Young athletes who focus on a single sport are more likely to get injured or to suffer from burnout, according to new research from the University of Georgia.
Instead, students should play multiple sports, the research suggests.
"Using the same muscles in the same way over and over and over, say, a pitcher pitching constantly year round, or even someone playing football is engaging in the same movements lead to repetitive use injuries," said Dee Warmath, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences. "So if you didn't diversify and engage in different types of sports, that is that challenge your body in different ways that you could end up with a repetitive use injury."
Warmath also said the study also noted burnout among athletes who specialized on only one sport.
"You want young adults to be engaged in their sport, and there are a lot of benefits of that," Warmath said. "But if all you do year-round is play soccer, there’s a risk you’ll get burned out and possibly leave the sport.”
The study was published in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine and was funded in part by a Mind Matters Challenge Grant from the National Collegiate Athletic Association/U.S. Department of Defense. The study surveyed nearly 1,000 high school athletes in the U.S.
Experts have long recommend limiting sport specialization, particularly among high school athletes. But this study sought to learn why students choose to specialize. For the most part, the motivation was simple, a pure love of the game.
"So instead of saying sport specialization is bad and you shouldn’t do it, maybe it’s more about finding ways to compete more effectively and emphasizing how even some professional athletes use other sports to train for their primary sport," Warmath said. "This diversity of sports can make you better in your primary sport."
The researchers found that athletes who planned to play a sport in college were significantly more likely to have a high level of specialization. Warmath said those students can be encouraged to play other sports without sacrificing their desire to play their primary story.
"One is to play multiple sports and to consider them all to be your primary sport," she said. "Another way is like you described, where I have my primary sport, I want to be a hockey player, I want to be a football player. But I use other sports for more training purposes. And that diversification purpose to build my ability to move my body in different ways."
