Research published in the The American Journal of Sports Medicine has shed some light on a topic that has been debated for a fair bit of time now. With school boy rugby having seemingly tried to rise to the levels of professional rugby over the last few years one can’t help but wander if there is too much sport being played at a young age and wether pushing kids to focus on a specific sport does more harm than good!
Research shows that lower extremity injuries (LEIs) account for 65% – 70% of all injuries in the high school athlete population and that sport specialisation at high school level is becoming more prevalent. The consequence as a result of the high volume of sport specific training is possible overuse injuries.
A total of 1544 scholars were included in this particular study with a near equal split between boys and girls ranging from grade 9-12. Sport specialisation was determined using a previously utilized and vali- dated 3-point scale. Participants answering yes to all 3 questions were considered as being high specialisation. 13.3% of the scholars were classified as being in the high specialistaion group with 17.2% reporting having competed in more than 60 competitions in the last year in their primary sport.
The results were interesting!
- There was no difference in incidence of injuries between boys and girls
- Injuries occurred most often to the ankle (34.4%) & knee (25%) and were mostly acute (66.3%)
- Injuries included ligament sprains (40.9%) and muscle/tendon strains (25.4%)
- Surgical treatment was required in 8.3% of LEIs
“…high specialization had an 85% higher incidence of LEIs than those with a low specialization.”
Interestingly enough they didn’t show that an increased volume of competition was associated with increased risk of sustaining LEIs. A proposed answer to this is that lack of variety of movement patterns may be the reason why athletes specialising at a young age a more prone to injury. This results in altered neuromuscular control or muscle strength imbalances.
The current research paper reports that there is an association between specialisation and injuries at scholar level.
Although this study was published in the USA and the patient population sampled does play different sport to South Africa it still gives us very good insights into the topic.The full article can be found at the link below:
