There are a lot of debates among sport scientists and coaches about the best way for developing high-class athletes. The main tendency in coaching is participation in sports and specialisation in a chosen one as early as possible. On the opposite, sports scientists’ general recommendations are diversification (involvement in many sports) and enjoyable physical activities (Lloyd et al., 2015).
Whereas these scientific recommendations are appropriate for children’s well-being and harmonious physical development, are they applicable for achieving success in performance?
In this article, I deliberately omit the moral aspect of this problem — do we really have the right to impose our choice (and our ambitions?) on our children and discuss only its practical application for success in elite sports.
Written by Peter Joffe
What is better for high-level success: specialisation or diversification?
Children should be introduced to physical activity as early as possible. That facilitates their physical and mental development, as well as improves social skills and general well-being. However, a different question is when they can start sport’s training in one chosen sport (actually selected for them by their parents), which means structured, controlled by adults, all-year practice, where the goal is to achieve success in competition.
The main arguments in favour of early specialisation.
1. You need a lot of practice to be successful in contemporary sport. Highly cited “ten years-10000 hours” rule (Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-R?mer, 1993), though is an oversimplification of the athlete’s development process, reflects the need to work harder and better than your competitors. The earlier is your start, the more hours of practice you accumulate during your development years. Often, accumulated during adolescence, practice differs between elite and non-elite performers (Starkes & Hodges, 1998; Ward, Hodges, Williams, & Starkes, 2007). However, should it necessary be one-sport practice? In contradiction to early specialisation necessity, G?llich et al. found that among 1500 German Olympic athletes, early intensive practice in one sport had a generally negative effect on the probability of future success (G?llich & Emrich, 2006).
2. Early start very often is connected with earlier success; hence it increases early starter’s chances of being picked up for further high-performance training. That means that better coaches, facilities and funding become available for them. Probably early-starters will be better accustomed to competitive stress because competitions become usual routine for them from early age. However, in the mentioned above study, juvenile success and involvement in intense youth development programmes, implemented by sport’s governing bodies were not always positively connected with future achievements.
3. Starting early young athletes acquire the necessary technical skills while his/her brain is still developing, thus allowing technical patterns to be more naturally integrated into the brain’s structures.
Why diversification may be useful?
1. Fundamental motor skills (FMS) and agility
Though we are considering our abilities to run, jump, leap, turn, catch, throw, kick, etc. as natural, actually, we were not born with these skills and sometimes and somehow we learnt them. In the past, when children were more physically active, most of these abilities they learnt during unstructured and non-controlled games with their peers. Some of them acquired such skills better than others due to inborn giftedness; nevertheless, most kids could do that.
We realised that something was wrong only when humanity adapted a more sedentary lifestyle, and the younger generation began to lack physical activity.To our surprise, we found out that many children cannot do these basic movements, and actually, coaches have to teach that when kids start to play sports. Why do we need these skills? Well, because if a young athlete is not good in FMS, then more complex movement patterns needed for sport won’t be robust. It is like a house without a solid basement.
Another quality, which is necessary for many sports, is agility. That is an ability to perform a rapid whole-body movement with change of velocity and/or direction in response to a stimulus (Sheppard & Young, 2006). I want to add that such kinetic changes should be performed smoothly and efficiently in different, often unpredictable, and complex environments. You cannot completely predict and rehearse that in advance.
Agility is based on FMS and requires variable and diverse training stimuli for its development. A kid may better develop FMS and agility in a multi-sport environment (Fransen et al., 2012). Technical skills, which are not based on a solid FMS platform and agility, are not strong and flexible enough and may “crack” under pressure.
2. It makes participation in sport more enjoyable and helps to prevent burnout in the future.
Raedeke defined burnout in sport as “a psychological syndrome of emotional and physical exhaustion, reduced sense of accomplishment, and sport devaluation”(Raedeke & Smith, 2001)
When a kid participates in one sport exclusively from his/her early age, it may put an “uneven” physical and psychological pressure on him/her. Children may be bored with continuous routine, endless coaching instructions, and demands and finally loses a joyfulness of sport’s involvement.
However, it is just a part of the problem. The more serious issue is that young athletes start to consider themselves exclusively as professional athletes, without any other interests and responsibilities instead of developing a wide sense of self as multidimensional persons (Hill, 2013). This problem is more likely to emerge in the early specialisation when parents and coaches actually may facilitate it.
The child becomes fully devoted to achieving success and perfectness. His/her self-esteem and self-realisation are entirely connected with winning. However, after colliding with the high-level sport’s reality, young athlete suddenly or gradually realises that success is not guaranteed. After that he/she may develop a sense of fear, hopelessness, and despair. That is a vicious circle: young athletes pursue success so desperately that it becomes detrimental for performance and training (see article).
3. Overuse injuries.
And the last but not the least problem which may arise from the early specialisation, is overuse injuries. These kinds of injuries may account for 45-54 % of all injuries (DiFiori et al., 2014). We have to admit that a high-level sport puts tremendous physical strain on an athlete. Therefore it is the coach’s interest from a moral and high-performance perspective to develop an athlete who is well adapted to repeated overloading and is not predisposed to injuries.
