Thoughts on the sport Early Specialisation and the Sampling approaches

 

The debate between Early Specialisation and the Sampling approaches (often called Diversification) to child and youth sport centres on the best way to either develop young athletes or retain for long term participation young players. They represent fundamentally different philosophies about how to approach child and youth sports.

Sampling refers to an early sport participation environment characterised by diversity, both within sport (e.g., informal and deliberate play and practice) and between sports (Côté, 1999). Early specialisation is usually seen as occurring prior to 12 years old (LaPrade et al., 2016). Sport specialisation is participation in a single sport as opposed to multisport participation (Pasulka et al., 2017) and may occur at child or youth sport levels. Sport specialisation looks like year-round training in a single main sport at the exclusion of all other sports (Jayanthi et al., 2020).

In consideration of player development towards ‘high level’ sport, a UK retrospective study by Bridge and Toms (2013) found a significant association between the number of sports participated in early adolescence and likelihood of competing at a national compared with club standard between the ages of 16 and 18, in that those who practised only one sport were less likely to have reached club standard. Kliethermes and colleagues (2019) review of literature indicated that elite level athletes are more likely to have chosen to specialise mid-adolescence compared to those that don’t reach that level more likely to have chosen to specialise at early adolescence. Güllich (2017) suggested that reaching the highest level in sport does not require specialising from childhood and that multisport participation may be advantageous. Regarding Olympic sports, McLellan and colleagues review (2022) found most sports demonstrate better performance after youth multisport engagement, and youth sports specialisation was linked with increased injury risk in athletes once at the elite level.

However, the research is not conclusive. Research into early specialisation shows this narrow focus may lead to an increased risk of injury, could lead to a reduced movement competence development, and could lead to a decreased ability to develop a broad variety of fundamental movement skills (Zoellner et al., 2021). However, consistent differences in movement competence based on level of sport specialisation are not necessarily evident in the research literature (Zoellner et al., 2021). Also, the association between sport specialisation and injury risk may be inconclusive (Zoellner et al., 2022). With regards to long term participation, youth intrinsic motivation may not be significantly correlated with childhood self-led sport activities, self-led play in particular, or childhood sports diversification (Thomas & Güllich, 2019).

With regards to the development of sport pathways to high level attainment, there be an argument for domain specificity rather than framing specialisation based on the performance orientation of sport specialisation. In this respect, the domain may be games in the same ‘category’. Considered this way, specialising in a sport while sampling different experiences within the specific domain during childhood and adolescence may be a pathway to elite level representation at youth and adult level (e.g., Berry et al., 2008; Haugaasenet al., 2014; Sieghartsleitner et al., 2018). An early engagement hypothesis has some evidence in the research literature in that early and prolonged engagement in sport specific activities has been found to be related to senior levels of attainment in some sports. Additionally, some studies have found that elite level players often report that they started playing the sport in childhood and while often also playing formally and informally in other sports, the majority of their time was spent in the sport that they end up playing at senior level (Sweeny et al., 2021).

Is it as simple as early specialisation is bad but early engagement followed by domain specificity is good for long term player development?

While many have called for multisport participation or early diversification as it seems more likely to lead to long term sport participation and higher-level adult sport attainment, perhaps the early specialisation/early investment v sampling/diversification of experience argument is not ‘clear cut’, as indicated by the domain specificity and early engagement hypothesis research. If the question is ‘how to design a pathway that leads to high-level sport?’ then it seems to me that domain specificity through early engagement becomes a consideration, as does the context-specific need that is some sports seem to need more training years to attain expertise than others (Charbonnet & Conzelmann, 2024). If the question is ‘what encourages youth to continue to play sport?’ and youth motivation may not be significantly correlated with childhood sports diversification (Thomas & Güllich, 2019) then maybe the need is for co-design with youth for leisure, informal and recreational sport opportunities (as competitive community and pathway sport is already available for those interested and finacially able to avail themselves of those opportunities).

Thanks for stopping by and reading this post. If you would like to connect with me on a project to do with this blog or any of the other ideas that I have blogged about, you can contact me by the email link available here

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References

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Bisi, M. C., Pacini Panebianco, G., Polman, R., et al. (2017). Objective assessment of movement competence in children using wearable sensors: an instrumented version of the TGMD-2 locomotor subtest. Gait Posture, 56, 42–48.

Bridge, M. W., & Toms, M. R. (2013). The specialising or sampling debate: a retrospective analysis of adolescent sports participation in the UK. Journal of Sports Sciences, 31(1), 87–96.

Charbonnet, B., & Conzelmann, A. (2024). Talent development in childhood: Early specialization or sampling? From an either… or… question to a 2× 2× 3 question cuboid. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 19(1), 459-475.

Ford, P. R., Ward, P., Hodges, N. J., & Williams, A. M. (2009). The role of deliberate practice and play in career progression in sport: the early engagement hypothesis. High Ability Studies, 20(1), 65–75.

Güllich, A. (2017). International medallists’ and non-medallists’ developmental sport activities – a matched-pairs analysis. Journal of Sports Sciences, 35(23), 2281-2288.

Haugaasen, M., Toering, T., & Jordet, G. (2014). From childhood to senior professional football: elite youth players’ engagement in non-football activities. Journal of Sports Sciences, 32(20), 1940–1949.

Jayanthi, N., Kliethermes, S. A., & Côté, J. (2020). Youth sport specialisation: the need for an evidence-based definition. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 54(4), 196-197.

Kliethermes, S. A., Nagle, K., Côté, J., Malina, R. M., Faigenbaum, A., Watson, A., ... & Jayanthi, N. (2019). Impact of youth sports specialisation on career and task-specific athletic performance: a systematic review following the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM) Collaborative Research Network’s 2019 Youth Early Sport Specialisation Summit. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 54(4), 221-230.

LaPrade, R. F., Agel, J., Baker, J., et al. (2016). AOSSM early sport specialization consensus statement. Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine, 4(4), 2325967116644241.

Pasulka, J., Jayanthi, N., McCann, A., et al. (2017). Specialization patterns across various youth sports and relationship to injury risk. The Physician and Sportsmedicine, 45, 344–52.

Sieghartsleitner, R., Zuber, C., Zibung, M., & Conzelmann, A. (2018). “The early specialised bird catches the worm!”–a specialised sampling model in the development of football talents. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 188.

Sweeney, L., Horan, D., & MacNamara, Á. (2021). Premature professionalisation or early engagement? Examining practise in football player pathways. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 3, 660167.

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Zoellner, A., Whatman, C., Sheerin, K., & Read, P. (2022). Prevalence of sport specialisation and association with injury history in youth football. Physical therapy in sport, 58, 160-166.