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Sports specialisation in young atheletes

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Sports specialisation in young atheletes

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Risks and benefits of youth sport specialisation

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Risks and benefits of youth sport specialisation

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It can lead youngsters into a sport not of their choice, create an intensity that takes away the fun, compromise their athletic development, make them vulnerable to injury, and lead to psychological pressure that can result in burnout.

The dangers of early specialisation have been highlighted by a number of studies, including a consensus statement published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine on reducing risk of burnout and injury in youth sport, which emphasised the benefits of diverse sports training during early to middle adolescence.

These findings have been supported by analysis of Team GB at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, which showed the majority of the high performing athletes - including those who medalled - had come into their sports late, at 16-plus or even later.

David Faulkner, coaching at Millfield

It is widely accepted that there are sports which suit later specialisation, such as rowing, athletics, cricket and now, with recent work by the RFU, rugby.

Sports organisations are increasingly recognising the value of gaining wider skills to improve tactical, technical mental and physical development, and to provide an edge over competitors.

Furthermore, there is growing recognition that coaches have often been falling into the trap of focusing upon young people who appear talented at around the ages of 10 to 13, while ignoring other potentially talented youngsters.

It was with all this in mind that we established the Millfield Institute of Sport and Wellbeing, to formalise what we have already been doing informally to ensure all pupils engage in athletic development, enjoy a variety of sports and provide opportunities to transfer to sports they may have never considered.

The aim is to support every individual to leave Millfield with a holistic toolbox, so that when they progress to university or professional sport they have all they need in terms of technical, physical and mental abilities, together with a wider holistic understanding in areas such as teamwork, leadership, and dealing with setbacks.

By playing a range of sports before deciding upon a specialism, young people achieve a level of athletic development that enables them to deal with higher training levels and to perform more effectively.

This is because they are using their bodies more effectively than they would by focusing upon just one sport, which would result in their motor skills - how they operate - becoming one dimensional, and causing them to hit a physical ceiling.

There is also the issue of injuries - usually hamstring, groin and shoulder - as a result of overplaying the developing body.

Also worth bearing in mind is the valuable social experience gained by pupils involved in a range of sports, either as part of a team or in individual events.

The benefits of good coaching are not solely defined by results achieved at school. The true test will be how pupils are performing in their chosen sports and careers a decade after leaving.

David Faulkner, director of sport at Millfield, and gold medal winner for Team GB Hockey at the 1988 Olympics

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School sport: variety is key to future success

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It can lead youngsters into a sport not of their choice, create an intensity that takes away the fun, compromise their athletic development, make them vulnerable to injury, and lead to psychological pressure that can result in burnout.

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A teenage patient and her mother during a follow-up exam after surgery.

If it takes 10,000 hours of "deliberate practice" to truly master a skill, as author Malcolm Gladwell contends, it would make sense that the earlier you specialize in an activity, the better you will be. While this may be true, it's not without consequences. Kids who start specializing in one sport early may put their health at risk.

More kids than ever are playing sports these days, leading to more sports injuries in general. But we're also seeing - especially in larger cities such as Dallas - kids at younger ages specializing in one sport, which leads to more overuse injuries that can plague them into adulthood.

I get it. We want our kids to do the best they possibly can. We want them to get scholarships and play at an elite level. The competition for playing time can be fierce, especially in larger schools, and we fear they will fall behind if they don't specialize. But I know from experience that kids can excel at one sport while still enjoying others.

I grew up playing several sports. In high school, I began to focus solely on basketball, got a scholarship, and had a wonderful college basketball career at the University of Massachusetts. I wouldn't trade it for the world. Nor would I trade the skills I gained and experiences I had playing sports other than basketball when I was younger.

You may be thinking, "Well, only one or two kids on my child's team have an overuse injury." But when it's one or two kids on every team in Dallas, and in Texas, and in the United States, that's a big problem. Our community needs to recognize this issue and learn the facts about sports specialization and overuse injuries so we can continue to foster a love of sports in our children while keeping them safe.

What are overuse injuries?

There are two main types of sports injuries: acute and overuse. Acute injuries usually are the result of a single incident, such as dislocating your shoulder or twisting an ankle or knee on the basketball court. Overuse injuries are caused by repetitive trauma to the tendons, bones, or joints. These injuries can be subtle and happen over time. Examples include shoulder pain in young throwing athletes, shin splints, and stress fractures.

Adolescents are more susceptible to overuse injuries because their bodies are still developing. They typically have open physes (where the bones grow), meaning the muscles and tendons are stronger than the bone itself. This can lead to overuse injuries to the growth plate and long-term problems down the road, such as chronic pain, the inability to perform, femoroacetabular impingement (FAI, in which the bones of the hip are abnormally shaped), and, although unusual, growth plate disturbance (such as limb length inequality).

We also see some overuse injuries in kids who don't use the proper techniques for certain movements. Some of the more common overuse injuries we treat for different sports include:

Baseball and softball: Elbow and shoulder injuries from repetitive throwing. Many fans have heard of professional pitchers having Tommy John surgery on their elbows, but we're seeing younger and younger players having it.

