The Benefits of a Multi-Sport Background (And Drawbacks of Single-Sport Specialization)
TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read)
Youth sport experiences can be defined by specialization or diversification
While some sports demand early specialization, diversification is regarded as the healthier path, that also leads to better outcomes
Play multiple sports, in different seasons and enjoy the talent exchange, social benefits and decreased injury rates
What’s Better? A Jack of All Trades or Master of One?
In a galaxy far far away, a young athlete would complete their season, store their equipment high up in the garage, and not look or think about it until the following season.
A galaxy far far away indeed...
In this galaxy at least, we have been led to believe that in order to excel in sport, one must engage in a year-long cycle of sport-specific activity. A young aspiring baseball pitcher must play the regular season, followed by fall ball, winter training, spring ball, pitching camps and a variety of prospect tournaments.
It makes sense at a primitive level. If you want to get better, work at it constantly.
Unfortunately, we’ve seen time and time again that this approach may work in rare occasions, but most often leads to chronic injuries, burn-out and drop-out.
Choose Your Path Wisely
Early specialization is the selection of a single sport during childhood (5-12 years of age), which becomes the focus of formal intense and high-volume training, competition and play.
Early diversification is a pathway that includes multiple sports during childhood, played in both formal and informal settings, with specialization to a single-sport delayed into adolescence (13-18 years of age).
Focus on the bold words above and consider the difference between formal and informal.
Formal: Adult organized and led activities i.e. coach-led practices and games
Informal: self-organized activities without intervention i.e. recess games with friends, pond hockey
Despite AI’s objections - “We talkin’ bout practice?!” - formal training is required to achieve high-performance status. We also know that a strong background of informal activities lead to higher levels of motivation, better skill acquisition and improved decision-making abilities.
Why?
Well, without the barrage of whistles from coaches, the young athlete is free to play; to create, invent, or try something new without fear of reprimand.
Ice hockey legend Bobby Orr spoke glowingly about pond hockey and his own development: “With no boards to make high chips off the glass, you had to stickhandle your way out of trouble.”
Expectations vs. Reality
We think obsessing over little detail and training and training year-round will yield results…but it isn’t always the case.
The notion that early specialization provides young athletes a head start is a long-held and deep-seated belief among parents, coaches and athletes. The main argument is the number of hours spent practicing, leading to improved skills, higher levels of physical fitness and increased confidence. Research demonstrates that reaching expert status requires a minimum of 10 years of dedicated practice. Starting at a young age should therefore help expedite the attainment of expert status.
However, this notion is not supported when examining the backgrounds of elite athletes across the globe. The expected pattern of early specialization in sport is not seen. While there are obvious exceptions, world class athletes are characterized by later age of specialization and a great deal of sport sampling during their youth.
Early specialization is often driven by parents and coaches that upon witnessing early juvenile success, assume more specialized training will dictate future successes. But the unfortunate reality is that early juvenile success has no meaningful relationship with future athletic success.
Everyone Gets a Sport!
Early specialization can indeed produce elite talent in select cases: Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Connor McDavid. But it reflects a lack of understanding regarding the mountains of research supporting long-term athlete development models. Early specialization more often leads to overuse injury, burnout/dropout, decreased social development and a decline in fundamental movement skills critical for later sporting skills.
There are great cross-over benefits for those who play complementary sports that are similar, but different, than the primary sport.
Conversely, playing multiple sports as a youth and delaying the focus on one sport helps prevent the negative consequences associated with early specialization mentioned above.
But there is more to early diversification than simply avoiding negatives.
Engaging in sports with similar but different requirements aids in skill acquisition and decision-making abilities. For example, a lacrosse player can benefit from playing field hockey. Both sports are categorized as invasion sports, which helps with tactic comprehension (creating and containing space) as well as pattern recognition of offensive and defensive schemes. Further, both sports involve using an implement (field hockey stick vs. a lacrosse stick) which aids in developing hand-eye coordination.
Wading Through the Murky Waters of Youth Sport
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) states, “Youth should avoid early specialization, as diverse athletic exposure and sport sampling enhance development and athletic capacity, reduce injury risk and increase the opportunity for a child to discover the sport(s) that he/she will enjoy and possibly excel at.”
Practically speaking, no young athlete should engage in only one sport. For those cases where the athlete has a high motivation to participate in just one sport, the extra time should be devoted to informal (playful) sport-specific activities while encouraged to try other sports. All other youth athletes should engage in the early diversification pathway, sampling as many sports as possible.
