Who does not love the idea of seeing their kids becoming elite athletes?
If a kid shows an inclination for a sport, glimpse of “talent”, and even starts getting some recognition from coaches and peers, it is so easy to start expecting more!
Before one knows it, parents start referring to their primary school kids as Rugby, Tennis, Soccer, Netball “players”.
What everyone too often forgets is that children and teens generally participate in sports activities because they find them enjoyable, make friends, and reap all the benefits building self-esteem, sense of leadership, and relationships.
Kids are often projected way too quickly towards highly competitive settings.
If for some parents and coaches specializing kids early is the only path to the elite level, for others it is a dangerous road with potentially long-term disastrous consequences. As a Coach and dad, I truly believe should be given the tools to make an informed choice since clearly too often they sort of tag along with the sports coach and do “what is best” for their kids.
Let’s get started with some clarification on common terms you might have heard:
Early sport specialization
It can be defined as “intense year-round training in a specific sport with the exclusion of other sports at a young age”.
Arguments for early specialization are generally about expertise in skill development. Does the 10000 hours or 10 years rule sound familiar? This approach embraces such concept, stating that the earlier an individual starts with the purposeful practice of a skill, the earlier one becomes an expert at the skill.
Very interestingly research has demonstrated how multi-sport samplers suffer – during young age – some lag in physical fitness and gross motor coordination if compared to early-specializing peers; however, once fully developed they generally outperform them (1).
Now it is not all that bad and negative, in fact sports such as swimming or gymnastics generally see athletes peak at earlier ages compared to other sports. These are the disciplines in which such an approach might make sense.
Late sport specialization
It is the “participation in a variety of sports and activities through which an athlete develops multilateral physical, social, and psychological skills”.
In the critical review from 2020 (2), it is clearly expressed how the end goal should be appropriate long-term sports development (i.e., increase youth’s physical activity, facilitate skill development, and develop a life-long appreciation for sport/physical activity) rather than early competitive success.
Sampling several activities promote positive youth development and are linked to longer sporting careers, positive implications for long-term sport participation, and intrinsic motivation. To make sure a child is ready for structured practice, certain developmental components should be considered, such as sport-related fundamental motor skill development, sport-specific knowledge, motivation, and socialization.
Fundamental motor skill development should be trained to achieve success:
- running
- jumping
- kicking
- throwing.
Having adequate levels of physical maturation, or developmental age will help the children to learn the sport-specific skills that require strength and speed.
Although Science has not definitely disproven one or the other theory, our philosophy at Athletix, with our Youth-based classes, veers more towards the latter approach: exposing kids to a variety of stressors and movement requirements. This approach, we believe, has more positives than negatives.
Stay tuned for part 2, in which we dive into some interesting guidelines.
