A recent article from the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports titled “Late specialization: the key to success in centimeters, grams, or seconds (cgs) sports” concluded that athletes who specialized later (mid to late teens) fared better than those who specialized in a sport at an earlier age. In truth, the study focused more on training volume, than specialization.

The study compared near-elite to elite athletes in Denmark. The near-elite group practiced more in their sport between the ages of 0-9, 9-12 and 12-15, and their training volume peaked during the 12-15 age group. The elite group gradually increased its training volume and surpassed the near-elites between 15-18 and 18-21. The researchers used this information to conclude that those who specialize late (mid to late teens) rather than early (prior to the onset of puberty) ultimately reach a higher level of performance.

The problem, as Dr. Ross Tucker pointed out on his blog, The Science of Sport, is that training volume does not mean specialization. The near-elites averaged 10.49 hours per week of training in their sport (compared to 8.14 hours for the elites) in the 12-15 age category; that leaves time for participation in another sport or activity.

Dr. Tucker proposed two models to explain the training volume trajectories: (1) motivation/psychological and (2) talent/physiological. Of course, as with most things, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

The talent model suggests that the athletes with a higher ceiling likely needed less practice as youths because they fared well competitively without the extra practice – they are naturally gifted. Their peers with lower ceilings had to practice more to keep up and stay competitive, but as the athletes moved toward higher levels of competition and specialization in their late teens, their ceiling came into view, and they realized that they lacked the stuff (height, fast-twitch muscle fiber, strength, etc) of elite competitors so their practice declined. Essentially, they hit their performance peak in their mid-teens and their effort and practice gradually tailed off as they realized they were not going to make it to the elite level.

The psychological model suggests that parents were the primary motivator for the near-elites during their higher training volume as youths and early teens, and as these athletes progressed, they either found other interests, burned out or lacked the internal motivation to persist through more demanding training. The elite group started slower and built their internal motivation.

Both models caution against early specialization. In the talent model, early specialization is not enough to overcome lack of natural talent in the long run. In the motivation model, early specialization leads athletes to burnout or quit before they reach the elite level. Either way, whether through motivation or talent, those who progress gradually and specialize later reach a higher level of performance in the long run.

An alternative explanation is the concept of Mindset developed by Stanford University professor Dr. Carol Dweck. Rather than the near-elites hitting their ceiling after early success, the early success may have led to the development of a Fixed Mindset. Because they were good and talented during childhood, people (parents, coaches, teachers) likely focused on the outcome in their feedback. Meanwhile, the late bloomers who were not as successful in early childhood may have received more effort-related feedback which developed a Growth Mindset.

Player A grows early. He is a big, strong, aggressive player who dominates because of his speed, strength and size between the ages of 9 and 15. His identity starts to become one of a jock. He is praised for performance, so he focuses on his strengths to maximize performance – he relies on his size, speed and strength advantages to bully other players.

People expect performance and constantly reward him for his performance. Parents say things like “You scored 2 goals; you’re a great player.” Consequently, he develops a Fixed Mindset and believes in his innate talent. He spends less time developing other skills because any skill which causes an initial struggle damages his ego and decreases his motivation to practice. He concentrates on demonstrating his talent and views mistakes – a requisite for learning and development – as a sign of failure, so he quits the task.

Player B, meanwhile, cannot bully other players. As a late bloomer, he is less successful between 9-15, so he is unlikely to wrap up his identity in being a jock. He finds ways to stay in the game with his hustle, tenacity and maybe a key skill.

He hears comments from coaches and parents pertaining to his effort, “You’re important to the team because you play really hard” rather than his performance and this leads to a Growth Mindset. When he practices, he does not view mistakes as a threat to his ego; instead, mistakes are an opportunity for improvement. When he makes a mistake, it motivates him to work harder to master the task. When he eventually masters the task, it enhances his motivation to work harder and master a newer, harder task.