For formal training, the number of hours should slowly increase until the athlete reaches 14-18, at which point, a single sport may become the sole focus. Simultaneously, the number of hours spent on informal activity should decrease until 14-18 years of age, at which point, it should stop altogether.
Look to the Greats
The proof for early sport diversification is in the proverbial pudding:
NFL wide receiver Terrell Owens was a university track and basketball star and played for the Sacramento Kings in the NBA summer league.
Seattle Seahawk quarterback Russell Wilson was the 140th overall draft pick by the Colorado Rockies in the 2010 MLB draft and a highly enough regarded prospect that the Texas Rangers took a flyer on him in the 2013 Rule 5 draft knowing he was NFL bound.
Bo Jackson, arguably the greatest athlete in history, is the only player to be named an all-star in baseball (outfielder with the Kansas City Royals) and football (running back with the Los Angeles Raiders).
Two-time Super Bowl winner and cornerback/outfielder Deion Sanders, who also played in a World Series for the Atlanta Braves (1992). Oh, and he was a track star at the university level as well.
NBA legend Wilt Chamberlain played professional volleyball once retired. He also competed in track, basketball, high, jump, shot put and quarter-mile races in college.
Philadelphia 76er center Joel Embiid was a promising volleyball and soccer player in his native Cameroon before switching to basketball at age fifteen! Think about that…he didn’t start basketball until age fifteen!
Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr, Gordie Howe, Brendan Shanahan, Doug Gilmour, Gary Roberts, Joe Nieuwendyk, Paul Kariya, John Tavares, Steven Stamkos, Sean Monahan and more all played lacrosse growing up.
Clara Hughes owns multiple medals from both Summer and Winter Olympics (road cycling and speed skating).
Heather Moyse is a World Rugby Hall of Famer, two-time Olympic gold medalist (bobsleigh), competed internationally in cycling, played soccer and ran track at university.
The effects of talent transfer and early diversification pay off in the long-run. Having the patience and discipline to stick to the process is undoubtedly difficult.
The underlying benefit all these athletes derived is talent transfer; moving skills from one sport to another.
Consider:
44% of Olympic and Senior World Championship medalists at one point changed sports
Of that 44%, over half transitioned at 15 years of age or older
Demotions, side-steps, and all-out interruptions are more common in high achieving athletes
It is difficult to not worry about getting left behind when peers are getting in extra reps at their chosen sport. It requires a great deal of patience and perspective to remember that early youth success is not a guarantee of later senior success. Even if your friends are currently ahead of you, we know with certainty there is a good chance that you will overtake them in the future if you follow the right path.
Don’t chase immediate success. Play the long game.
Soccer and track and field pair nicely for running and jumping skills. Hockey and figure skating are a lovely couple of edge work. Basketball and volleyball are a dynamic duo of jumping, and ball tracking abilities. Baseball and tennis are a cohesive team of striking and hand-eye coordination. And every athlete can benefit from dance, gymnastics and martial arts to help with movement, balance and agility.
To reiterate, not only does a multi-sport background help with ability transfer, skill-building and improved social skills, it also protects from overtraining, overuse injuries and dropout/burnout.
The NBA: Useful for More Than Just Fashion Advice
If you squint really hard, you can see Lebron sulking in the corner.
An NBA research study examined 237 athletes drafted in the first round between 2008 and 2015. Of those 237 athletes, 36 (15%) had multi-sport backgrounds while 201 (85%) were single-sport athletes.
“A-ha!” the naysayers exclaim, “It pays to specialize early! Off to the court! My boy gonna get drafted!”
Slow down over-eager parents! Brushing aside the superficial statistics, the picture begins to crystallize.
The multi-sport group was clearly better off over the long-term:
They played a significantly greater percentage of total games
They suffered significantly fewer major injuries even though they played more games overall
They played for a greater number of years
These results are a destructive punch to the gut of the single-sport, early specialization crowd. Looking at the highest level of professional basketball in North America, the multi-sport group may be smaller, but relatively speaking, have longer and healthier careers.
Bottom Line
At the end of the day, we all get into sport for the right reasons (hopefully) - leadership, teamwork, positive values, fitness and the dream of one day getting paid to play! Keeping this in a mind, an early diversification and a multi-sport background will permit for a longer, healthier, and ultimately, more productive sporting career. So with spring arriving, go hide the hockey equipment (and smell) in the garage, bust out the soccer shoes, tennis racquets and baseball bats and get going on another sport!