Hockey: Hip injuries are common because of the mechanics of the skating stride.

Gymnastics: This is a sport with historically early specialization, and wrist and elbow injuries from overuse are common.

Many overuse injuries aren't treated surgically, but they can take a long time to heal. Often we'll use braces or physical rehabilitation to target the area of the injury. It's important to diagnose them early to prevent long-term problems and help get the athlete back on the field sooner and performing at their maximum ability.

How can we prevent overuse injuries?

While we can't prevent injury 100 percent, there are some guidelines to follow to help your child avoid overuse injuries:

Age vs. hours: Don't let your kids spend more hours per week than their age playing sports. For example, 9-year-olds shouldn't be spending 10 hours a week at soccer practice.

Take breaks: You should have a day or two off each week and longer breaks throughout the year.

Cross-training: Playing other sports or doing other exercises gives some muscle groups a much-needed rest while developing others.

Some sports organizations have specific rules to help prevent injuries in teens, such as USA Cycling's gear ratio restrictions and USA Swimming's practice limits. For baseball and softball, pitch counts have proven especially beneficial in reducing injuries.
Make sure your children understand how important it is to tell an adult right away when something doesn't feel right. Overuse injuries develop over time, and we want to address them as quickly as possible so they can keep playing.

I saw a 13-year-old who had been experiencing elbow pain for about four months. He wanted to keep playing baseball, so he had just dealt with it, but it had gotten to a point where he couldn't throw anymore.

He was upset when I told him he would have to stop playing for a time. I told him, "I know you love sports. I do, too. I'm not trying to keep you from baseball; in fact, I want you to play at your highest level. But I would rather see you stop playing now, get the appropriate treatment, and be able to play in your more important games later in the season."

With some physical therapy and strength training, he got back to baseball. And that's what we want.

You know your children and you can recognize if something is off. Listen to them when they tell you something hurts. Obviously, there will be times when your 8-year-old tells you his foot hurts because he wants to get out of practice. But if it's a prolonged complaint, they're asking to take medication such as ibuprofen, or it's affecting their performance, get it checked out. I'd rather you err on the side of caution than push them to continue playing.

Does specializing in one sport as a child increase their chances to go pro?

Studies show that specializing early in a sport does not increase the chances of becoming an elite athlete. It's really not until the teen years where specialization begins to show a benefit.

A 2013 American Medical Society for Sports Medicine survey found that 88 percent of college athletes played more than one sport as children, and 70 percent didn't specialize until they were older than 12.

Even hockey, another popular sport in Dallas-Fort Worth, doesn't appear to benefit from early specialized play. A 2003 study showed that while, on average, professional hockey players did spend 10,000 hours in sports practice before they were 20, only 3,000 of those hours were spent practicing hockey. And of those 3,000 hours, only 450 came before they were 12.

Meanwhile, sports specialization has been shown to lead to injuries. According to a 2013 study, adolescents who spent more hours per week than their age playing one sport were 70 percentmore likely to experience overuse injuries than other injuries. For example, 15-year-old who played one sport 16 or more hours a week would be at increased risk for an overuse injury.

Another study showed that kids who play one sport for eight months out of the year are nearly three times more likelyto experience an overuse hip and/or knee injury.

What are the benefits to playing multiple sports?

Playing multiple sports can make you a better athlete overall. In doing this, you train more parts of the body and increase your agility. It may be funny to think about NFL players doing yoga, but many of them do because it helps make their play on the football field better.

There's also a social aspect to consider. When your children play multiple sports, they're exposed to different groups of people, and there's value to that.

It's great to dream of playing in college or in the pros, but we need to remember that only a small percentage of high school athletes will play in college, and even fewer in the pros. Above all, we want our children to learn teamwork, become good citizens, and avoid overuse injuries that potentially could have long-term consequences.

And as for Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule, a 2014 study found that deliberate practice only accounted for an 18 percent variance in performance for sports. So sign your child up for several sports - there's plenty of time for them to get that scholarship!

If you have questions about overuse injuries and your child's involvement in sports, request an appointment or call 214-645-8300.

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Kids and sports: How specialization can lead to overuse injuries | UT Southwestern Medical Center

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If it takes 10,000 hours of "deliberate practice" to truly master a skill, as author Malcolm Gladwell contends, it would make sense that the earlier you specialize in an activity, the better you will be. While this may be true, it's not without consequences.

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There is no single pathway to success in sport. If there were, we wouldn't be able to compare the stories of Chrissie Wellington, who discovered her remarkable talent late in life but went on to dominate IronMan Triathlon within a few years, to that of another endurance athlete, say Floyd Landis, who began cycling at school, with a single minded focus that took him to the professional level many years later.There are countless cases of both examples, not only in endurance sport, but in skill-based sports - cricket or rugby players who "arrive" in their 20s, compared to the "prodigies" who are ear-marked for success from their early teenage years, or even earlier. I am sure that in your own country, you can instantly think of one example of each.

