The dangers of early sports specialisation
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 kids 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 kids 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 kids 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 yearround 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 old. 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 sports specialisation as starting before puberty. Puberty is when t he 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 sports specialisation. 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 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 pursuing his master’s degree in sports medicine at the Faculty of Sport, University of the West Indies.
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