Early specialisation puts a significant load on the same muscle groups, ligaments, and joints, while kids are still underdeveloped. That may lead to injuries (DiFiori, et al., 2014). Very often, “early specialisation coaches” ignore this danger and do not pay the necessary attention to comprehensive physical conditioning. Multi-sport involvement naturally makes an athlete better physically prepared and less susceptible to injuries when specialisation finally occurs (Paterno, Taylor-Haas, Myer, & Hewett, 2013).
Technique, FMS and agility’s demands may separate sports on early and late specialisation.
Scientific studies about early specialisation and diversification leave us with contradictory results. This contradiction is especially evident when researchers don’t consider the specificity of sport(s) they are talking about. In my opinion, the general approach is not appropriate here. There are different groups of sports that require different development paths for young athletes.
I propose to take as a basis for separation the requirements for technique, FMS, agility and decision making.
Gymnastics, figure skating, and diving.
Gymnastics, figure skating, and diving are the sports where high level of technique is required. However, this technique is unchangeable in competition. New elements have to be learned, in advance. Performance goes basically in the same conditions, and other competitors cannot influence your technique’s execution.
In fact, you just need to practice your exercise to perfectness, and after that, avoid mistakes while performing it in competitions. I don’t mean that it is easy. The level of perfection and complexity and psychological pressure is so high that achieving success is really difficult. However, I can argue that these sports don’t require high-developed agility. It may sound strange because athletes from these disciplines are, to the greatest extent, graceful, powerful, and artistic. Still, such an argument makes sense if we consider agility as the quality of dealing with unpredictable circumstances.
Because in mentioned sports circumstances always the same, you don’t need to develop the ability to evaluate the environment and adjust the technique’s execution. In these sports, athletes have to devote all his/her time to learning and polish technical and artistic skills and develop physical qualities specific for performance. Probably it is better to start doing earlier and don’t spend precious training time on other sports. Especially if it is an early peak performance sport. Support for this opinion comes from Law et al. study (Law, C?t?, & Ericsson, 2007). They found out that Olympic level rhythmic gymnasts participated in less other sports than their international level colleagues. However, they were more vulnerable to all side-effects of that early specialisation, such as: poorer health, more injuries, and less fun.
Kilograms, centimetres, and seconds sports.
At the opposite end of the starting time scale are so-called kilograms, centimetres, and seconds sports. This group includes track and field events and weight lifting. The technique here is not so complicated compared to previous groups, but physical qualities are of great importance. You can develop these qualities in many different ways; thus early specialisation is not necessary for these sports. It can be even detrimental because it places huge physical stress on immature athletes (Paterno, et al., 2013).
Combat sports.
Combat sports are the group where some level of complexity in movement patterns is presented, though it is lower than in the gymnastic–diving group. However, this technique has to be executed under direct physical pressure from an opponent who is actively trying to distract your performance. To perform under these circumstances, athlete needs not only to have good physical conditions, such as strength, power, and endurance but highly developed cognitive and sensory skills (distance calculation, anticipation, reaction speed. etc.).
The situation in a fight is continuously changing; hence, the fighter benefits from an adequate agility level, though its absence may be compensated by physical strength and cognitive/sensory skills. Comprehensively developed fighter benefits from participation in sports games because abilities and actions needed can be transferred to the fight. These are quickness, endurance, balance, interception’s action, collision avoidance, and many others. My personal coaching experience supports the notion that high-level fighters are generally good in game-sports.
Moreover, the inclusion of various sports can help avoid boring routine in combat training and ease psychological pressure. All mentioned above lead us to conclude that it can be possible to achieve success in combat sports even if you start late but have a solid sporting background. It is beneficial for fighters to include a few other sports in their training programme.
Team-game sports.
A separate group may be formed from the team-game sports, where a high level of technique is an obligation, and direct contact with opponents is presented. That makes the environment in such sports as basketball, football, and hockey very complex and changeable. A player has to deal with the ball/puck while keeping the balance, changing speed and directions, avoiding/making contacts, and to evaluate complex situations on the pitch.
Success in these sports demands a high agility level, the ability to make quick decisions, and be highly developed physically. In my opinion, practising these sports can develop athletes so comprehensively that there is no need and, perhaps, no time to participate in other sports. It doesn’t mean that training can not include exercises and methods from other sports. This actually means that children can and should specialise in these sports as early as possible.
Support for my opinion comes from (Ford & Williams, 2012; Haugaasen, Toering, & Jordet, 2014) studies where no difference was found between successful and non-successful footballers regarding how many other sports they practised in childhood. What distinguished them was an amount of football practice (structured and unstructured) accumulated during development years. So in this group, as in the gymnastics-diving group, but for a different reason, it is probably better to spend more hours on the chosen sport.
Lawn tennis.