If it took starting at the age of 4, with a parent driving a child to train for hours a day (think Agassi, Woods), then we wouldn't have cases like Roger Federer, who showed exceptional tennis ability very young, but did play other sports (on this note, Federer is reported to have begun at 6, but played football and tennis until he focused on tennis at 12 - this is still young, as we'll see later, but it's not nearly as early as other cases of tennis players. Compare Agassi, who spent hours a day practicing at 6 years old, and who even played a match for money at the age of 9, at his father's "request")

But is there an optimal time to begin specialization in a particular sport? This is such a loaded question that I can't possibly answer it, or even begin to cover it in one post. So with that question begins a series of articles where I'll look at some of the evidence for whether young athletes who specialize very early on are more or less likely to succeed than athletes who delay high training volumes, competition and specialization in sport.

Without wanting to be too prescriptive, I think the following sub-headings needs to be addressed in a series:

1. What do elite athletes do? Is there evidence to say whether early or late specialization is better?

2. What does science (that is, me...!) make of the 10,000 hour concept that that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an 'expert'?Really, what this gets at is whether there is such a thing as "talent" or whether hard work and practice allows anyone to succeed. It's the Coyle, Syed and Gladwell argument in Talent Code, Bounce and Outliers. But what does physiology make of it?

3. What is the concept of Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD)? Where are its strengths, and where are its shortcomings, both practically and physiologically?

4. What are the implications of all this for coaches, parents, and young athletes?

So with that in mind, let's get started towards trying to answer that question.

Early and Late specialization: Introducing the concepts

So we begin by looking at some evidence for what elite athletes do, and for that, I'll focus on a specific research paper called Late specialization: the key to success in centimeters, grams, or seconds (cgs) sports. [cite source=pubmed]21401722[/cite] (I linked to this paper on our Twitter feed on Monday, and I'll do a similar "article of the week" every Monday, so if you haven't yet followed us on Twitter, you can do so now!)

The title of the paper kind of gives away its conclusion, but don't worry, there is a lot more to it, including my conclusion that the paper does NOT in fact make this discovery, and there's something much more complex going on.

Here is a systematic breakdown of the paper, looking at the main research question, the rationale behind the research, its findings and how they might be interpreted.

The research question and rationale

The paper aimed to sort out which of two models for developing elite athletes was most effective in producing elite performances. Those two models are summarized in the diagram below. But before we begin, we have to define specialization. In the paper, it has a rather clumsy definition, where it's a hybrid of being defined as a focus on a specific sport, as well as being measured in hours of practice in that sport.

In many cases, specialization and training volume will be related - the more you focus/specialize, the more time you have for that sport. For example, a 15-year old with 2 hours a day to train will train more for Sport A if they are specialized than if they split the 2 hours between Sport A and Sport B. However, this is not always the case - the same 15-year old can be "diversified" and do both sports, but still do more training in each than the specialist if they sum their time - A + B might equal four hours a day, not necessarily two.

To me, specialization should be measured as the number of hours spent training for Sport A relative to the time spent practicing for Sports B, C and D. Someone who only practices tennis for one hour a day is more specialized than someone who trains tennis for two hours, but also plays football for an hour a day. In the literature, however, there seems to be confusion around this, and specialization is not only "single focus", but also training time. In other words, it's "specialization plus time practicing", and in the paper, I feel this is confused, and impacts on the conclusion. Bear this in mind, because it will come up later...

So on your left is this model of "early specialization", where an early focus on a sport is recommended. This is motivated largely by the framework that it takes so many practice hours to become proficient, and so you have to start young, and focus young, in order to accumulate them. This is the Ericsson argument, and if you've read Bounce or Outliers, you'll know of Ericsson - he did a study on violinists in Berlin and found that the outstanding violinists had practiced for almost 10,000 hours, compared to only 8,000 hours for the "good" and 4,000 hours for the "normal" violinists (the ability of the violinists was assessed by the professors and teachers, in case you were wondering).

That study led to this 10,000 hours concept, which has since been applied to all kinds of skills, including sport. There is an inherent problem with this, because sport is not the same as playing a violin in that there are without doubt physical attributes that training cannot change but which determine one's "ceiling of ability" in most sports.

The most obvious (bordering on ridiculously, in fact) example is that if you stand 1.50m tall, you'll never be a basketball star, even if you accumulate 20,000 hours of practice. Your genetic make-up eliminates some of your options, it determines your ceiling especially when physiological characteristics are so significant to success, and then training helps to optimize how close you get to reaching your ceiling. That's why no one succeeds without some training, but without question, some have more "talent" for a specific sport than others.... Whether the same is true of a skill-sport like tennis is debatable. This is a great topic, but not one for today - that's why I'll set it aside for a future post as part of this series. Let's leave this as saying that this kind of thinking drives the early specialization model.

On the negative side, there is also evidence of higher attrition rates with early specialization, and also potential negative health outcomes. The issue is whether a young athlete who specializes at 9 or 10 is likely to continue with the sport beyond say 18, and there is some evidence that the answer is no.

