Dr Hoshane White

The year was 2004, and on any giv­en af­ter­noon, whether there was school or not, you could find me play­ing foot­ball or crick­et with a group of chil­dren in the com­mu­ni­ty. That was the norm back then.

Fast for­ward al­most 20 years lat­er, and that sight is prac­ti­cal­ly a rar­i­ty. You’re like­li­er to see chil­dren as young as six play­ing an or­gan­ised sport at school or for a club all year round, with on­ly a short break be­tween com­pe­ti­tions. There’s even a new trend called “Project MBappe,” where chil­dren are be­ing trained from an ear­ly age to be­come pro ath­letes. While it may be cute and fun­ny, it begs the ques­tion: “Is it the best thing for chil­dren to be un­der­go­ing in­tense train­ing and what is known as sports spe­cial­i­sa­tion from such a young age?”

First­ly, what is sports spe­cial­i­sa­tion? It is train­ing in a sin­gle sport on a year-round ba­sis. It fo­cus­es on de­lib­er­ate prac­tice, which in­volves em­pha­sis­ing high­ly struc­tured ac­tiv­i­ty with no im­me­di­ate re­wards, and the core mo­ti­va­tion is to im­prove per­for­mance rather than play­ing for en­joy­ment. Train­ing may be­gin as ear­ly as six years. Some mo­ti­va­tion­al fac­tors are de­vel­op­ing a com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage, ob­tain­ing a schol­ar­ship, hav­ing pro­fes­sion­al as­pi­ra­tions, and even pres­sure from coach­es and par­ents.

Those all sound great, and this writer isn’t say­ing that putting ef­fort, ded­i­ca­tion, and time in­to your craft to get good at it is ter­ri­ble. What I am say­ing, how­ev­er, is that start­ing ear­ly to spe­cialise can do more harm than good.

Stud­ies have de­scribed ear­ly sport spe­cial­i­sa­tion as start­ing be­fore pu­ber­ty. Pu­ber­ty is when the child ma­tures phys­i­cal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, and men­tal­ly, and the var­i­ous pres­sures placed on ath­letes due to ear­ly sports spe­cial­i­sa­tion can be detri­men­tal to them. This takes us to the harm that is there in it. Emo­tion­al, phys­i­cal, and even so­cial risks are in­volved with spe­cial­is­ing ear­ly. Emo­tion­al­ly, the ath­lete is more like­ly to de­vel­op anx­i­ety, ex­pe­ri­ence burnout, and even de­pres­sion due to the ex­ter­nal pres­sures from coach­es, par­ents, and even so­ci­ety and so­cial me­dia.

So­cial­ly, they may start to feel or be­come iso­lat­ed from their peers and have strained re­la­tion­ships with fam­i­ly due to rig­or­ous train­ing sched­ules which have to be man­aged with their stud­ies. They may al­so feel a sense of loss of con­trol over their lives. Phys­i­cal­ly, they are more like­ly to de­vel­op overuse in­juries due to the train­ing vol­ume and in­ten­si­ty, com­pet­i­tive lev­el, and pu­ber­tal mat­u­ra­tion stage.

Sports par­tic­i­pa­tion ben­e­fits the youth in many ways. It pro­vides an out­let for so­cial­is­ing with peers, teach­es lead­er­ship skills and how to be a part of a team, helps de­vel­op phys­i­cal skills that can last a life­time, and, as a bonus, it can be so much fun! It’s no se­cret that be­com­ing suc­cess­ful in it could have the po­ten­tial to cre­ate gen­er­a­tional wealth and fame. How­ev­er, there’s al­so no ‘se­cret sauce.’ Ear­ly sports spe­cial­i­sa­tion does not guar­an­tee fu­ture suc­cess in the sport. Stud­ies show that ear­ly di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and late spe­cial­i­sa­tion have done more to de­vel­op elite-lev­el ath­letes.

Ear­ly di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in­volves mul­ti­ple sports and fo­cus­es on de­lib­er­ate play and in­ten­tion­al and vol­un­tary in­volve­ment in in­for­mal sports games to max­imise the built-in en­joy­ment of what­ev­er sport. Dur­ing this time, chil­dren aged 6-12 could de­vel­op the ‘ABCs’ (agili­ty, bal­ance, co­or­di­na­tion, speed) of ath­leti­cism in a fun way. Late spe­cial­i­sa­tion fo­cus­es on par­tic­i­pat­ing in in­tense train­ing for a sport af­ter pu­ber­ty, usu­al­ly around 16 years old. With these two prin­ci­ples on board, the ath­lete would be in a bet­ter po­si­tion men­tal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, and phys­i­cal­ly to han­dle the pres­sures as­so­ci­at­ed with spe­cial­is­ing. They would al­so be bet­ter able to de­vel­op self-mo­ti­va­tion and un­der­stand the ben­e­fits and costs as­so­ci­at­ed with giv­ing in­tense fo­cus to one sport they as­pire to ex­cel in. Oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions to pro­tect our child ath­letes in­clude lim­it­ing the hours of train­ing per week to less than the ath­lete’s cur­rent age and tak­ing three months off from sports per year, in­clud­ing one month af­ter the sea­son ends.

Sports have many ben­e­fits, but at the end of the day, we need to re­alise that when it comes to child ath­letes, we must re­mem­ber the ‘child’ part of that term, no mat­ter how bad­ly we want them to suc­ceed.

Dr Hoshane White is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing his mas­ter’s de­gree in sports med­i­cine at the Fac­ul­ty of Sport, UWI