At 16, let’s say, the two players equal out in size, strength and speed. Player B is now more skilled, so he moves ahead of Player A. Player A will be de-motivated because of his early success and his Fixed Mindset. He will perceive their equality as a sign that he is not good enough or that he has hit his ceiling, while Player B will perceive himself as just starting to grow into his ability.

Player A did not peak necessarily. Instead, he needs to develop the skills that he ignored. Rather than relying on his physical advantages, now that the advantages have disappeared, he needs to augment his physical talent with greater skill, technique and game understanding. However, he has a Fixed Mindset, and developing skills at that point is hard, especially when he is used to being the best, so he is de-motivated.

People with Fixed Mindsets do not practice hard because it is a sign of a lack of talent, and they believe in innate talent. Athletes at this age often do not practice hard or play hard so they have an excuse; they can blame their effort, not their lack of talent. They say things like “I could have won if I wanted, but I didn’t feel like playing hard today.”

Meanwhile, Player B with his Growth Mindset starts to see the result of his effort – he starts to improve and perform better and that reinforces his Growth Mindset. Rather than attributing his success to his talent – as does the early bloomer – he attributes his success to his work ethic, which fuels even more practice and effort.

This Mindset changes their practice habits at this point, as reflected in the training volume in the study. Player B works harder and keeps improving, while Player A does not work as hard and stops improving, as he wants to protect his talent and his ego. This does not mean that Player A hit his ceiling; maybe he simply hit a plateau and perceived it to be his ceiling. His Mindset affects his perceptions differently than Player B even though their talent, physiology and current performance level may be the same.

In a sense, it is not necessarily the early training volume or the early specialization, but the adulation from the early success, and the inability to maintain that childhood dominance, that led to the phenomena in the study. The way that coaches and parents provide feedback to a child athlete is of critical importance and may contribute to the patterns seen in the Danish study.

Physiology and genetics differ. Everyone has a different ceiling. However, very few individuals reach their ceiling in terms of athletic performance. Lance Armstrong probably maximized his physical gifts to their fullest; but, how many others truly push to the ceiling of their capabilities, either because they never find the right sport, never find the right training program, never find the right competitive environment, etc?

Every time society believes that humankind has reached the limit on human performance, someone surpasses it, like with the four-minute mile. Once the original surpasses that limit, suddenly dozens of others are able to surpass it. Does that mean the others improved their physical prowess once someone else paved the way or does it relate to the psychological limitations we place upon our performance?

By Brian McCormick
Brian McCormick Basketball
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

We generally do not allow sports science to interfere with our deeply held beliefs, even when the beliefs are more myth than reality. When I coached in Ireland, the young Irish players believed that basketball greatness was not in their genes. They felt that Irishmen were not meant to be great athletes. Meanwhile, the Irish Rugby Team crushed its opponents in its preparation for the 2007 World Cup. While basketball and rugby require different skills, each features fast, quick, agile, strong and coordinated athletes. If Ireland develops world-class rugby talent with these qualities, why do Irish basketball players believe this development is beyond their gene pool?

Few people view rugby and basketball in terms of athletic qualities, so few see the similarities, which impedes our overall athletic development.

Because we view sports in sport-specific terms, coaches encourage early specialization. Some basketball coaches dislike players who play volleyball, as they feel the players fall behind their teammates. However, volleyball and basketball require lateral movement, hand-eye coordination, ball skills and vertical jumping. Blocking a ball transfers to contesting a shot, and moving laterally for a dig transfers to moving laterally to prevent an offensive player’s penetration.

As youth sports grow more competitive, more young athletes rush to specialize. They heed their coach’s advice or follow their parents’ guidance, as parents try to give their child an advantage over the competition.

Early specialization – when an athlete plays one sport year-round to the exclusion of other sports before puberty – leads to immediate sport-specific skill improvements. Coaches and parents see immediate results and follow this path. If the most skilled 10-year-old plays basketball year-round, maybe my son or daughter needs to devote 12 months a year to basketball.