On the right, the contrasting model is Early Diversification. Here, children play a number of sports, the theory being that they develop a diverse range of skills, which are transferred across sports. The proposed upside is that it promotes intrinsic motivation (let the child choose for themselves) and balance through increased exposure, and also ensures longevity. The downside is that it may be too late, and by the time the person reaches adulthood, they may never overcome a potential late focus on training for a specific sport.

The only way to differentiate is to ask the question of elites, and that's exactly what the study did.

The method and findings

This kind of study is usually done by looking backwards in what is called a retrospective design. Athletes are given questionnaires asking them to recall how much time they spent training each year. Your alarm bells might be ringing, and rightly so, because this is a fundamental problem of this kind of research - it's reliant on memory and we all know that this is not infallible - can you remember how many hours a week you spent training in 2003? The authors of the paper acknowledge this and they use some methods to confirm the memory of the athletes they interview, and conclude that the recall is reasonably good, given the limitation. What will really help is a 20-year prospective longitudinal study, which I'm sure is on the way at some stage in the future.

The athletes interviewed in the study were high-level Danish athletes who were split into two groups, Elite and Near-Elite. Elite athletes were those who had achieved Top 10 placings in World and Olympic competition or podium finish in European competitions, which is pretty impressive. I'm looking at repeating this study here in South Africa, and if we set the standard at Top 10 globally, we'd be lucky to get 20 athletes! The Danish got 148. In the Near-Elite group were 95 athletes who hadn't met those criteria, but who were still on the Danish sports programme.

The athletes were then given a questionnaire looking mainly at how many hours a week they practiced, from the age of 9 up to the age of 21. They also had to report what other sports they did and when they reached certain "milestones" in the sport, such as first international competitions, when they began intense training and when they reached the elite level.

The other very important thing to point out is that they only sampled athletes in what are called CGS sports - these are the sports measured in Centimeters, Grams and Seconds. Think Rowing, swimming, athletics, kayaking, weightlifting, sailing, triathlon, cycling. This is vital, because this study is NOT going to allow us to answer whether a tennis player or a golfer should start younger. It also looks at sports that are typically more favoured by later specialization, because in general, peak performance age in these sports is in the mid to late 20s. Sports like diving and gymnastics, on the other hand, are characterized by a peak in the late teens, early 20s, and that's a significant point to make.

Below is a summary of the main findings regarding cumulative training time, with a short explanation beneath it (it's fairly self-explanatory)

So four major findings.

The first is that the Near-Elite group had actually gotten an earlier start than those who would go on to be elite - by the age of 9, they're 160 hours of practice time AHEAD.

That difference persists up to the age of 18, by which time there is no difference between the Elite and Near-Elite athletes.

Then, at the age of 21, the Elite athletes have pulled well clear, with about 1,100 hours MORE training than the Near-elites at that age.

And finally, there was no difference in the number of months spent on other sports - 63 months for the elites, 62 for the Near-Elites. In other words, during the 12 year period of sampling, both groups spent just over 5 years in total practicing in other sports. What is not reported is how those sports were spread out - were they done predominantly from 12 to 15, were they done for 7 months a year or all at once?

The practice trajectory: When should the training volume be ramped up?

The above table (and the main table of results in the paper) are however incomplete. What is really of interest is to track the practice time per year in these athletes. For some reason that wasn't presented in the paper, but it's easy enough to do given the results, and so below is my re-analysis of their data, looking at what I would call a "practice trajectory":

So this plots the average number of practice hours PER week over time in the two groups. Elites are shown in the beige, the Near-Elites in blue. Quite clearly, they follow different trajectories.

Up to the age of 9, as we said, the athletes who will go on to be Near-Elites do more than twice as much practice - it's an artificially low number, of course, because there's probably zero training up to maybe 5 or 6 on average, but it had to start somewhere!

From 9 to 12, Near-elites do 2 hours a week more than athletes who will go on to be Elite

From 12 to 15, Near-elites remain ahead, and the result is that by 15, they'd accumulated about 850 hours more practice than the Elite group had done

Then from 15 to 18, it changes. Here, the Near-Elites began to practice less, while the Elite group continued, increasing to almost 2 hours a day on average. That shift is what causes the cumulative practice time at 18 to be equal between the groups, as we showed in the previous figure

From 18 to 21, more of the same - the Elite group continues to spend 14 hours a week in practice, while the athletes who will go on to be Near-Elite drop down to just under 7 hours a week

So quite clearly, they follow very different pathways, and end up in different locations - one group goes on to be in the Top 10 globally or Top 3 in Europe, the other doesn't quite make that level. They may yet, of course, the study was simply a retrospective look of a sample.

The authors then made five major conclusions.

