Study backs advice for young athletes to delay specialization in running, focus on ‘multidirectional’ sports instead – Science Daily

The study, published by the American College of Sports Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, examined freshman and sophomore female cross-country runners who suffered from bone stress injuries, such as stress fractures. The researchers found that athletes who ran and participated in multi-directional sports such as basketball or soccer had better bone structure and strength than those who ran, swam or biked when they were younger.

As a result, the study’s findings support recommendations for athletes to delay specialization in running and play multi-dimensional sports to build stronger bones at a young age — and prevent bone stress injuries.

“Our data show that playing multi-dimensional sports at a young age and specializing in one sport, such as running, can develop larger, stronger bones and reduce the risk of bone injury,” said study associate dean and chancellor professor Stuart Warden at the IU School of Health and Human Sciences at IUPUI. “There is a common misconception that children must specialize in one sport to be successful at a high level. However, recent evidence suggests that athletes who specialize at a young age are more likely to overeat and are less likely to progress to higher levels of competition.”

Historically, researchers have looked at bone mass — how many bones a person has — to determine how healthy their skeleton will be later in life, he said. But in previous studies, Warden and his colleagues found that both weight and size are equal according to a person’s age.

In the current study, the researchers used high-resolution imaging to evaluate the shin bone and bones near the ankle, and stress injuries in the legs are common in runners. They found that athletes who participated in running or multi-directional sports at a young age had 10 to 20 percent more bone strength than athletes who ran alone.

“Our study showed that runners who played multi-disciplinary sports as young adults had stronger bones than collegiate athletes, and were less likely to experience bone stress, including stress fractures,” Warden said. “We want people to have better, stronger bones as they grow up, become teenagers and go through life. Specializing in one sport at a very young age means they can get injured and not do it at the college and professional level.”

Warden says anyone supervising a junior athlete or team — parents, coaches or trainers — should think twice about pushing them to specialize in one area. He advises young athletes not to specialize until at least their freshman year of high school to allow for proper growth and development. For athletes who already play multi-directional sports, it is important to take time for rest and recovery during the year, which improves bone strength and performance.

Additional authors on the study include Austin Sventeckis, Ph.D. student, and Robin Fuchs, associate professor, IU School of Health and Human Sciences at IUPUI, and Rachel Surowicz at IUPUI School of Engineering and Technology.

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