I see a lot of young athletes and their parents fully commit to the process of becoming an elite athlete at a young age. But, in my opinion, they’re going about this all wrong.
There is a common belief to improving athletic performance that “more is better”. More on-ice sessions, more power skating, more games, more, more, more. The reason I know this is because these kids usually end up on my plinth with overuse injuries such as:
- Groin injuries
- Flexion-related low back pain
- Osgood-Schlatter’s disease
- Patellofemoral pain
What makes a Champion? Specialization or Diversification
A recent research paper by Arne Gullich aimed to figure out what influences elite athletic performance. They made three key findings when it comes to developing elite athletes:
- World-class performers participated in more non-main sport practice than national-level performers
- Junior-level performance was correlated to starting the main sport at a age, higher main-sport practice time and reaching main sport success milestones earlier. Interestingly, world-class performance was not found to be related to any of these.
- Main sport and non-main sport child-led play time was not related to performance at any level.
The evidence is pretty clear; multi-sport, later specializing athletes have greater sport success. Yet, pushing youth athlete success through early specialization continues to be a problem.
We only pay attention to the few success stories, not the millions of failures.
This is the definition of survivorship bias.
Survivorship bias happens because we don’t look at all of the facts. We only see and hear about the few success stories. No one talks about the millions who tried and failed. In hockey, the chances of playing a single game in the NHL are about 1-in-1000 and the chances of having a 400 game career in the NHL are 1-in-4000. This makes the chances of being a generational player like Bedard, Crosby and Gretzky likely closer to 1-in-10,000. Meaning stories like Bedard, Crosby and Gretzky are exceptions to the process of player development, not the proven pathway to the NHL.
The real issue is not that the majority of players simply don’t succeed at making it to the NHL. It’s that they will have physically and mentally burned out before they are adults trying to make the NHL. Because hockey is all they’ve ever known, there is a risk of developing mental health and self-identity issues as young adults. It can become a slippery slope.
Sustainability = Success
The goal of youth sport shouldn’t be success, it should be sustainability. We need to ensure youth athletes are able and willing to continue playing sports. Those who remain healthy, passionate and confident are more likely to be successful as adults, when sport success matters most.