1. Elite athletes specialize later in their career.

2. Near-elite athletes pass through "milestones" sooner than elite athletes (I didn't go into this data, but the summary is that the athletes who go on to be Near-elite begin sport younger, train hard sooner and enter international competition around 2 years earlier than athletes going on to be Elite)

3. Elite athletes enter international competition older (as for above)

4. There is no difference in the time spent on other sports (remember, 62 months vs 63 months over the recall period)

5. "There is no delay in the athletic development that cannot be made up later with late specialization"

Some arguable conclusions, and what the study REALLY shows

Read that last conclusion again, for it is perhaps the most important one in the paper: "There is no delay in the athletic development that cannot be made up later with late specialization". I actually disagree subtly with this conclusion.

To me, the primary finding of the study is that success and performance in these CGS sports is NOT determined by how much TIME is spent training as a child, and that increasing the training volume later (after 15) is more than able to make up for time NOT spent training when even younger.

As for the issue of specialization, that's a conclusion not supported by the results! The time spent on other sports was the same - it may have followed a different pattern, but this wasn't reported. All we know is that both groups did around 62 - 63 months of training in other sports over this period. Specialization, defined as a single-focus on a sport, has nothing to do with ultimate performance, then. It's more about time spent at different ages, and that "practice trajectory" I showed in the above graph.

However, in the interests of your time, and mine, I'm going to leave it overnight, and pick up this discussion again. Let's just say that this study was much more focused on training time in the final chosen sport, and it makes quite a nice case for delaying high training volumes until the mid to late teenage years. Effectively, you need to replace "specialization" with "high training volumes" and then you have the real finding of the study!

And that's where the discussion will resume tomorrow! That, and also we'll look at some of the reasons why that graph of practice time would look like it does - it may not be what you think!

I'm sure there will be comments and feedback, and as always, it's most welcome! Join us tomorrow for more on this paper, and the issue of specialization vs training volume.

Ross

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Early vs Late Specialization: When should children specialize in sport? | The Science of Sport

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There is no single pathway to success in sport.

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If you want your child to become a superstar hockey player, figure skater, or other athlete, when should they specialize in that one sport?

It's a question that often generates heated discussion among coaches and sport parents. All too often, in most sports, children are pushed to specialize too early.

Too many coaches and parents push them to focus on one sport long before high school in the belief that they will "miss out" if they don't. The thinking is that they need to "get ahead of the pack" by putting in the extra hours and staying away from other sports.

Meanwhile, the research suggests that specializing too early probably prevents most kids from reaching their full potential in their sport. They might win the district championships for Grade 8 or Grade 10 basketball, but that will be their peak achievement. They won't make the cut for the national team and the Olympics at age 19.

It seems counterintuitive. How could specialization reduce your success?

It's connected to physical literacy and the need to develop a wide range of physical, mental, and emotional skills within sport. When researchers look at top athletes across a range of sports, the majority of them are distinguished by broad athletic ability from playing a variety of sports as children. This kind of broad athleticism doesn't happen when kids specialize in one sport from an early age.

(Please note: We haven't even mentioned the problem of overuse injuries to tendons, ligaments, and bone growth plates due to premature specialization. There's enough research on that subject to write a book. Premature specialization is also linked to kids dropping out of sports early.)

Is early specialization wrong for all sports? No. But research shows very few sports where it helps.

Sports and activities such as gymnastics, figure skating, diving, and dancing generally require early specialization. To reach the highest levels of competition, your child needs to start young and spend most of their time practicing that sport or activity.

However, sports such as hockey, soccer, basketball, baseball, and tennis are late specialization sports. If you want your child to have a chance to go to the Olympics or the World Cup in these sports, the evidence suggests they should also play other sports until at least age 14. This is called "sampling" or "early diversification".

So when should your child specialize in one sport? First of all, you should ask them if they even want to specialize. Maybe they don't want to, and that's okay. Not everyone dreams of going to the Olympics or playing in the NHL.

However, if we imagine that your child shares your enthusiasm in a late-specialization sport such as hockey, soccer, squash, volleyball, baseball, tennis, or basketball, there seems to be a general age range where specialization becomes important. It depends on the sport, your child's level of maturation, and-if we are talking about a team sport-their playing position. The general rule would be sometime around the middle of high school, or ages 14-16 years.

When you feel the urge to make your child specialize early, remember that Steve Nash didn't even start playing basketball until he was 13-years-old. Wayne Gretzky started hockey young, but he also played baseball, lacrosse, and tennis into his teens.

Pro athletes and their childhood sports

Wayne Gretzky (hockey): baseball, lacrosse, tennis

Christine Sinclair (soccer): basketball, baseball

Steve Nash (basketball): hockey, soccer, lacrosse, baseball

Roger Federer (tennis): soccer

Michael Phelps (swimming): baseball, soccer, lacrosse, golf

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Why specializing early in one sport is a bad idea - Active For Life

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Athlete and sport specialization is a hot topic in long term athlete development for parents who want to pressure their children to become superstar professional athletes, but they should look at late specialization, sport sampling and early diversification rather than early specialization in sport.

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Why kids shouldn't specialise in one sport

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Why kids shouldn't specialise in one sport

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In a move that surprised many sports parents, last week the USTA, NFL, MLB, NHL, NCAA, U.S. Olympic Committee and three dozen other leading sports organizations joined forces to speak out against the popular "early specialization" trend in youth sports, where children under 12 focus intensively on one sport, at the exclusion of others, year-round.

