Take some down time! I frequently joke that as a coach, I spend most of my time telling athletes NOT to train. One of the most common reasons that we see for injuries and poor performance is overtraining. Competitive athletes are frequently wired to want to achieve more, train harder, and perform better. Unfortunately, increasing training volume does not always translate to improved performance. If that were the case, rather than racing, we could just submit our training log and see who did the most. Rest days are an integral part of a proper periodized training program but many athletes forget to take it one step further. Downtime is an extended break from training placed strategically within a training year. Downtime allows all your body systems to recover dream a heavy training and racing load. Muscles repair themselves from damage incurred. The immune system recovers and returns to normal function. Finally, and probably most importantly, a mental break allows the athlete to rediscover other passions as well as their passion for their primary sport. An overuse injury is damage to a bone, muscle, ligament or tendon that occurs over time, usually from improper training or technique when a child is performing repetitive motions. According to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin, 46% of growing athletes who specialized in a single sport suffered a lower-body injury, nearly twice the 24% rate for kids who played multiple sports while they were still growing.

Multi-Sport Athletes Instead of committing to one sport, multisport athletes participate in a range of activities. Being a multisport athlete has many advantages — and some of them might surprise you. Experience long-term success. Consistent performers with fewer injuries, multi-sport athletes actually tend to experience longer-term success over their one-sport peers. They also have a much higher chance of being active adults. Limit overuse injuries. Playing multiple sports gives athletes time to heal and develop different muscle groups, tendons and ligaments. With the rise in overuse injuries in youth sports, this is an important point to consider. A recent American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine study also pointed out that sports specialization could lead to more lower extremity injuries. ess pressure, less burnout. Burnout is a real problem for athletes who specialize too early. After all the practices, skill development and games growing up, they get sick of their sport by the time college comes around. Multisport athletes are more likely to retain their love of the game. Accumulate cross-sport skills. Multisport athletes gain different kinds of skills that they can apply from one sport to the next. This enhances hand-eye coordination, balance, endurance, explosion, communication and athletic agility. Who wouldn’t want the speed of a sprinter with the hand-eye coordination of a baseball player on their team?

FOMO!? Social media cranks up the pressure when it comes to the fear of missing out. It seems everyone is posting pictures their kid's team wearing a first-place medal. I don't see many posts about kids getting last place in a tournament, but the kids got better and had fun. Society has made it all about winning. The pressure is cranked up for these kids for the rest of their career and there is pressure on the parents to dedicate even more time and resources for their kids to be the "best." If they don't win every event, are they a failure? And don't get me started about rankings. I recently had a conversation with a kid I know who told me his 10U team was playing the No. 2 team in the state this weekend. I could not help but laugh. Who is ranking 10U teams? Who is looking this up and then telling their 10-year-old this information? The kids aren't ranking teams, so it must be some obsessed parents or coaches who are in charge & and people actually check the rankings like they really mean something! I don't know many young children who read the newspaper, and Facebook or Twitter don't allow kids under 13 to have an account. So that makes this much more disturbing, as all of this seems to be more for the parents egos rather than the kids. We need to get a grip as a society when it comes to youth sports. Can't we just post "loved watching Sara and her teammates play the game they love today" and not add pressure to kids that are out there to have fun? Let's attach our kids' identities and self-esteem to our values and not youth sport achievement.