Performance Post: Overspecialization in young softball athletes
Performance Post: Overspecialization in young softball athletes
The early overspecialization of young softball athletes is causing injury, decreasing performance, and cutting careers short.
Aug 12, 2015 by Brentt Eads
Sarah Hoffman is the latest addition to the FloSoftball staff and will be producing content and attending events for us. She has a strong strength and conditioning background, having served as a coach in softball and several sports in the SEC and Big 12, and you can read more about her impressive work and school experiences in her bio below the article.
Sarah will be utilizing her insights and expertise in training to good use as she frequently covers important topics and issues in this area.
Today, she talks about how more in softball isn’t always better…
Before I go any further, let me be clear: softball is a highly skilled sport, on par with the skill necessary to play golf or tennis.
The technicalities of the swing, the pitching motion, and sprinting necessitate thousands of repetitions in practices and games to master. Practicing and playing softball is necessary to increase softball skill.
The softball swing is a high-skill movement that requires thousands of repetitions to master.What is not necessary–and might be both detrimental and dangerous–is playing softball, and only softball, year-round, 12 months a year with no off-season.
Developmentally, all young athletes must develop certain basic motor patterns in order to maximize their general athleticism. Squatting, hinging, lunging, jumping, pressing, pulling, and bracing are all necessary biomechanical movements for any sport.
Some sports require more of those movements than others, and some sports develop them to a greater extent than others; but no sport alone in and of itself will train those foundational movements efficiently enough to maximize an athlete’s broad athleticism, or a term used by strength and conditioning coaches, general physical preparedness (GPP).
Softball is a sport that requires many fundamental motor patterns, such a lunging.Young athletes used to be exposed to GPP in their school-based physical education programs, but with the reduction or removal of physical education from most school curricula, very few young athletes are developing GPP qualities unless they are actively participating in multiple sports or following a periodized strength and conditioning program.
And with the advent of today’s youth sports culture that champions premature overspecialization at the ripe, young ages of 10, 11, 12, and 13 years old, very few athletes are given the opportunity to improve their sport skill by maximizing their athleticism.
… overspecialized young athletes soon begin to stagnate and may even fall behind their peers, either due to a lack of GPP or worse, from injury due to overuse and overtraining.
Focus is frequently given to increasing sport-specific skill to the detriment of other physical qualities like strength, power, flexibility, coordination, agility, and endurance. Young athletes are specializing before they have developed any kind of general physical qualities.
At first, this overemphasis on sport-specificity at such a young age produces a dramatic spike in performance above peers.
However, overspecialized young athletes soon begin to stagnate and may even fall behind their peers, either due to a lack of GPP or worse, from injury due to overuse and overtraining.
Young pitchers are often specialized early in their careersWhile a lack of GPP contributes to the detriment of premature overspecialization, injury results from the danger of premature overspecialization.
It happens frequently with endurance athletes, specifically runners. The only movement and stimulus to which they subject their body is repetitive, low-intensity straight-line running.
Their bodies physically break down from rampant volume and overuse and they often lack the strength, balance, and flexibility to move in any pattern other than straight-line running.
Tragically, we’re seeing the same thing happen in young skill athletes like softball players.
I spent four years as a strength and conditioning coach for two top-tier softball programs in the SEC and Big 12. Each year, we brought in stud freshmen too weak to start a general strength program or too broken from overuse that they had to spend their first year on a rehab program.
And more often than not, the demands of collegiate softball produced more strains, sprains, and tears on their already broken bodies.
Most of the soft-tissue overuse injuries that I encountered could have been prevented altogether by developing well-rounded athletes through playing multiple sports and participating in basic strength and conditioning programs geared first toward GPP development.
In my article next week, I’ll discuss in greater detail what GPP is and how best to train GPP for young athletes.