In an ad that appeared in SportsBusiness Journal, a leading trade journal, the group highlighted the risks of early specialization in developing bodies and encouraged instead a multi-sport approach, which "can lead to better performance, less burnout, less social isolation, and, most importantly, more lifelong enjoyment in sports."

Image courtesy of SportsBusiness Journal

"We hope that by coming out and saying multi-sport play is really what's best for children, that parents and coaches will be better educated and will end this growing trend," said Sue Hunt, chief marketing officer at the USTA, which spearheaded the ad. "Early specialization and winning is really about the parents," Hunt told me. "The kids just want to have fun."

Each year an estimated 30-40 million children play youth sports -- but it's a different game than their parents played. Gone are the days of casual after school pick-up games. In today's competitive childhood, youth sports have become adult-led, professionalized and focused on winning, which has led an increasing number of children, some as young as 7 or 8, to specialize early to better compete.

"Sports have become another way for parents to keep up with the Jones, and it's damaging childhoods," said John O' Sullivan, founder of the Changing the Game Project, an organization focused on youth sports. He told me families who can afford it supplement practices with private coaching, anything for an edge that could one day lead to an athletic scholarship or a leg up on the competitive college admissions process.

Even parents who aren't looking to create the next Tiger Woods feel like they have no choice but to reluctantly buy into the trend. "The most common fear I hear among parents is that if they don't specialize early, their children will fall behind and never catch up," said O'Sullivan.

But does early specialization build a better athlete?

Growing research suggests it doesn't.

In fact, the well-rounded athlete may be the one most likely to succeed. Studies of college-level and Olympic athletes found that the majority of them played multiple sports growing up and did not specialize early. In a study published last year, researchers surveyed 708 minor league baseball players and found that only 25 percent of them specialized in baseball before age 12. In fact, those who specialized later were actually more likely to win college scholarships.

"Early specialization may enhance a skill but it does not enhance athleticism like practicing multiple sports can," said lead researcher Richard Ginsburg, a sports psychologist and faculty member at Harvard Medical School.

Research shows there are physical risks involved with specialization. In a recent study involving nearly 1,200 young athletes at two Chicago-area sports clinics, researchers found that those athletes who specialized in one sport for eight months or more a year (at the exclusion of others) had a significantly higher risk of stress fractures and other severe overuse injuries. Young athletes who played more hours per week of sports than their age (as in a 9-year-old playing more than 9 hours a week) were more likely to be injured, and athletes who spent more than twice the time playing organized sports than free play were more likely to have serious overuse injuries.

And then there is the emotional toll early specialization can bring. "I've seen the damage it can do to the parent-child relationship when a child thinks their parent's love is tied to winning," said O'Connell.

Why are we putting this pressure on our kids, he said, when only a small percentage will play in college and an even smaller percentage will play professionally?

"We need to give sports back to our children," said O'Connell," and give them back the childhoods they deserve."

Here are tips for making sports a positive experience:

Be a cheerleader, not a coach. Resist the post-game analysis. "Parental praise opens the doors of communication and motivates," said Sally Johnson, executive director of the National Council of Youth Sports. Criticism can do the opposite.

Encourage sports sampling. "Different personalities, abilities and developmental levels might be a better match with different sports," Johnson told me. Multi-sport play has also been found to reduce burnout and overuse injuries.

Set Limits. Athletes should take at least one to two days off per week from competitive athletics, sport-specific training, and competitive practice (scrimmage), and a total of 2 to 3 months off per year from a specific sport, according to American Academy of Pediatric guidelines.

Watch for Burnout. Burnout, simply put, is mental and physical exhaustion. Watch for signs like nonspecific muscle or joint problems, fatigue or poor academic performance.

Make time for free play. Child-initiated free play, like after school pick-up games, helps to build social and emotional skills and can be an important tool for preventing overuse injuries.

Find the right program. Your goal as a parent is to find athletic experiences that encourage positive lessons, like sportsmanship, teamwork, and cooperation, said Johnson. "Sports should bring out the best in your children," she said, "and the best in your relationship with them."

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Why Kids Shouldn't Specialize In One Sport

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In a move that surprised many sports parents, last week the USTA, NFL, MLB, NHL, NCAA, U.S. Olympic Committee and three dozen other leading sports organizations joined forces to speak out against the popular "early specialization" trend in youth sports, where children under 12 focus intensively on one sport, at the exclusion of others, year-round.

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Now imagine instead that you're the parent of a kid who's good at just about anything he or she tries. On the one hand, it's every dad's dream to watch your son or daughter play hard and not just enjoy the experience, but dominate the competition. On the other, you're hearing a steady stream of advice from coaches, trainers, college recruiters, and perhaps even pro scouts. "Your kid is good, but if Jack/Jackie doesn't focus on one sport, he/she is going to fall behind."

And there goes that scholarship you were counting on when you tithed 10 percent of your income on camps, travel teams, and private coaches. So should you push your kid to focus on his or her best sport, and train for it year-round?

