Kids Who Specialize In One Sport Have More Injuries

A preliminary study is suggesting that kids who specialize in one sport may be setting themselves up for more injuries.

Researchers examined 154 young athletes (average age 13) involved in a variety of sports. Of the 154 athletes, 85 had been treated for sports injuries and 69 were there to receive physicals. The study, presented recently at the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine,  determined how “specialized” each athlete was based on a series of factors including how many months they trained, how many months they competed, and how often they practiced each sport.

Their results were startling; they found that over 60% of the injured athletes were specialized in one sport compared with only 31% of the athletes that came in for sports physicals. Uninjured athletes played an average of 17 hours of sports a week, while injured athletes had participated in almost 20 hours per week.

Why are more specialized adolescent athletes getting injured?

One factor may be participating in highly specialized sports like tennis, gymnastics, and dance, which tend to be linked to more severe overuse injuries. The constant, intense training of the same muscle groups can affect a young athlete’s still-growing body very negatively. Another explanation is called “exposure risk.” Essentially, the better you are at a sport the more intense your training becomes. As children develop more and more sports skills their bodies become more vulnerable to injury.

How can parents and coaches prevent these athletic injuries?

Physicians and researchers recommend that parents should be cautious about allowing children to intensely specialize in one sport before high school. Young children should cross-train or enroll in multiple sports until their bodies are more mature and can handle the demands of intense sports training. Additionally, athletes should try to vary their sports participation by season. Playing one sport year-round further increases the risk of overuse injuries.

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