The Youth Athlete
“Young people need models, not critics.”
Managing Youth Athletes with the Future in Mind
I personally take great joy in helping youth athletes return to sport following injury, as I believe that sport serves as a means to promote self-efficacy in the face of difficulty. Youth sport participation serves as an excellent conduit to foster physical fitness, problem-solving, and social identity.
During my time as a pediatric sports physical therapist, I have noticed a concerning trend among the athletes I see in clinic: early sport specialization and associated increased risk of injury and burnout. Research is abundant that we need to have some very difficult conversations regarding early specialization, as roughly 75% of families have a child that participates in sport. Let it be clear I stand firm that the risk of injury of participating in sport is negligible compared to the detrimental effects of a sedentary lifestyle (so get your kids involved!). This is about how we (parents, coaches, and healthcare providers) can do a better job at managing how much an athlete participates in sport in order to maximize the positive associated benefits while keeping our athletes safe and mentally stable.
The concerning trend of early sport specialization over recent years in the United States is likely partially driven by the rising cost of college tuition. Families push their children to perform at high levels at younger and younger ages in hopes of securing scholarships to offset these costs. Parents reason that a child may be better off becoming the best at a single chosen sport to secure the ever-elusive scholarship. This is a logical fallacy and in direct contrast to research that states that the majority of D1 collegiate athletes were multi-sport athletes in high-school.
Research is becoming very abundant and clear that early sport specialization not only doesn’t help a child reach that next level of competition, but it increases the risk of injury and psychological burnout that could hinder them from reaching the collegiate level. According to the 2018 study by Bell et al, athletes who specialize early are nearly TWICE AS LIKELY TO GET INJURED compared to their multi-sport peers. Now, injury is multi-factorial and cannot simply be attributed to the sport in question. This consensus statement from the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine indicates that overtraining may be a likely culprit as to why early-specialization athletes get injured more.
Here are some evidence-based take-aways to help guide how much sport is an appropriate amount for your athlete.
Limit participation in hours of organized sport to less than than the age of the athlete (ex: ≤11 hours of organized sport for an 11 year-old athlete), with a cap of 16 hours/week
≤ 1.7 practices in a given 48 hour window (i.e. don’t schedule excessive practices and allow for adequate recovery between practices)
Have a defined off-season (~3months) to utilize for long-term athletic development
Get athletes involved in resistance training (Barbell Medicine has put out an entire series on this topic)
While physical injury is always an inherent risk in any sport, by keeping these simple principles in mind we can greatly mitigate the risk of injury due to controllable factors and keep the fun in sport for our youth athletes, setting them up for a lifetime of healthy living.
In strength,