"Parents are constantly asking me that question," says John Graham, CSCS, who runs St. Luke's Sports and Human Performance Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania. "I've always endorsed kids playing multiple sports. It's better for them from a physiological standpoint. The kids who play multiple sports become better athletically."

Graham speaks from both personal and professional experience. For the past three decades, he's trained athletes in just about every individual and team sport. On any given day at St. Luke's, you might see him training tiny 8-year-old gymnasts, massive pro football players, or anything in between.

Before that, he lettered in three sports in high school-football, basketball, track-and also played rec-league baseball in the summer. He believes that broad foundation helped him earn a football scholarship to Pitt in the early 1980s. "I tell parents I don't think I would've been capable of playing at that level if I hadn't played multiple sports."

BAD EXAMPLES
Kids and parents alike can be seduced by the success of the outlier. There's Lionel Messi, the world's best soccer player, who was more or less a pro at 11 years old. (He needed expensive medical treatments, which his current team, Barcelona, offered to provide if he joined their youth program.) There's Tiger Woods, who hit golf balls on The Mike Douglas Show when he was just 2, won his first tournament at 8, and was ranked #1 in the world at 21. More recently, there's Bryce Harper, who started his baseball career as a 3-year-old playing T ball against kids twice his age, and who regularly played more than 100 travel-team games a summer before he was drafted first overall in 2010 and signed a contract that guaranteed him $9 million.

Given those examples, most of us assume an athlete who wants to reach the highest level should focus on that goal from the earliest possible age, and pursue it to the exclusion of everything else.

You'd think that's the message athletes get at Cressey Sports Performance in Hudson, Massachusetts. In the 2014 baseball draft, 18 of the 1,215 players selected trained with owner Eric Cressey and his coaches, including six of the top 100. If any facility stands as a shrine to sports specialization, it should be this one. But Cressey says the truth is the opposite.

"You rarely see someone who played only baseball all the way through go on to have a successful career in the big leagues," he says, noting that you have to be a good athlete before you can be a good baseball player.

Some of the athletes he trains start off as just that - the best in any sport they pursue. But not all.

"I'm constantly amazed at how many late bloomers" develop into successful college players, and eventually become pro prospects, he says. "They weren't great athletes at a young age, but that broad range of abilities made it possible for them to become great in a specific sport."

Lack of athletic development isn't the only risk of early specialization. "We know it leads to more injuries," Cressey says. "The more kids play, the more they get hurt before they turn 18."

A 2012 review in Sports Health notes that young pitchers who throw more than 100 innings per year have 3.5 times more injuries than those who pitch less. And pitchers who throw more than eight months a year are five times more likely to require elbow or shoulder surgery.

Baseball is hardly alone. In any sport, the review says, "increased exposure was the most important risk factor for injury." The more an athlete trains and competes in a sport, and the higher the competitive level, the greater the risk.

Athletes may be most vulnerable during "peak height velocity"-that is, the middle of their biggest growth spurt. That's when the risk of fractures is highest. Boys typically hit that peak between 12 and 16, while for girls it's between 9 and 13.

Competitive athletes aren't the only ones at risk. My son, for example, grew six inches in about six months when he was 14. Near the end of that growth spurt he went on a weeklong, 50-mile backpacking trip with his Boy Scout troop. He complained of knee pain for years afterwards.

NOT ALL CHOICES ARE GOOD CHOICES
For all the downsides to early specialization, there are certainly times when it's the best and perhaps only option. Sports that challenge balance in unique ways and require complex timing-gymnastics, figure skating, diving, and perhaps skiing-require an early start. Kids have to get in by kindergarten or first grade to have any hope of reaching elite levels. Those are also some of the most expensive and demanding sports for both parents and athletes, which further limits the field.

Female golfers and tennis players also tend to commit to those sports when most kids are still learning to tie their own shoes.

In other situations, a kid simply may not want to play more than one sport. "If an athlete truly finds a pure passion, I have no issues with the athlete playing just that one sport, even at a young age," says Lee Taft, CSCS, owner of Sports Speed, Etc., in New Castle, Indiana.

The athletic qualities they miss out on by focusing on one sport can be developed in a good training program, Taft says. "As coaches, we can use warmups, off-season, and pre-season to generalize workouts."

Another reason to specialize: to mitigate injury risk. Graham offers an example: Aaron Gray, a 7-foot-tall basketball star, also played football in high school. "By his junior year, he worried he might get injured if he kept playing football," Graham says. Focusing on basketball was the more prudent course, and it seems to have worked: Gray, a defense-and-rebounding specialist, has spent seven years in the NBA after four years in college.

The same might also apply to a slightly built baseball player, Graham adds. The larger his athletic portfolio, the greater his risk of a career-ending injury.

