Youth Specialization: Early to Ripe, Early to Rot
It’s that time of year again. It’s Super Bowl Sunday (Go Bucs!) and we’ll have the opportunity to see all kinds of graphics and literature about how many players in the Super Bowl were multi-sport athletes growing up. Around any high level national championship without fail this topic gets brought up. From the Final Four to the Frozen Four to the Super Bowl to the World Series and everything in-between coaches seem to want to bring this subject to light and for good reason, it’s important. Developing athletic qualities through various sports endeavors throughout your youth can have an enormous impact on your overall longterm development. Different sports utilize different movement skills, different energy systems and different skillsets which will all have an impact on your athletic development overall, impacting every other sport you’re playing.
All sports in their most simple form are problem solving endeavors, both mentally and physically. What this means is that we need a large tool box filled with many different kinds of tools to be successful. In any given play on the field you have to not only decide strategically how to act/react but you need to have the physical ability to accomplish that task. The more athletic qualities you possess, the better your chances of making a play can be. From conditioning, to speed, to strength and movement quality the more full your “tool box” is the more likely you can get the job done on the field. The old saying goes “if all you have is a hammer, everything becomes a nail” and a lot of times in sport nothing is a nail and your hammer becomes useless so you better have a full toolbox!
There are a lot of reasons why kids tend to specialize at young ages and the sad fact is that two of the biggest reasons are parents and coaches. We’re going to talk about why this happens, what the ramifications are, and what should be done instead here in this article.
Why Are We Specializing?
The sheer fact off the matter is that kids are specializing in sport at younger and younger ages. The reasons why range from love of the sport, to parent’s fear of missing and being left behind, and even pressure from coaches and organizations demanding loyalty to a team or program. The rat race is on and it seems everyone’s jumping in to try to get to the finish line first without realizing their car’s gonna breakdown before the finish line ever on the horizon.
We’ve all heard the stories of superstar athletes dedicating their lives to their sport: The hockey players born in skates, the basketball players shooting hoops in their driveway to the wee hours in the night, and the baseball players running poles every single day trying to make it to the show. Hell, Sports Illustrated and ESPN will even make documentaries on the absurdity of their dedication to the sport since they could walk. The only problem, these guys are the EXCEPTION to the rule not the rule itself. For every Sidney Crosby and LeBron James who make it, there’s tens of thousands of kids who don’t make it.
I’ve had the pleasure of working for two different sports performance facilities that were located inside of large sports complexes. While the experiences were awesome there was one thing that always ate me up inside: these facilities have to offer year round organized sports in an effort to keep the doors open, and if you want these facilities to remain open you’ve got to patronize them throughout the year. And who can blame them? They’re offering services that people want in an effort to maximize their profitability, as a capitalist I can absolutely respect and understand that. The problem lies in the fact that this doesn’t give kids a break from their sport. The last facility I was at ended their competitive travel season in late February and TWO DAYS later started their organized spring travel training to help kids get ready for tryouts for the next season. It’s a vicious cycle that doesn’t allow kids to try other sports, learn other skills or even recover from their previous season. The facility I was at prior to that was an academy that had kids practicing their sport for SIX HOURS per day, every day. They would also sell private training on the side so their coaches could make some extra money and there was even a waitlist for some of the coaches. Some of these athletes were as young as 7 years old playing one sport and one sport only for 6 hours a day. There’s a lot of dangers to this amount of volume when it comes to sports and we’re going to go over that now.
The Problem with Specialization
So why is specializing in a single sport at a young age such a bad idea? There’s tons of data to support diversifying your athletic abilities but what about specialization leads to such poor outcomes? Here’s a list of problems created by early specialization laid out by Tom Myslinski’s in his “Development of the Russian Conjugate Sequence System" paper:
Early forced adaptation leads to increased incidence of injury
Increased chance of burnout or quitting prior to 18 years of age
Best performances between 15-16 years of age due to early adaptation
Performance inconsistencies within competition
Immediate performance improvements, with a quick taper of said improvements
As you can see these are all undesired outcomes, but what do they mean? I’ll explain them a little bit more in depth here
Increased rate of injury
Many sports use fairly consistent movement patterns over and over again and don’t really stray from a specific set of movements. Let’s take the extreme of baseball for example. In baseball you only do a few things: swing, throw and sprint. Swinging and throwing are one sided endeavors, and the sprinting only goes counterclockwise around the diamond with lateral starts to the right. With the exception of the outfielders the majority of the game completely neglects any multidirectional movement, and right turns for that matter. Over time this is going to create imbalances that could have otherwise been addressed by other sports or even proper training. These imbalances will lead to overuse injuries.
Burning out or quitting
It should probably go without saying but I’ll say it anyways, kids get bored pretty easily. Putting all your eggs in one basket isn’t just bad for business and life, but athletic development as well. This isn’t something that every kid is going to deal with as love of sport definitely factors in, but I can tell you from personal experience as a coach that not every kid loves their sport, and the first chance they’re given to jump ship they will. This issue tends to be parent driven, and once kids find out about friends and social lives their sport will quickly fall by the wayside.
Best performances early on
On the surface this sounds like a great thing. Specialize early and you’ll be better than everyone else starting at a young age. The problem is that no one is going to scout your 10U team, and to be completely honest no one gives a crap about how good your 14U stats were either. In my experience it’s very rare that the kid who tears up 10/12/14U ever ends up with a college scholarship or playing at any significant level following high school.
