Sport Specialization
In the last article, we talked about how important resistance training is for youth and that it can be safe and effective in young athletes. Another major topic in youth sports is specialization. This is the idea of an athlete focusing solely on a single sport at a very young age. Why this happens is that people really want their kid to be successful. And what’s typically the best way to get really good at something? It’s to practice that one thing a lot. Typically, the debate revolves around should a kid participate in one sport or in multiple sports. The idea behind only participating in one sport is that the athlete gets to focus only on the movements required to be successful at that sport. On the flip side is the argument that participation in multiple sports allows the athlete to learn a variety of movements and skills thus giving them more experiences to apply to each sport.
The controversy is all about whether or not this kind of specific focus will make a major impact on the young athlete’s abilities in the future. Like will this make them a superstar or will it actually hurt them. Ultimately, too many believe that outstanding success will happen, that focusing on one sport will make a kid a superstar in the chosen sport. However, research is showing otherwise. Moesch et al. (2020) in their study on young athletes found that elite athletes specialized at later age. The athletes that accumulated less hours in one particular activity and just increased the intensity of the work in late adolescence were more likely to reach the elite level. A big part of this is allowing the young athlete to develop. During this time, they are growing, learning new things, learning how their body moves. It is through experiences during this time that the individual learns the things they like, things they are good at, and the things that they want to work on. This discovery component is critical. It allows development and growth because when an individual gets so locked into one specific thing, they lose sight of everything else that’s going on and many can lose their passion or excitement for it. It can also lead to overuse injuries due to massive amounts of repetitive movements. Take baseball as an example, a young athlete starts to specialize and thus is throwing a lot multiple times per week. This means that they are overstressing young, developing muscles without allowing enough recovery time. In cases like this, tendinitis, tendinosis, and other overuse injuries become very common. Being careful with how much of one specific activity a young athlete does in a single period of time can work to combat these negative effects.
More specifically, this is letting the young athlete try out different movement patterns. Even if they really love football, playing basketball will force them to learn and utilize their bodies in a novel way. In this process, there can be a transfer effect of the athlete learning foot work in basketball that can then help them on the football field. Basically, it is allowing the young athlete to develop physical attributes overall. McGowan et al. (2020) found that incorporating a balance between free play and organized practice was critical in athleticism as well as decreased injury chances. Free play is not just letting the athletes do what they want, instead it is providing an environment for them to try things and learn on the fly. Think of scrimmages. In these scenarios, athletes are able to try out that between the legs dribble or the changeup they’ve been working on with feedback from their environment. More found from McGowan et al. (2020) was an increased injury risk of 0.88x when a young athlete participated in highly specialized practice before the age of 13 and even greater increase (1.6x) when playing one sport for more than 8 months out of the year. What this is saying, is that young athletes need to do a variety of movements and activities throughout the year giving them an opportunity to use muscles in new ways and to give them a break from repetitive movements. They need to be challenged in an assortment of different activities that challenges their muscular and brain development.
This is something that comes into the weight room as well. Too often parents are wanting their kid to perform exercises directly related or that look exactly like their sport. However, this can go against the goals of training young athletes. In this training, we are trying to develop the whole athlete. Work on not just upper body but lower body strength, stability, and mobility. We are looking at not just how they swing a bat right now but building a strong base for them to not just swing a bat but tackle in football or run up and down the basketball court. The weight room is all about building a base for their future. So please, when looking for or evaluating a strength and conditioning coach or trainer for a young athlete, make sure that they are building up a strong, athletic base for your athlete. This is something that will set them up for success no matter what sport they may end up playing. At Grisdale Performance, that is what we are all about. This is our focus, to develop strong and athletic individuals that will have success whether they continuing playing the sport they are now or pivot to a completely different one. Being strong, explosive, athletic, and mobile will never hurt a developing athlete.
-Tyler Grisdale, MS, CSCS, RSCC, CES, TPI
References
McGowan, J., Whatman, C., Walters, S. The Associations of Early Specialisation and Sport Volume with Musculoskeletal Injury in New Zealand Children. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport. 23, 2, 139-144. (2020).
Moesch, K., Elbe, A.‐M., Hauge, M.‐L.T. and Wikman, J.M. (2011), Late specialization: the key to success in centimeters, grams, or seconds (cgs) sports. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, 21: e282-e290.