Early specialization: how not to train an elite athlete
The general public rarely allows sports science to interfere with their deeply held beliefs, even when the beliefs are more myth than reality. When I was a basketball coach in Ireland, young Irish players believed that the greatness of basketball was not in their genes. They said the Irish were not meant to be great athletes. Meanwhile, the Irish rugby team crushed their opponents in their preparation for the 2007 World Cup, where some pundits considered Ireland a favorite alongside the All Blacks. While basketball and rugby are different sports that require different skills, each features athletes who are fast, agile, strong, and coordinated. If Ireland produces world-class rugby talents with these athletic qualities, why do Irish basketball players believe this development is beyond their gene pool?
Few see rugby and basketball in terms of athletic qualities, so few see the similarities. The same goes for sports in the United States. Many coaches and parents don’t see the athletic similarities between sports: People view basketball as a sport for tall people who can shoot; rugby as an aggressive physical sport; and volleyball as a non-contact sport with different ball skills than other sports. We miss athletic similarities, which impede our overall athletic development.
Because we view sports in sports-specific terms, coaches encourage players to specialize at an earlier age. Some basketball coaches do not like players who play volleyball, as they see no benefit and feel like they are lagging behind their teammates while “wasting time” playing volleyball. However, volleyball and basketball require lateral movements, hand-eye coordination, ball skills, and vertical jumps. There is a trade-off between blocking a ball and contesting a shot, between moving laterally for a dig and moving laterally to avoid penetration by an offensive player.
As youth sports become more competitive, more young athletes are rushing to specialize. They heed their coach’s advice or follow their parents’ guidance as parents try to give their child an edge over the competition. Early specialization, when an athlete practices one sport year-round and excludes other sports before puberty, leads to immediate improvements in sport-specific skills. Coaches and parents see immediate results and follow this path. If the most skilled 10-year-old plays basketball all year long, my son or daughter may need to spend 12 months out of the year playing basketball. However, athletic development is a process and developing sport-specific skills is only one piece.
People encourage early specialization because of immediate gains in sport-specific performance and ignore research that cautions against early specialization. As Alan Launder writes in Play practice:
“In 1985, a study by the Swedish Tennis Association suggested that early specialization is unnecessary for players to achieve high levels of tennis performance. Among other things, this study found that players who were part of the ‘miracle’ of Swedish tennis players of the 1980s, including the great Bjorn Borg, were very active in a variety of sports until they were 14 years old and did not begin to specialize until they were about 16 years old. ”
Before one can be excellent at any sport, one must first be an athlete, and early specialization impedes overall athletic development. However, as with Irish players, we see sports based on specific sporting abilities, not athletic qualities. We ignore examples like Chase Budinger and Wes Welker. Budinger, from the University of Arizona, was an elite volleyball player in high school. University of Arizona head coach Lute Olson believes Budinger has the athleticism to be a great defensive player because of his volleyball experience. Welker played soccer throughout his high school career and his former soccer coach, Mike Leach of Texas Tech University, credits soccer for Welker’s quickness and vision, making him nearly unstoppable as a wide receiver. of the New England Patriots slot machine.
Sports training facilities have proliferated in recent years. While these facilities fulfill parents’ big league dreams, much of their success is due to the development of general athletic skills that athletes fail to develop naturally because they specialize and reduce their athletic development. Rather than playing multiple sports, which train multiple skills, athletes specialize in one sport and use performance training to compensate for their narrow athletic development.
Children used to develop these athletic skills by playing multiple sports and neighborhood games. Young children used to play tag. As speed expert Lee Taft says, “Tag may be the best game ever invented … There is linear speed, lateral speed, angular takeoffs, moving backwards, avoidance skills, cutting, change of direction, pretend skills, skills breaking skills, reaching skills, body control skills, balance, flexibility, coordination, raising and lowering the center of mass, preparing opponents, strategies, teamwork … Basically, etiquette will force you to dig deep into the bag of Trick movements of your body. has stored, or better yet, not stored and forces you to use or learn it. “
Now, instead of playing tag in the street, the children go to the facilities where they do agility exercises to be able to change direction, pretend, evade and cut when they play basketball, soccer or football. We impose vocational training environments on children before puberty and ignore their different developmental needs. In the Swedish study, “what was most significant was that many players who had been superior to the eventual elite while in the 12-14 age group had dropped out of the sport,” (Launder).
Athletic development is a process and early specialization tries to speed up the process. However, what is the goal? Is the goal to dominate at age 10? Early specialization leads to early peaks. Players improve their specific sports skills more quickly than those who participate in a wide range of activities. However, those who develop deeper and broader athletic skills have a better foundation when they finally specialize. While those who specialized early hit a plateau, others improve as they spend more time improving their sport-specific skill.
If you specialize in basketball at age 10, your overall athletic development is incomplete. While you are likely to improve your dribbling, shooting, and understanding of the game more quickly than your multi-sport peers, those who play multiple sports develop many other athletic skills. If others play soccer, they improve their vision, agility, footwork, and more; If they play soccer, they develop different skills depending on position, but they probably improve acceleration and power. When these athletes specialize in basketball at age 15, they have broader athletic abilities and have an advantage against the player who specialized early and is likely to hit a plateau in skill development.
Skills, from athletic to tactical to perceptual, carry over from sport to sport. Many coaches and parents insist that there is no relationship between sports, which gives more credence to early specialization. However, before you excel in a sport, you must first be an athlete. The more developed a player’s general athletic abilities, the higher the player’s ceiling in the chosen sport. While these ideas are slow to embrace by the general public, sports science research holds that specialization before puberty is totally unnecessary and, in some cases, detrimental to an athlete’s long-term success. If the goal is to dominate other 10-year-olds, specialize early. However, if the goal is to raise healthy children and give them the opportunity to participate in athletics in high school and / or college, playing multiple sports offers a child more advanced development than early specialization.