However, athletic development is a process, and sport-specific skill development is only one piece. Before one can be a great player, he must be an athlete, and early specialization impedes overall athletic development. Unfortunately, as with the Irish players, we view sports based on sport-specific skills, not athletic qualities.

Recent years have seen a proliferation of athletic training facilities. While these facilities play to parent’s big league dreams, their success is developing general athletic skills which athletes fail to develop naturally because they specialize and narrow their athletic development. Rather than play multiple sports, which train multiple skills, athletes specialize in one sport and use performance training to compensate for their narrow athletic development.

Kids used to develop these athletic skills by playing multiple sports and neighborhood games, like tag, which develops agility, balance, coordination, evading skills, body control and more.

Now, rather than play tag, children go to facilities and do agility drills so they can change directions, fake, evade and cut when they play basketball, soccer or football.

Athletic development is a process, and early specialization attempts to speed the process. However, what is the goal? Is the goal to dominate as a 10-year-old?

Early specialization leads to early peaks. Players improve their sport-specific skills more rapidly than those who participate in a wide range of activities. However, those who develop deeper and broader athletic skills have a better foundation when they ultimately specialize. While those who specialized early hit a plateau, the others improve as they dedicate more time to enhancing their sport-specific skill.

If one specializes in basketball at 10-years-old, his general athletic development is incomplete. While he likely improves his dribbling, shooting and understanding of the game more rapidly than his peers who play multiple sports, those who play multiple sports develop many other athletic skills. If the others play soccer, they improve their vision, agility, footwork and more; if they play football, they improve acceleration and power. When these athletes specialize in basketball at 15-years-old, they have broader athletic skills and an advantage against the player who specialized early and hit a plateau in his skill development.

Skills – from athletic to tactical to perceptual – transfer from sport to sport. Many coaches and parents insist there is no relation between sports, which gives more credence to early specialization. However, before one excels at a sport, he or she must be an athlete first. The more developed a player’s general athletic skills, the higher the player’s ceiling in his or her chosen sport.

Sports science research contends that specialization before puberty is wholly unnecessary and, in some cases, detrimental to an athlete’s long term success. If the goal is to dominate other 10-year-olds, specialize early. However, if the goal is to nurture healthy children and give them an opportunity to participate in high school and/or college athletics, playing multiple sports offers a child more developmentally than does early specialization.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development

Childhood has moved from a time of exploration to a time of preparation, and youth sports epitomize that transition. Playing sports has changed to training for a sport for even young children. Mike Boyle, a well-known strength & conditioning coach in Massachusetts, recently wrote about a question that he received from a parent-coach of a nine-year-old hockey team looking to put together a summer plan. Boyle’s first suggestion was to play another sport.

Young athletes progress through three general stages in their athletic careers: Sampling (6 -12-years-old), Specializing (13-15) and Investment (16+). The sampling period is a time to play multiple sports and develop a wide base of athletic skills before choosing a sport to pursue. The specializing period is a transition between the more playful sampling period and the more intense investment period. The young athlete participates in fewer sports during this period, but practices and plays more often in his or her chosen sports. The investment period is when the athlete hones his or her skills for competitive play and trains to be a hockey player, soccer player or basketball player.

As more attention focuses on the practice hours required to reach an expert level, more parents and coaches skip the sampling stage and move directly to specializing and investment in an effort to speed the developmental process. However, rushing the process does not lead to more elite players. The sampling period is not a waste of time or easily ignored. This playful period plays an important role in an athlete’s development, regardless of his or her ultimate sport of choice.

The sampling period is a time to play, not train. As players engage in different sports, they develop different athletic qualities and add to their athletic toolbox. Rather than train these qualities in drills and training, playing multiple sports makes the athletic development more fun and gives the young athlete a chance to choose his desired sport from among several options.

Boyle suggested that youth hockey players play lacrosse because of the tactical similarities between the two games. All invasion sports (lacrosse, basketball, soccer, hockey, water polo, etc) use the same basic tactics in terms of spacing, movement and passing. Rather than spend the spring and summer in ice rinks playing more games and practicing more hockey-specific skills, lacrosse enhances the players’ development by broadening their athletic skills. Rather than burning out on year-round hockey, players continue their development by learning new skills and training in a different sport.

Boyle’s second suggestion is to skip all but one week of summer hockey camp and to pick one with the largest number of friends attending. Summer sports camps are more social than developmental. As Boyle says, “You won’t get better in a week anyway.” Sports camps are effective if they motivate players to work hard after they leave the camp and if they teach things in a way that players can use what they learned on their own. However, learning and improvement do not occur during the time frame of the camp. The camp’s developmental impact occurs long after the camp ends. Therefore, as Boyle suggests, attend a summer camp for fun and to play with friends.

Boyle’s third suggestion is to cancel any summer leagues. The off-season is a time for training, not competing, and nine-years-old is too young to concentrate on training for a late specialization sport like hockey, basketball, soccer or baseball. Since nine-year-olds do not need to train for their chosen sport, they should use this time for more sampling, not specializing. Rather than play in a hockey league, play lacrosse. Rather than play year-round baseball, join a swim team. Rather than play year-round basketball, take martial arts classes. Do something new. Provide experiences that enable the young athlete to develop broader and better athletic skills.

Older athletes in the specializing and investment periods use the off-season to train their skills and prepare for the next season. They add new moves and skills to their repertoire and improve their strength, fitness, flexibility and quickness. Nine-year-olds do not need to train for youth sports. They need to play.

Boyle’s other suggestions are to engage in more family activities like bike riding and fishing. Plenty of families base their schedules around their children’s youth sports schedules and ignore family activities. Missing one tournament or skipping a practice is not going to set back your son’s or daughter’s athletic career, regardless of how disappointed the coach may be that a player would skip a game or practice. Holidays have become a time for youth sports tournaments, which dominate nearly every weekend as well. At some point, these tournaments have diminishing returns and a weekend spent bicycling at the beach or snowboarding in the mountains is more valuable.

Rather than heeding Boyle’s advice and spending an athlete’s early years developing varied athletic skills, parents and coaches encourage year-round training. Rather than allow for a period of play, youth sports have turned into a time for training.

I recently spoke to a Boys & Girls Club about its middle school basketball program, as the athletic director was hiring coaches for its spring season. In the meeting, he spoke about “competition,” “cutting players” and “winning.” I left the meeting feeling that something was wrong. If middle school sports at a Boys & Girls Club are that cutthroat, where can a recreational player play for fun? I expected an environment of inclusion and development, not a results-oriented, exclusionary team. He spoke effusively of a player who played in the club as an 8th grader and earned a Division I scholarship, and he said that was the goal. Is the B&GC’s mission really to produce Division I athletes? What happened to fun? What happened to teaching life lessons like discipline, responsibility, work ethic, accountability and more?

A local youth organization is hosting an exposure weekend for young basketball players as young as 4th grade to determine invitations for summer national all-american camps. Do young athletes need an all-american camp? Do they need a national ranking? I train a player who was an All-Freshmen pick in his conference this year, and he was never ranked in the top 500 players in his class during high school. There is no benefit to being a nationally ranked player as a 4th grader, except the neighborhood bragging rights. Have we reached the point where youth sports participation is measured entirely by one’s rank or ultimate success in the sport rather than the fun that one has and the friends that one makes while playing the sport?

Brian McCormick is the Director of Coaching for the Playmakers Basketball Development League and Performance Director of Train for Hoops.

This summer, Chula Vista Little League won the Little League World Series, and the biography for winning pitcher Kiko Garcia said that he also played club soccer and basketball.

