Kids and Sports: Is Training Getting Too Intense?

Sports and competition go together, hand in baseball glove. And the myriad benefits kids derive from playing sports is well documented —exercise, increased confidence, a shot at a future scholarship. But as youth sports have become increasingly “professionalized,” the risks are starting to outweigh the rewards.

Children as young as 5 and 6 years old are participating in what Daniel Gould, director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports, calls the “elite level talent development model.” Today, for example, in various sports, kids are being placed on high intensity “travel teams” that play year-round. Scouts seek out top child athletes to sign to those teams. And specialized coaches promise to help young athletes hone specific areas such as kicking, pitching, or endurance. “The problem is that kids are not miniature adults,” Gould told Yahoo Health. “And it can be physiologically and psychologically detrimental for them in the long term.”

This movement toward a high-intensity sports culture has had experts warning against the dangers of injury for years, and now scientific research is starting to back them up. In the most recent example, a new study in the journal Radiology found that young baseball pitchers who throw more than 100 pitches per week are at risk for a newly identified overuse injury that can impede normal shoulder development and lead to other injuries, including rotator cuff tears.

Read the full post here.