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.