Does youth sports specialization affect performance, career longevity, and injury rates in professional, elite, and Olympic athletes?
Youth multisport engagement is associated with better performance, while youth sports specialization is linked to increased injury risk in elite athletes.
Although current data on sports specialization in elite, professional, and Olympic athletes are mostly retrospective and survey-based evidence, most sports demonstrate better performance after youth multisport engagement, and youth sports specialization was linked with increased injury risk in athletes at the highest levels of competition.
McLellan et al. (Tue,) studied this question.