Yes, I know, the title of this blog post is kind of clickbait and I don’t have any experience with parenting or coaching, but hear me out on this one. Obviously, this blog post will not lay a blueprint on how to raise an athlete nor do I strive to teach how to be a better parent (this for a 21-year-old kid would be pretty strange). My main goal of this blog post is to raise awareness of the word Specialisation in the context of the youth sports.
What is Specialisation ?
In general terms, Specialisation is a particular area of work, study or business which somebody spends more time on than on other areas (Oxford dictionary definition). In the context of this article, I will refer to a specialisation in sports, especially talking about adolescent athletes and the dangers within the early specialisation in one sport.
Why is this important ?
I remember being approximately 10 years old, just around the time when youtube came along and watching this video of a 5th grader doing all these crazy things with basketball, showcasing he’s crazy skills and abilities and thinking to myself, that I need to train more if I really want to achieve success in the sport. Years went by, my dream of playing professional basketball vanished and I am still thinking to this day, what was the point of doing so much work for the sport in which I honestly had no future in. Thankfully, the sport has defined who I am and shaped my into the person I am right now, but the story is not about me, it is about specialisation and how you should avoid it until a certain age.
Besides all that, recently, I have noticed that there is an incredible increase of commercialised training camps, individual coaches, skill schools and many more weird entities, which try to create an illusion that the 12-year old kids have to learn how to do the triple behind the back crossover with their eyes closed whilst juggling the tennis balls. It’s just absurd and I strongly advise any parent, which is considering paying some self-proclaimed basketball skills guru for individual training sessions for their kids, think twice and better spend that money on some fun activity with the kid like ice-skating. If my opinion is not enough, I would like to get to the main part of the article, which is scientific evidence.
Specialisation does not result in reaching elite levels in sport !
Before getting the injury risk part of the article, I want to address an important issue of specialisation in young athletes. There, literally, is in no evidence that early specialisation increases the chance of reaching elite levels in sport. An article “Early sport specialisation, does it lead to long-term problems? ” clearly states that delayed sports specialisation provides enhanced opportunities for youth development. Additionally, the authors suggest that besides the physical developments of participating in different sports, the psychological and social developments can be enhanced leading to more positive outcomes for youth overall development. Furthermore, the previously mentioned article is just one example that advocates the non-specialisation approach. By just typing in some keywords related to sports, specialisation, youth, etc. in Google Scholar you can come up with numerous articles debunking the myth of why early specialisation in sports is good for the youth.
The injury risk
My next point of why the early specialisation is bad for the youth development is increased injury risk. Many articles, including the Early Sport Specialization: Effectiveness and Risk of Injury in Professional Baseball Players and A Prospective Study on the Effect of Sport Specialization on Lower Extremity Injury Rates in High School Athletes state that athletes who underwent the early specialisation in sports at youth levels have higher risks of injuries later on in their professional careers. Furthermore, even the athletes themselves claim that early specialisation is not needed to reach the elite levels in sports. Additionally the previously mentioned claim is also statistically backed up by researches, who conclude the same.
P.S.
As this is not an actual research paper, and I am not required to reference this article correctly, I will not provide full APA referencing list. All cited articles are linked in the text and you can explore the topic more by reading them (if you click on them) and researching the topic of early specialisation in sports on your own !
Sports Blog by Henriks Diure 