SPORT SPECIALIZATION IN YOUTH
In his famous 2008 book, Outliers, author Malcom Gladwell proposed a “10,000 hour rule.” In it, he proposed that it takes ten thousand hours of intentional practice to achieve mastery within a field or study. He examines the workload of Bill Gates, the Beatles, and theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. Athletically, he looks at Kyrie Irving’s 10,000 hours of practice.
In today’s society, there’s been an absolute explosion in youth sports participation. There’s been an emphasis on winning, leading to a fundamental shift - away from a youth-driven recreational activity - and more towards a coach and skill development activity emphasizing a single sport specialty. This sport specialization is defined as a duration of practicing for a specific sport greater than eight months per year, or, quitting all sports to focus on one singular sport.
We have seen the 10,000 rule play into effect in the sport realm. Coaches and parents, in increasing trends, are aggressively pursuing athletic success in one particular sport. Today’s schedules of practices and games is different from that of previous generations. Kid’s are specializing at earlier ages, as evidenced by the growth in AAU leagues.
But the fundamental question is, is this healthy, and what are the effects of this?
Before looking at the effects, we should first examine the 10,000 hour rule itself. Originally, it was created looking upon the success of grand-master chess champions and violinists. It’s been largely debunked, at least in terms of a magic number to greatness. However, this rule is still believed that hyper intense, sport-specific training is correlated with athletic success. Data has shown that musicians began training around 5 years of age, and those after 5 years of age were unable to catch up. However, research in athletics has not demonstrated this pattern at all.
However, highly specialized athletes had a 2.25 greater odds of having sustained a serious overuse injury than an unspecialized young athlete, even after accounting for hours per week of sports exposure. Multiple studies have shown that early specialization is not the best way to achieve athletic success. The chief theory is that participation in a diverse array of sports allows the child to develop diverse motor skills, instead of constantly training an unstable patterning. Further, a multi-sport participation allows the child to participate in different play structures, limiting the pressure to perform.
Most experts agree that a good measure is to limit specialization of an athlete’s sport until at least 12 years of age to help the athlete decrease risk for injury and psychological burnout. World class athletes are more likely to start competing at a later age, competed in other sports as children, and were typically selected for an organized sport program at an older age.
