Cross training vs early specialisation in youth
Studies have found that many parents who have had successful careers in sport tend to have a bias towards pushing their children to also play the same sports. Fortunately, some go on to emulate their example, sometimes surpassing the heights of their parents’ success. Amongst the many factors that may influence a successful sporting career in a young athlete, we focus on the issue of ‘cross training versus early specialisation’ in youth sport today.
Cross training refers to the engagement in more than one sport code by a young athlete. This may mean that whilst the young athlete plays football, he/she also takes up, say rugby, swimming or basketball at the same time. This is usually done by parents who want their children to be exposed to as many sports as possible, before identifying the one he/she will be best at, or the one they will most probably excel at. Eventually these young athletes focus and build their careers on the remaining one.
As the name suggests, early specialisation refers to the engagement of a single sporting code at a very early age and a total focus on building skill and talent in this one code until it is mastered to an elite or professional level. One would for example start playing tennis at the age of five, and specialise in it until elite level, without participating in any other sport. But which one is the better way to raise your child in sport? This two-part article analyses the merits and demerits of both.
Whilst cross training exposes young athletes to many sport codes, it is also believed to give an abundance of choice to the athlete where they can explore their areas of passion. In terms of physical development, there are two ways to look at cross training: skill acquisition and neuromuscular conditioning. Training across various sporting disciplines allows the body to be exposed to a variety of body stresses that differ by sport, e.g. tissue stresses to the lower body in football players, and strains to the upper body in basketball and rugby, as well as back and shoulder stresses in swimming or mental strain in chess. Although this may be viewed as an overload to the developing body, it can also allow the body to adapt better to training as the child grows if training loads are monitored correctly.
In terms of skill acquisition, studies suggest that children, who play many sports at once, are likely to master a particular sporting discipline later than those who take an early specialisation in only one sport. This can be simply explained in the sense that skill acquisition and mastering requires repetitive constant practice of a particular physical routine over time.
Motor learning processes are mastered through constant stimulation of neurological pathways that are repeatedly stimulated the most in our bodies. As the old adage goes, ‘Practice makes perfect’ or better yet, ‘Practice breeds improvement’, since no one ever reaches a true state of perfection.
– To be continued next week.
Munashe Chinyama is a consultant sports physiotherapist based in Windhoek, Namibia.
He has been working with various NFA national teams since March 2018. Chinyama holds a B.Sc. (Hons) Degree in Physiotherapy from the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) and a Diploma in Football Medicine from Fifa. He