[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]http://www.conjsports.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Tommy-McCarthy-Headshot.png[/author_image] [author_info]
conjsports.com contributor
@_tommy_mccarthy[/author_info] [/author]
What is your first memory from youth sports? What sport was it?
When athletes are first starting sports, they are looking to find an outlet from their everyday life to go out and enjoy themselves with their friends and their teammates. Youth sports used to be something that most kids participated in and at least tried.
According to www.changingthegameproject.com, an advocacy group with a desire to “return youth sports to our children” – 70% of youth athletes drop out of organized sports by the age of 13.
One thing that is keeping athletes off the field is the fear to get hurt. Another reason is for the idea of specialization in sports.
What many people don’t realize is the connection between these two. As athletes begin to specialize in sports they put themselves at a higher risk for injury within that sport. While playing just a single sport the idea of specialization takes on more than just the skills involved with the sport.
Baseball players especially are at a high risk for injury when specializing in just the one sport. Among baseball players, the dreaded injury that keeps players off the field is the injury that is ultimately referred to as Tommy John Surgery. Tommy John surgery began 40 years ago as the first operation was performed on former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher, Tommy John. Over the past 40 years there have been many advancements in the surgery, so why are there more surgeries being performed?
“There are likely several factors for this, including heightened awareness, better imaging techniques (MRI), and the fact that more surgeons are trained to perform Tommy John surgeries,” said Dr. Chris Dodson from the Rothman Institute. “However, far and away, the most likely reason is that kids are just flat out throwing too much. Young kids are focusing on one sport instead of playing multiple sports.”
As athletes continue to try and perfect their craft to be one of the best at a certain sport, they begin to specialize in that sport earlier than they used to and at an extreme rate. Young athletes are prematurely choosing the sport that they want to play throughout high school and college, and giving up on the other sports involved. What many young athletes don’t know is that playing multiple sports can increase your chances of being a Division I athlete, while also lowering your chance for injury.
A 2017 USA Today report noted that 71% of DI men’s football players were multisport athletes. By playing multiple sports while growing up you gain many different attributes and skills that are used between multiple levels of multiple sports. Of the 253 players drafted in the 2017 NFL Draft, nearly 90 percent played multiple sports in high school.
The top athletes in the world continue to credit their own dominant abilities to the other sports that they have played throughout their lives. The National Center for Biotchnology Information conducted a survey of 1,731 professional athletes, of which only 22.3% said that they would want their own child to specialize to play a single sport during childhood/adolescence.
“I credit tennis for a lot of my footwork in the NFL,” New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees told the Herald and News of Klamath Falls, Oregon. “I credit baseball and basketball with certain fundamentals and athletic movements (that relate) to what I do as a quarterback.”
There is also a less likely chance that they experience overuse injuries. Overuse injuries occur when an athlete repeats the same motion over and over again.
An example of these overuse injuries is the throwing motion that is done by overhand athletes and most importantly, overhand throwing athletes. As athletes begin to specialize themselves to be great at one sport, they are losing many key workout opportunities and they will not be working all the muscles needed to be successful.
Philadelphia Phillies Team Physician and Rothman Institute Physician, Steven Cohen said, “Health care providers are more commonly recognizing how dysfunction around the shoulder, core (abdomen and back), and hips can affect injuries to the elbow.”
Athletes at any age can go through this injury and it can be caused by a variety of reasons. There are some cases in which athletes have the surgery at ages as early as 12 years old.
“One recent study showed that there is increased risk of injury in 9-12 year olds who throw more than 600 pitches in a season or more than 75 in one game,” said Dodson.
So how do we fix this?
The first step in the mind of Dodson is to limit the amount of pitches and throwing that is one per outing, week, and month by each pitcher. Little League baseball has set a limit on the amount of pitches that can be thrown by a pitcher in a game and then followed by a set amount of rest days before being allowed to pitch again. Not only does this give the players a chance for their arms to rest but they are becoming all around better athletes by playing different positions.
The same is true for the argument of having athletes play multiple sports. When playing multiple sports throughout the year at a young age it keeps the body in top shape as there are constantly different muscles being worked and there is not one single body part that is taking the blunt of the force in every sport.
As an overhand thrower it is not a natural motion for the body to make so it causes added stress to the entire arm. If a young thrower or pitcher is not properly trained with the mechanics and throwing procedures they will be consistently throwing in a way that is detrimental to the arm over time. The UCL can develop tiny tears over time and the ligament continues to stretch until it reaches a point that it can no longer endure the throwing motion.
A large contributor to the amount of throwing that is done by youth athletes, is the number of teams that these young athletes are apart of. Some athletes at the little league level are playing for three to four teams at a time to try and play at the highest level. When playing for multiple teams at a young age, you want to show each team your best position. Across youth baseball young pitchers are throwing at an exceedingly high rate at maximum effort across multiple leagues
For pitchers, this can be their worst enemy.