Performance inconsistencies
This one seems like it would be a bit of a head scratcher but in reality it’s not. Forced early adaptation, overuse injury potential and burnout all lead to various states of readiness for any athlete especially those under 18 years of age. This varied state of readiness will lead to inconsistencies in both training and play on the field.
Immediate performance improvements
Again, this is another thing that sounds great. Immediate adaptation and improvement of a skillset on the surface sounds like a win. But this quick improvement is more often than not followed by a tapering off of performance and these kids typically get passed by their peers who develop at an older age. Focusing on specific sport skill can/does lead to a lack of athletic development, and when their peers catch up from a skill perspective these kids get left behind.
If this is what happens with early specialization, what does the data say about more of a multilateral development approach? Here’s the facts:
Performance improvements are continuous over time
Best performances tend to be later in childhood and into adult life due to both physical and mental maturation
Performance is much more consistent over time
Instead of burning out, many athletes “come into their own” in adulthood
Gradual adaptation and variety of athletic stimuli lead to a lower rate on injuries
As you can see the multilateral development model leads to much better outcomes. In addition to the likelihood of staying in the sport and excelling, they’ll be more likely to stay on the field and off the training tables dealing with injuries.
Combating Early Specialization Through Training
How do we combat early specialization? Well the easiest way is going to be to not specialize at a young age! The second best way is to spend time developing athleticism through training. Playing different sports can absolutely take care of that BUT working with a strength and conditioning coach who makes you a better athlete and not just better at your sport can do the same. The problem lies in the fact that many sports performance “trainers” will make your training look like your sport. Doing this can not only lead to every single bad outcome that early specialization will lead to but it will amplify it. Here’s a few examples of what trainers will do with their athletes:
Baseball - lots of rotational work
Anti-rotational movements should take precedence in physical preparedness for baseball. Athletes are rotating in one direction when they hit and when they throw. This needs to be combated through proper training.
Hockey - a bunch of lateral movement
Even linear movement in hockey is done with lateral force. They’re getting more than enough of that on the ice, lateral movement should be developed sparingly while there should be a focus on strength development.
Football - tons of upper extremity pushing
Pulling is actually against the rules in football and thus pushing is almost 100% of what the upper extremity does in the sport. Pulling should be the main focus for many positions in football.
Basketball - way too much jumping
They’re getting hundreds of ground contacts in practice throughout the week. You’d be much better off focusing your time on strength in the gym for basketball players.
Soccer - entirely too much conditioning
Practice and games are full of conditioning and thus it’s unnecessary to waste time on conditioning. Focus should be on things like power, strength and speed.
Tennis - lots of “foot speed” drills
Tennis is another sport that seems to be in the dark ages of training much like football. Tennis players should be focusing on decelerating and learning to produce and accept force through strength training and not learning how to move their feet really fast without going anywhere.
While a lot of these types of training are still necessary for athletic development with all athletes, we need to keep in mind that a good portion of the work we do in the weight room should be focused on giving us what we’re not getting on the field of play. This is the only way to create well rounded athletes who have a large tool box and a good pool of movement patterns to pull from to be able to solve those problems on the field of play. If you’ve made it this far you’re probably interested in how training should be structured and the Long Term Athletic Development Model is a good place to start.
The Long Term Athletic Development Model
The Long Term Athletic Development (LTAD) model was popularized by Istvan Balyi in the 90’s as a way to create the highest functioning athletes possible over time. It focuses on different athletic adaptations throughout different periods of time in youth development. While its focus is on sport development through childhood, it can be applied to training for sport as well. It is broken down into the following six stages:
FUNdamental - childhood
Running, jumping, landing, skipping, throwing, games, etc. It’s important to make training fun for kids at this age and not make them dread training sessions which will lead to a higher compliance level. Training should look nothing like their sport.
Learning to Train - late childhood
Beginning of some structured training. Training should be light and focused on creating good movement patterns and learning to deliver and accept force. Training should look nothing like their sport.
Training to Train - adolescence
Training becomes more structured with an actual plan and goals for training. Training still should look nothing like their sport.
Training to Compete - early adulthood
Training becomes periodized and much more structured. Athletes are expected to have a readiness level that allows them to train at a high level every session. Focuses shift to specific adaptations at times such as speed/power/strength throughout the training year. Training may have some similarities to their sport, however the overwhelming majority of their training should look nothing like their sport.
Training to Win - adulthood
Highest structured type of training. Training may become planned on even a yearly basis and designed to peak at certain competition times. Training may have some movements that look like their sport, but the majority of their training should focus on adaptations for their sport, not the movements of their sport.
Retirement - adulthood
Training becomes for general health and wellness.
While the LTAD model has its flaws, the fundamental underpinnings of it are very sound. The goal of following this model is to acquire desired athletic qualities and foster a love of sport which in theory should lead to better athletes throughout the training process.
Early specialization in sport is something that seems to get more and more popular as the years go on despite all the data showing how bad it is for your developing child. There’s just a ton of money in it for coaches, programs and facilities alike and the fear of missing out on development can be too much for some parents to pass on more time on the field of play. Resist this urge and convince your kids to try other sports! It will more than likely only increase their love for their chosen sport, and their development will thank you!
