We have an on going debate in my school, my home, and amongst all my coaching friends and colleagues. The topic is the multisport athlete. The points of contention always seem to be what is the goal of sports at certain levels, how and when should you specialize and whether the nature/history of community dictate how the sport is managed. There are lots of issues but you can see why people have varying opinions.
Let me start by saying I was a dual sport athlete. Up until I was 17 I competed at reasonably high levels in basketball and swimming. Once in high school I limited my swimming to outside of the my high school basketball season and trained year round for basketball (this limited my opportunities but I swam because I was good at it, not because I wanted to be an Olympic athlete). Also growing up I tried a little baseball, soccer, and volleyball in competitive leauges. While doing things like sking, jogging, and a variety of sports recreationally.
I'm not interested in debating the finer points of if, when, and how you should sport sepcialize. Everyone has to make their own decisions. I am going to say if you want to compete in leagues with competitive teams that are producing high level athletes, its only fair to your kids to do the same things. That being said to create atheletes that perform at a high level we should follow what the science tells us, not what worked for some group, some time in the past.
So what do we know scientifically speaking:
Prior to Age 10 kids should play a variety of sports. The point of which is develop basic phsyical attributes and motor skills. This should be done through games and activity based learning. They should play a variety of sports every week doing each a couple of times with no one sport going for more than 6-12 weeks consecutively.
Between the Ages of 10-14 young athletes should play complitmentary sports (activities with similar movements and requisite general motor skills). They should begin training with sport specifc activities and select a prefered sport. This sport should have a high intensity training period lasting 20-30 and they should train 3-4 times per week for this sport, in addition to other sports activities. 75% of the their time should be spent training skills and physical attributes with 25% in actual preparation for competitive games/competitions.
Between the ages 14-18 (the high end range of kids opportunities in our area) kids should be sport specialised. They should be training 6-9 times per week during high intensity training periods in that sport. These periods should occur twice a year and total 42 weeks. Training should be 50% skills and phsyical attirbutes and 50% compettion specifc skills. Exercises and training should be geared towards their sport specialization.
That is science of it. I know these numbers may or may not work in individual settings. I also know that if your goal is not high performing athletes these targets are not needed. I would like to say again: if the goal of your program is to give kids a place and chance to play, you can do that without putting kids up against athletes who are training specifically to be high performance. Telling kids its ok to do less and just play more, while then making them compete with high performing sport specialized athletes is setting the kid, your coach and your program up for failure.
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