Play the Field: Specializing in a Single Sport Can Be Detrimental to Youngsters’ Health

I started training Fred a few weeks ago. He read an article I wrote for the Seven Mile Times about the importance of sprint training and decided to give me a call. Fred is a competitive sprinter who runs in 100-meter races. He’s been training for sprinting for about 12 years now. Fred is 78 years old. When someone who is older than me is also better than me, I always joke, “Well, they’ve had more time to train.” Fred is a great sprinter and always places well in whatever he enters. Like I said, he has only been training for about 12 years.

I wonder if he had been training all of his life for sprinting, would he be as good now or would his knees and hips have been too beaten up from so many years of repetitive stress? Is the fact that he didn’t specialize earlier the reason he is able to keep going at the pace he is now?

There has been a large increase in youth sports participation across the globe. Along with that has been an escalation in early sport specialization (ESS). This refers to participation in intense year-round training and competition in a single sport with the exclusion of other sports at a young age. While most experts agree that some degree of specialization is necessary to perform at an elite level, they also agree that this specialization should be reserved for late adolescence.

Along with this increase in ESS, there has been a drastic rise in youth sports injuries. Over the past 10-15 years, there has been a large increase in the occurrence of injuries to young athletes. Shoulder and elbow injuries are up 500% in baseball and softball players. Anterior cruciate ligament injuries have increased 400%. Sports injuries are the second-leading cause of emergency-room visits for children and adolescents.

One of the biggest contributing factors to this trend is ESS and the imbalance of strength and joint range of motion that it might cause. A recent study from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, which included more than 1,500 high school athletes, found that athletes who specialized in one sport were twice as likely to report a lower-extremity injury compared to those who played multiple sports. Specialized athletes sustained 60% more lower-extremity injuries during the study than athletes who did not specialize.

Why does specialization lead to increased injury risk? Every sport presents a different demand on the body. They require different skill sets while presenting different strain and wear patterns on the body, thereby reducing the chance of overuse injury. Young people are still building their athleticism, and exposure to all types of athletic demands will help them acquire all types of skills and make them better overall athletes. Children participating in multiple sports have been shown to develop more efficient skills in their main sport due to skill transfer.

A study in The Journal of Sports Sciences showed multiple comparisons revealing that boys ages 10-12 who spent many hours in various sports performed better on the standing broad jump and gross motor coordination than boys specializing in a single sport. Children who play multiple sports have a larger base of skills to draw from.

According to a study in The American Medical Society for Sports Medicine, 88% of college athletes participated in more than one sport as a child. I run a Speed School down at Stone Harbor Recreation to teach young athletes proper sprint form to not only make them faster but also to make them more resistant to injury. As an example of the need for skill transfer, a lot of the soccer players I train spend all of their time practicing ball drills with their feet and therefore end up not using their arms when they run. They run around the field with their arms down at their sides. Arm use is an integral part of sprint form in not only getting faster and helping in change of direction but also preventing injury. If a child suffers an overuse injury, that may mean missing weeks of play and therefore weeks of important athletic development.

So, it is well-documented that ESS can hinder overall athletic development by reducing the variety of demand on the body when participating in multiple sports. If an injury does occur, the athlete then misses out on crucial developmental periods when sidelined for any appreciable amount of time.

Strength training will help fill some of the gaps not developed with sport participation by providing a foundational strength and addressing faulty movement patterns. It also can help build coordination and balance, making the body more resistant to injury. Enjoying multiple sports will lead to a greater overall athleticism and put your athlete in the best possible position to succeed.

Specialization might be necessary, but not until at least high school and sometimes college. If you are looking to compete for an athletic scholarship, you probably shouldn’t wait until your golden years to specialize. But maybe that’s why Fred is so fast. He’s had a long time to train.