JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, May 7, 2025

Sport Specialisation: How early should one start?

by

1255 days ago
20211129
Presentation College’s Jaiye Sheppard and Pleasantville Secondary’s Alexcia Ali pose with their Secondary Schools Football League (SSFL) 2019 Player of the Year trophies following that season.

Presentation College’s Jaiye Sheppard and Pleasantville Secondary’s Alexcia Ali pose with their Secondary Schools Football League (SSFL) 2019 Player of the Year trophies following that season.

CA-images

While some par­ents are elat­ed to have their child par­tic­i­pate in sports when start­ing pri­ma­ry school, oth­ers have al­ready had them par­tak­ing in rou­tine train­ing. In some cas­es, the child is di­rect­ed to play on­ly one sport and oth­er sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties are dis­cour­aged. This can be due to sev­er­al rea­sons, such as the par­ent want­i­ng their child to be a suc­cess­ful ath­lete in a par­tic­u­lar sport, a coach try­ing to grow tal­ent in his/her class, or the child em­u­lat­ing their favourite sports fig­ure. Youths who par­tic­i­pate in on­ly one sport for eight months or more per year are de­fined as en­gag­ing in sport spe­cial­i­sa­tion.

Many are of the opin­ion that hav­ing a child spe­cialise in a sport from a young age is ben­e­fi­cial to them. They be­lieve that do­ing so will in­crease their chances of be­com­ing a pro­fes­sion­al and even­tu­al­ly a top tier ath­lete. Some be­lieve it will give an ad­van­tage over those who start at a lat­er age or who play in mul­ti­ple sports, while oth­ers be­lieve it will boost chances of ob­tain­ing col­lege schol­ar­ships.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the re­search does not sup­port this line of think­ing; on­ly a small per­cent­age of child ath­letes ob­tain schol­ar­ships and an even small­er num­ber be­come pro­fes­sion­al paid ath­letes.

Spe­cial­is­ing in a sport be­fore 12 years old can do more harm than good. One main con­cern is the in­creased risk of in­juries. When youth be­gin spe­cial­i­sa­tion at an ear­ly age, they are sub­ject­ed to train­ing loads and in­ten­si­ties that some grown adults could not tol­er­ate.

The repet­i­tive move­ments as­so­ci­at­ed with the sport can cause wear and tear on the mus­cles, ten­dons and lig­a­ments and, giv­en their un­der­de­vel­oped bod­ies and lack of mat­u­ra­tion, chil­dren may suf­fer in­juries, many of which are re­lat­ed to ab­nor­mal stress­es on the growth plate.

Overuse in­juries tend to plague those who spe­cialise at a young age and have even end­ed ca­reers be­fore they have be­gun.

An­oth­er con­cern with ear­ly spe­cial­i­sa­tion is burnout. Burnout is the so­cial, emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal with­draw­al from a sport ac­tiv­i­ty that one had pre­vi­ous­ly en­joyed play­ing. It is the re­sult of chron­ic in­tense train­ing. Many chil­dren suf­fer from burnout and de­vel­op symp­toms such as loss of de­sire to play, anx­i­ety, phys­i­cal and men­tal ex­haus­tion, con­cen­tra­tion prob­lems and even sub­stance abuse.

Re­searchers note that those young ath­letes suf­fer­ing from burnout would have been pres­sured by coach­es or par­ents in­to do­ing the sport, with in­tense train­ing be­gin­ning at an ear­ly age. Many will dis­con­tin­ue the sport in their ado­les­cence or ear­ly adult­hood while some will reach an ear­ly plateau.

Ear­ly spe­cial­i­sa­tion can re­sult in the loss of one’s iden­ti­ty. With ear­ly im­mer­sion in­to a sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ty, some young ath­letes may as­so­ciate their iden­ti­ty and char­ac­ter with on­ly that sport. Many are un­able to dis­so­ci­ate from it and do not demon­strate a well-round­ed so­cial life out­side of sport.

Due to in­tense train­ing re­quire­ments, these young spe­cial­ists of­ten have to sac­ri­fice at­ten­dance at so­cial gath­er­ings for train­ing and may not have a so­cial net­work out­side of fel­low team­mates or com­peti­tors.

With so many cons to ear­ly sport spe­cial­i­sa­tion, it should still be not­ed that there are sports where ear­ly spe­cial­i­sa­tion is re­quired. Ear­ly spe­cial­i­sa­tion sports are those that re­quire very com­plex mo­tor skills and of­ten in­cludes the artis­tic and ac­ro­bat­ic sports like gym­nas­tics, fig­ure skat­ing and div­ing.

Sports that have high ki­naes­thet­ic re­quire­ments are al­so con­sid­ered ear­ly spe­cial­i­sa­tion, and this in­cludes wa­ter-based ac­tiv­i­ties like swim­ming and syn­chro­nised swim­ming, equine sports and sports in­volv­ing snow, like ski­ing and snow­board­ing.

All oth­er sports can be con­sid­ered late spe­cial­i­sa­tion and the ap­pro­pri­ate time for lat­er spe­cial­i­sa­tion sports is be­tween ages 12 to 15 years. This in­cludes team sports like bas­ket­ball, soc­cer and all track and field ac­tiv­i­ties.

To pre­vent the harm­ful ef­fects of ear­ly sport spe­cial­i­sa­tion, sports sam­pling is en­cour­aged. Here, the chil­dren are al­lowed and en­cour­aged to par­tic­i­pate in var­i­ous sports and any de­lib­er­ate play. They should not be train­ing all year round in a sport and should have at least four months per year off a spe­cif­ic sport. Ad­e­quate rest should be pro­vid­ed, such as hav­ing as much as 2-3 days off from train­ing. By par­tic­i­pat­ing in oth­er sports, chil­dren are like­ly to de­lay any fur­ther repet­i­tive stress­es on those mus­cles and lig­a­ments that are ac­tive in their pri­ma­ry sport.

Many par­ents dream of their chil­dren be­com­ing the next Michael Jor­dan or some oth­er elite sportsper­son and mis­tak­en­ly en­cour­age ear­ly spe­cial­i­sa­tion hop­ing to achieve this.

But what many don’t know is that most elite ath­letes par­tic­i­pat­ed in mul­ti­ple sports dur­ing their youth. Michael Jor­dan played base­ball and Amer­i­can foot­ball.

Us­ain Bolt played crick­et and soc­cer in his pre­teen years and was an ex­cel­lent fast bowler.

When we push for ear­ly spe­cial­i­sa­tion, we should take a step back and ask our­selves whether we would be de­vel­op­ing an Olympiad or end­ing a ca­reer be­fore it has be­gun.

Justin Mesqui­ta is a Phys­i­cal Ther­a­pist prac­tic­ing in Ja­maica and a grad­u­ate stu­dent in the Fac­ul­ty of Sport.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored