Sports Injury Prevention

According to recent research, specializing in one sport at an early age, isn’t what’s going to make your child an elite athlete – diversifying participation in a multitude of sports and not playing year-round, as promoted by the STOP Sports Injuries Campaign, though just might.

Recent research published in Sports Health: A Multidisciplinary Approach, analyzed articles from 1990 to 2011 looking for information about whether sports specialization actually helps or hurts kids.A research which was recently conducted on 519 tennis players ages 10-18 who spent, on average, 11-15 hours/per week training.

The results highlighted that kids who specialized in tennis were 1.5 times more likely to get an injury, regardless of their total training time. Performance was also investigated by the researchers and the studies illustrated that in sports like cycling, swimming, and skating, those who started significant training around age 15 were more likely to become elite-level athletes (defined by podium placings in European competitions and top-10 results in World and Olympic events) than their peers who started training earlier.

“Kids often receive pressure from their parents or coaches to be the best in one given sport, when in reality participating in free play and a multitude of sports from an early age is the best strategy to create an outstanding athlete.