Yet another risk, Cressey notes, comes with being the guy we all wished we could be in high school: the star quarterback who's also a star pitcher. He could end up throwing 12 months a year, if he participates in baseball showcases and football camps between the two seasons. Although it dramatically improves his odds of dating a cheerleader, the injury risk is enormous.
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THE ULTIMATE DECISION
Now comes the tough question: Since all successful athletes need to specialize at some point in their career, what's the best time to make that leap? Of course it depends on the athlete as well as the sport, but research gives us a few guidelines.
Balance/timing/surface sports:
As noted, high-level gymnastics and figure skating require early immersion (ages 5 to 7), and generally preclude most competing activities. Such early training comes with a steep price. "I remember working with a young figure skater," Taft says. "She had ankle and knee pain all the time. I could hardly train her. She was only 10 or 11, and never played another sport."

Skiing-downhill or cross-country-and snowboarding are best learned at a single-digit age, although specialization isn't considered necessary until the mid to late teens.
Individual sports:
Anecdotally, we think of golf and tennis as games that force kids to go all-in as soon as they can swing a club or racquet. That's moderately true of tennis-top players typically specialize before puberty-but golfers don't necessarily have to emulate Tiger Woods and go straight from potty training to putting.

The most famous late bloomer is Larry Nelson, who started playing as a 21-year-old Vietnam vet, broke 100 his first round, and ended up winning 10 times on the PGA Tour (including three majors). He still plays on the Champions Tour, where he's won 19 times so far.

More recently, Y.E. Yang started golfing at 19, when he got a job at a driving range in South Korea. Eighteen years later, he famously came from behind to win the 2009 PGA Championship. The player he passed on that final round? Woods, who started that day with a two-stroke lead.
Team sports:
The great thing about team sports is that the most important qualities are transferrable. Speed, power, reaction time, movement skills, and hand-eye coordination carry over from one to another. So do the mental aspects, like decision-making. A kid who understands how to play soccer, for example, can easily pick up the strategy for other pass-and-shoot sports like lacrosse, field hockey, basketball, and even ice hockey.

Similarly, the visual tracking required for baseball and softball carries over to soccer, lacrosse, tennis, football, and rugby.

Cressey believes the ideal time to specialize in baseball is after a player's junior year in high school. By then an athlete has probably gotten all he can out of the other competitive sports, and it's time to focus on fine-tuning baseball skills.

That fine-tuning, Taft says, is what ultimately separates players at the highest levels: "If quality time isn't spent on developing skills, game knowledge, and tactical awareness, it doesn't matter if you specialize or not."
Strength, power, and endurance sports:
Outside the U.S., these are known as "CGS sports," meaning performance can be measured in centimeters, grams, or seconds. They include powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting, swimming, rowing, and track and field, among others.

Research is clear, if counterintuitive: Those who start serious training at the earliest ages are less likely to achieve the elite level. Near-elite athletes accumulate more hours of training during adolescence than the ones who reach the top. In a study of top Russian swimmers, for example, those who specialized before their 11th birthdays spent less time on national teams and retired earlier than those who waited longer to go all-in.
Contact sports:
This may be the trickiest of all categories. A generation ago, wrestlers were unlikely to start training before high school. Now they start at 5 or 6. "Kids seem to gravitate toward it at younger ages, and once they're in it they seem to stick with it," Graham says. "Coaches seem to think kids need to start younger."

Kids also start young in football, but it's hard to think of any good reason why. Graham says his parents didn't allow him to play football until 7th grade, and believes that decision helped him stay healthy in high school and college. "I really want to see kids developing athletic fundamentals and skills before they begin contact sports," he says.

THAT KID YOU KNEW
In closing, try this experiment: Think of the kid who was the best player on your first rec-league soccer team, or in Little League baseball, or Pop Warner football. Now think of that one kid you knew in grade school or high school who went on to play in the pros, or at least Division I. Doesn't matter which sport.

If your childhood was like mine, they weren't the same kid. Puberty was cruel to those out-of-the-gate studs. (Which, frankly, served them right. The ones I played with were insufferably arrogant.) But there was one hockey-obsessed kid in my class in 7th and 8th grade who went on to play professionally. I don't think he made it past the minors, but he's the only one I knew who got paid to play anything.

What set him apart? He was one of the bigger kids, but I don't remember him being particularly good in any of our playground sports - soccer, basketball, touch football. Nor did it seem to matter to him. His life revolved around hockey. It showed up in every conversation, every book report, every art project.

That obsession may be what ultimately separates the very best from the next-best. Most high-level soccer players, for example, start at 5 years old. As kids, the great ones don't spend any more time in structured practices and games than the almost-great, but they play more on their own. The same is probably true for any sport that lends itself to neighborhood pick-up games, like basketball.

The take-away message for parents is pretty clear: You can and should steer your kids to as many sports as they want to play. How far they go depends on how much they love their favorite one.

Lou Schuler, C.S.C.S., is an award-winning journalist and the coauthor (with Alwyn Cosgrove) of The New Rules of Lifting Supercharged.

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How Soon Should Kids Focus on Only One Sport?

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Imagine for a moment that you're a teenage athlete. You've loved sports as long as you can remember, and squeeze in as many as you can: football in the fall, basketball in the winter, baseball in the spring and summer.