Lawn tennis can be considered as one of the most debatable sports in regards to early specialisation. In my opinion, in tennis, agility and fundamental motor skills are in demand but cannot be sufficiently developed just playing tennis.
With no doubt, a high level of technique in this sport is compulsory, and a significant amount of time has to be devoted to it. So, it is probably an argument in favour of starting specialisation early. At the same time, it is a game where opponent directly influences your game by hitting the ball in different angles, velocities, and spins. Also, tennis surfaces are different, as well as weather conditions. All these make situations on a court variable and demand continuous adjustments in the technique’s execution.
A tennis player has to make his/her shots while running, jumping, and turning. He/she has to rapidly accelerate and decelerate from different body positions, change directions, and even have some acrobatic skills. That demands a good level of agility. The quick and correct decision’s making is of great importance, also. Why can we not develop this just practising tennis? Well, challenges for agility in tennis are more delicate and subtle compare to, for example, football and require rather “fine-tuning” of movement skills than “massive application” of agility. However, before refining something, you need to have something to refine.
Tennis training alone, probably, doesn’t allow developing fundamental and comprehensive motor skills, which later will form the basis for “fine” agility. Tennis exercises mostly include pre-planned movements, standard technical combinations, and physical drills. Whereas nobody can neglect the importance of techniques, tennis coaches sometimes even don’t realise that their students lack fundamental motor skills and agility. This insufficiency can be hidden behind artificially boosted superiority in technique and physical strength in kid’s tennis. Nevertheless, later this problem will take its toll.
Apologists of early specialisation in tennis may correctly point out that many tennis stars started as early as four years old. It is true. However, it would be worth to note that by specialisation we mean practising one chosen sport exclusively. Early specialisation is different from the early introduction. In the latter case, the child learns the basic tennis technique and movements pattern playfully while being encouraged to participate in other sports and physical activities. That allows him/her not only to ease the psychological workload, connected with the boring “special” drills, and possibly to avoid overuse injuries and burnout but to be more comprehensively physically developed and agile. That eventually makes him/her a better player.
Such great players like Federer, Nadal, and Murray continued to play other sports like, for example, football till teenage. Nowadays, a deficit in agility can be compensated by power and good technique even in adult tennis (especially in women’s tennis), but soon it will be impossible. New challenges and a new generation of players are coming.
Support for this point comes from many experts and governing bodies in tennis. For instance, the Australian tennis federation though advocates introduction to tennis from 4 years old, however, supports the importance of exposure to a variety of sports till the age of 12 .
Tennis fitness guru Allistair McCaw suggests that 40-50% of training time till the age of 12 should be spent on other sports .
WTA (women tennis association) published a result that after introducing a diverse model of young athletes’ development, the level of drop-out decreased, and high-level athletes started competing for longer (Otis et al., 2006).
Transferable sports and comprehensive physical conditioning training.
On the other hand, many coaches rightly complain that sometimes parents make their kids so busy with so many different activities that they actually have no time to train properly. Whereas comprehensive physical development is compulsory for future achievements, to squander energy and time on too many sports is detrimental. The right balance should be found here. Remember, we need a lot of practice in the chosen sport. There is no need to participate in more than 2-3 additional sports. Even then, these sports should be “transferable”, which means developing skills that are needed for the primary sport.
Comprehensive physical conditioning training can help as well. It shouldn’t be too specialised in early ages. While keeping in mind the main sport, physical conditioning coaches have to develop a wide and solid movement base, fine sensory skills, and stress resistance. They have to bring up complete athletes.
Conclusion.
How can we scientifically prove that one approach is better than another? Well, in our case, we can take adult athletes, retrospectively examine how they trained in childhood (early specialisation or diversity), and try to find a correlation with their present achievements. Unfortunately, there are so many other variables, which can interact with each other and influence an outcome that we cannot be sure about our findings. The cause-effect relation is not clear as well. For example, maybe Nadal, Murray and Federer participated in other sports in childhood just because they are genuinely good athletes, and this participation doesn’t influence their tennis career.
However, scientific data may help us to raise questions and to challenge old notions. There are a mounting amount of facts in support that in many sports, increasing specific practice in early childhood does not lead to success in the future. Of course, we cannot be naive and have to recognise that contemporary sports success demands a significant amount of practice. For the accumulation of this practice, children have to start participating in sport as early as possible. In some sports, where a high level of technique’s execution in an invariable environment is required, and peak performance often comes before maturation, there is probably no other choice than concentrate exclusively on one sport from early childhood. Perhaps that doesn’t make a child happier and healthier; however, it is a price for winning.
Nevertheless, in many other sports, this early specialisation, while it can accelerate initial success, ultimately results in athletes becoming underdeveloped. It provokes a lack of agility, burnout, overuse injuries, and ceasing participation in sport all together. Thus, it may be detrimental, even if we cynically consider only success as the sport’s main goal. For avoiding that, participation in 2-3 transferable sports and comprehensive physical conditioning training should be encouraged.
References
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