainers for some of the biggest teams in professional and college sports, including the New York Knicks, New York Giants, New York Mets, USA Swimming and the Wendy Hilliard Rhythmic Gymnastics Foundation, to name a few.
So it’s no wonder, then, that Anne Kinney and her daughter, Dale, would drive from New Jersey to see Dr. Metzl. Dale, an avid runner, had to stop running for a long time because of a stress fracture in her femur. That changed, of course, after Dale saw Dr. Metzl.
Anne Kinney later e-mailed Dr. Metzl to express her gratitude.
“After missing an entire year of competing,” Anne Kinney wrote about her daughter, “she is now running pain free thanks to you!!!”
Dr. Metzl’s great at making athletes feel better, but he also focuses a lot of his time educating athletes, coaches, medical professionals and parents about how to prevent athletic injuries. You may have seen him on national television shows or in sports magazines talking about some of the same issues – equipment options, strength training, sports medicine for coaches, baseball injuries, gymnastics and dance injuries and health issues in female athletes.
“I really think that these kinds of messages need to be heard multiple times in multiple places,” Dr. Metzl said. “We want sports to be as healthy and safe as possible for all athletes.”
It’s also important, Dr. Metzl says, to know what’s best for your body. Not everybody’s body is
built to be a ballerina, he once had to tell an 11-year-old who suffered from hip and knee pains because of the way her hips turn out. It was a tough conversation, he remembered, but it was also an opportunity for the girl to explore new activities that she may love even more – and that aren’t so painful.“Our focus is always trying to get athletes back to doing what they want to do,” Dr. Metzl said. “Sometimes people just aren’t built for the sport they want to do. What I always try to do is channel that negative into a positive.”
He also works to dispel sports myths, including a fear among parents that one sport is more dangerous than others. The truth, Dr. Metzl said, is that most injuries fall into two categories: acute traumatic injuries, which are one-time injuries such as a concussion, or overuse injuries, which usually happen when athlete is repeating the same movements over and over again.
“The injuries tend to be sport specific,” Dr. Metzl said. That means that Little League pitchers are often coming in with sore shoulders and elbows, the result of throwing too many pitches, and soccer players most often have problems with their knees because of overuse.
Whatever the problem, Dr. Metzl is intent on solving and preventing it. He’s written two books about sports and young athletes and he hopes to keep spreading the word to help make sports safe and fun for everyone.
“Basically, the concept is to make sports healthy. I think all the hospitals around the country do a nice job,” Dr. Metzl said. “I’m just an enthusiastic doctor who is fortunate enough to attract enthusiastic patients.”
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For more information visit www.hss.edu or www.drjordanmetzl.com
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