In the semi-finals of the United States’ bracket, Chula Vista defeated Warner Robins Little League from Georgia; ESPN showed the Warner Robins players preparing for their game by practicing their football plays, as football season had started in Georgia.

Throughout the tournament, ESPN’s baseball analysts praised the players’ fundamentals – especially the slick fielding of the San Antonio team and the professional hitting approach of Chula Vista – yet these players play multiple sports.

Many parents, however, rush their child into one sport. In youth basketball, many parents and coaches believe that players must specialize early just to make a high school team. However, most research contradicts these beliefs, and most sports scientists and doctors disagree with early specialization, which is playing one sport year-round to the exclusion of others at an early age, typically before the onset of puberty.

The arguments in favor of early specialization are:

• To give less naturally talented players an advantage to catch up to their peers.
• To develop better sport-specific skills.
• To concentrate solely on one activity in an effort to excel.
• To create a competitive advantage against those who do not play year-round.

Typically, those favoring early specialization are the competitive coaches or year-round programs that profit from children playing year-round competitive soccer or joining a year-round competitive swim team or taking year-round tennis lessons in a junior program. They convince parents that the only way to reach an elite level is through specializing and dedicating more time and energy (and consequently money).

Recently, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers brought the idea of the 10,000-hour rule or the 10-year rule into the public forum. Based on the research of K. Anders Ericsson, the 10,000-hour, 10-year rule states that it takes 10,000 hours or 10 years to become an expert in any discipline, whether playing tennis, playing chess or writing novels. Some have used this research to justify or support early specialization.

A subsequent book, Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code, supports the idea of practice, not natural talent, as the recipe for expert performance. However, Coyle adds another element of Ericsson’s research: Ericsson writes that people should choose something that they love, as that is the only way that they will invest enough time and energy to become an expert.

Rather than push children to specialize early, Coyle writes that children need to engage in activities and choose their own pursuit. He calls this the ignition and suggests that this is as important as the deliberate practice which follows.

Jean Cote and Jessica Fraser-Thomas call the ignition period deliberate play. In Developing Sport Expertise, Cote and Fraser-Thomas introduce a three-phase development plan: sampling, specializing and investment. During the sampling years (ages 6-12), children should play many sports rather than training to excel in any one sport (some sports, like competitive gymnastics, differ because they require an early peak, as most elite gymnasts are in their middle to late teens due to the body issues associated with elite gymnastics).

They argue that “athletes who had been involved in diversified sporting activities during childhood required less sport-specific training during adolescence and young adulthood to achieve elite status in their sport,” (Farrow, et al).

Essentially, Cote and Fraser-Thomas believe that the hours of play in different sports count toward the 10,000 hours. Therefore, one does not need to spend 10,000 hours playing only basketball, soccer or tennis, but the athlete can spread his initial hours amongst numerous sports to develop different motor and cognitive skills which ultimately make for a better overall athlete when the athlete chooses to specialize in his or her teens.

If researchers conclude that late specialization leads to better future performance, why do coaches argue in favor of early specialization?

Most people see the technical or sport-specific skills of a sport. For instance, basketball coaches see shooting skills and soccer coaches see dribbling or passing skills and volleyball coaches see setting skills. Coaches spend hours teaching these technical skills so players master the specifics of the proper shooting or setting form. Coaches who have a natural bias toward their sport and to the importance of performing these skills correctly believe that proper skill execution separates the expert performers from the non-expert performers.

In many sports, however, technical skill execution is not the deciding factor for expert performance. In basketball, few players fail to make the next level because of sub-par shooting; in fact, rarely does the best college shooter get drafted. More often, the players who fail to move from Division I basketball to the NBA lack an athletic skill like quickness or a cognitive-perception skill like making the right decision when leading a fast break. Because coaches typically see the technical skills, they fail to see the transfer of these athletic and cognitive-perception skills between sports.

