If you have been reading my blog for awhile, then you probably know I’m not a big fan of sport specialization at a young age.  I believe that you should allow your athlete to play multiple sports for as long as they can.  Unfortunately, this is getting tougher and tougher to do.

With travel teams bursting onto the scene in the late 80’s, there was a shift in youth sports.  There seemed to be this higher level of importance based on these games geared for 8-13 year olds.  If you aren’t travelling away from home each weekend, competing against supposedly the best competition in the land, you were nothing as an athlete.

Sport coaching I think became more popular in the 90’s.  There were always golf and tennis instructors, but now there were other instructors.  Hitting instructors, shot doctors, wrestling coaches, speed trainers started popping up everywhere and making a living helping your athletes get better.

The single sport athlete can certainly make some time to work with these instructors, but what about the multi-sport athlete?  If that athlete wants to improve, when can he/she find the time to utilize these awesome coaches?

There lies the problem.  TIME!!

I meet with a lot of athletes that play multiple sports and want to train with us, but can’t find the time.

It’s easier to find the time for a multi-sport athlete, up to the 7th grade.  Younger than that, an athlete might have a practice every other night, then a game or two to attend per week.  You can fit your specialty training in on the off days.

Once the athlete hits 7th grade, for a lot of sports practice is every night.  They might get Sunday off, but I know I don’t work on Sunday and they have to have a day off at some point.  If they play a sport a season, that leaves a week or two in between sports to try and better themselves as athletes.

Not really enough time to do that.

Let’s complicate things even more.  Nowadays kids are part of teams that are competing in multiple seasons.  Instead of dropping one sport for the other, they are playing two sports during the same season.

Now your time is really at a shortage.  “When can I train with you Adam?”and my answer is, “I don’t know.”

I encourage kids to play multiple sports to develop the overall athleticism.  But, what if it isn’t being developed at a speed acceptable to the athlete?  What if they like to play all the sports and want to get faster at those sports?

Yes, training could be an answer, but once again, when will you have time to train appropriately?  I wish I had a great answer for you, but I don’t.

I’ve made the decision to have my own children just play one sport a season.  But don’t think I don’t worry that they might be forced to give up their sport of choice way too soon because I didn’t put them in an accelerated program that played longer than one season.

You could train early morning and then have your practices and games be in the evening.  You could play on a lesser demanding team so you had time.  Or you could give up playing one of your sports and that season would be the off-season to train.

None are great options, but they are something for you the athlete and the athlete’s parents to decide.  Those longing for the days when kids could just play sports for the sake of playing, those days are long gone.

Photo courtesy of Kārlis Dambrāns on Flickr