Objectives: Current trends among young athletes towards earlier specialization age and
year-round training on multiple teams has raised concern for increased injury risk. Our …

Background: Sports specialization is becoming an increasingly common training strategy in
young athletes. Very little research currently exists examining the occurrence of serious …

Background: Many youth athletes focus on 1 sport to gain a competitive advantage, but early
sport specialization may increase risk of overuse injuries and burnout. College athletes have …

30 JOPERD• Volume 81 No. 8• October 2010 concerns in conducting this type of research.
We know very little about the potential benefits or negative consequences of early sport …

Background: Recommendations exist to encourage safe youth participation in sport. These
recommendations include not specializing in 1 sport, limiting participation to less than 8 …

Objectives: Early sports specialization is being seen with increasing frequency in children
and adolescents in an attempt to achieve elite performance status. This phenomenon has …

Recent estimates are that close to 30 million children between the ages of 6 and 18 years
participate in team sport and close to 60 million in some type of organized athletics in the …

Background: There are no clinical longitudinal studies exploring the associations between
sport specialization and intense training patterns and injuries in young athletes. Purpose: To …

A prevailing theory (and practical application) is that elite performance requires early
childhood skill development and training across various domains, including sport. Debate …

Sport specialisation is becoming increasingly common among youth and adolescent
athletes in the USA and many have raised concern about this trend. Although research on …