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 Researchers followed 756 kids starting when they were 10 or 11 years
old, giving them quarterly questionnaires for five years to see what
sports they were playing.
Kids who dabbled in several sports at the start of the study were
55% more likely to participate in recreational athletics five years
later than children who didn’t start out playing any sports or who
specialized in only one, the study found.
“Children have a lot to gain from engaging in a wide variety of
sports,” said senior study author Mathieu Belanger of the University
of Sherbrooke in New Brunswick.
“Through sport diversification children get to develop a wider
variety of skills which will contribute to their feeling of
competence in sports, which increases the chances that children
enjoy their experiences in sports,” Belanger said by email.
The findings come as a growing number of children are specializing
in a single sport at younger ages and participating in it year round
to pursue spots on elite teams that may boost their chances of
college scholarships down the line.
Children who specialized in one sport at the start of the study were
65% more likely to participate in sports during adolescence than
other kids, the study found. But the early specialists didn’t have
lower odds of nonparticipation as teens.
“If children specialize in only one sport and happen to drop out
from that activity at one point, they risk having no other sport to
fall to since they have not been exposed to them and have not
developed complementary skills required to fully engage in them,”
Belanger said. “Parents should therefore seek opportunities for
their children to try different physical activities and also avoid
having their children take part in any given sport year-round.”
In the first year of the study, 147 kids, or 19%, specialized in
just one sport. Another 506 kids, or 67%, sampled a variety of
sports and 103 children, or 14%, didn’t participate in sports at
all, the researchers report online November 13 in Pediatrics.
Children who specialized in a single sport also tended to spend more
time participating in organized physical activity as opposed to
informal pickup games with friends.
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With specialization, kids were also more likely to play sports
competitively, with specific performance goals, and less likely to
be involved in recreational sports as teens.
The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether
or how sports habits in childhood influence how much physical
activity kids get in adolescence. Researchers also didn’t look at
the total number of hours kids participated in practices and
competitions or examine whether youth played sports as adults.
Even so, the findings add to evidence that early sports
specialization may not have health benefits in the long run, said
Jennifer Sacheck, a researcher at the Friedman School of Nutrition
Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston who wasn’t involved
in the study.
“Put simply, specializing at a young age puts a child at an added
risk for injuries, burn-out and emotional stress,” Sacheck said by
email. “Cross-training is known to be a good thing for functional
movement skills and motivation should be equally cherished in kids.”
For the kids who are truly motivated and gifted athletes,
specialization needs to be handled with care, she advised. In
particular, parents and coaches need to watch for signs of sports
fatigue, such as when kids aren’t motivated in practice, get
injuries or struggle to sleep well or to do well in school.
“Too much of a good thing can sometimes not be a good thing,”
Sacheck said. “If a child has strong desire to specialize in a
particular sport at an early age, parents should still try to
maintain engagement in other complementary sports activities
throughout the year, and this could be on a much less competitive
level like intramurals.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2zLoNQ5
Pediatrics 2017.
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