Eddie Jones, an Australian rugby coach, says, “I can clearly pick out those players who have played a variety of sports growing up relative to those who have predominantly specialized in rugby. A key difference is that those who have played lots of sports are usually more tactically astute,” (Farrow, et al).

I watched several former clients play in club basketball tournaments this summer. Their teams hardly practiced, so they played mostly unstructured basketball and relied on individual players’ game understanding and reading of teammates.

As I watched one girl, I felt her soccer experience helped her on the basketball court versus her teammates who were basketball specialists. When she retreated in transition defense in 3v2 or 2v1 situations, the opponent rarely scored. She did not do anything noticeably different, but when she was back, the opponent committed silly turnovers or took bad angles to the basket – it was easy to write off as bad offense, except it consistently occurred when one player was on defense, not with the others. When her teammates were back on defense, the other team made lay-ups and often scored three-point plays.

Later in the summer, I watched a college soccer practice and I saw virtually the same technique that my client used in basketball on display in transition defense in soccer. She did not even realize that she used her soccer lessons to enhance her basketball performance, but the concepts transferred and informed her play, which led to better decisions and better performance than players with more basketball experience.

In Developing Sport Expertise, Greg McFadden, the Australian Women’s Water Polo Head Coach, describes the two traditional paths to water polo: some players are competitive swimmers who transition to water polo late in their teens, while others play a team sport like rugby throughout the winter and play some water polo during the summer. “Generally, the players that played other team sports were more successful than those from a swimming background because they had an understanding of how to create space and where to pass, etc.” (Farrow, et al).

In McFadden’s perspective, playing rugby transfers to water polo success better than swimming experience. However, if you asked the average person about which sports are more similar – rugby and water polo or swimming and water polo – most people would pick water polo and swimming because they take place in the water and involve swimming.

In reality, swimming is primarily a motor skill sport while rugby and water polo are motor and cognitive skill sports. A motor skill sport is one where the quality of movement produced by the performer is the primary determinant of success, while a cognitive sport is one where the quality of the performer’s decisions regarding what to do determines success (Schmidt and Wrisberg). Swimming and water polo involve the same motor skill (swimming), while water polo and rugby involve similar cognitive skills in terms of spacing, passing, defense and other decisions.

In water polo, what factor separates the expert performer from the average player? Is it swimming skill or other skills like cognitive-perception skills, tactical understanding and more? If swimming skill separated the expert performers, wouldn’t Michael Phelps, Aaron Piersol and Ryan Lochte be the best water polo players in the world?

Swimming – the motor skill – is obviously an important skill in water polo just as running is important to soccer. However, running ability rarely distinguishes an expert soccer player from a non-expert, just as swimming skill is not the limiting factor for water polo players. Instead, it is often the “feel for the game” or the ability to make the right decisions which separate expert players.

An expert water polo player skillfully separates from his defender for a split-second to create space to receive a pass, turn and shoot; an expert soccer player anticipates the location of a driven ball and beats the defender to the spot to head the ball into goal.

While there appears to be zero similarity between a water polo player elevating above the water to catch, rotate his body and throw the ball into goal and a soccer player running to a ball kicked by a teammate and using his head to punch the ball into goal, the cognitive skills in terms of reading the defender, finding open space, reading a teammate’s intentions, understanding the positioning of the goalie, and more are virtually identical.

McFadden, Jones, Cote and others do not believe it is a coincidence when my client illustrates a deeper understanding of game awareness and decision-making skills based on her soccer experience more so than her basketball experience. To them, it is the same skill, just a different sport. Therefore, the arguments for early specialization which focus on enhanced skill development and better preparation fall short.

In fact, early specialization may inhibit optimal development rather than enhance development. For an aspiring basketball player, playing a similar invasion game like soccer, lacrosse or water polo has a positive effect on one’s ultimate basketball development because of the transfer of cognitive-perception skills.

By Brian McCormick
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

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