I think this article also speaks to the growing trend and problem of kids specializing in just one sport at such an early age. They don't develop other crucial muscles that are needed to help prevent injuries.
Here is what I think is the scariest part:
Left on their own, children are natural cross-trainers. They climb trees, wade in streams, play whatever sport is in season and make up their own games. The lure of the great indoors -- cable TV and the Internet -- has made them, in general, less fit. But what is recognized less is that the way youth sports are now organized has made even those who are dedicated participants less athletic than they should be. The culprit is early specialization: many young athletes can perform the mechanics of their own sport, but too often in a repetitive, almost metronomic way, and they lack many of the other elements of all-around athleticism. ''I see it all the time,'' Sullivan said. ''I look at some kids, and they look good with the bat in their hands. They're perfect. And then they go out on the field, and I say, My God, this kid is a horrible athlete. He can't run. He can't move. He's spent all his time in the batting cage. So many of these kids have played no other sport. They're one-trick ponies.''
I heard variations of this same lament, repeatedly, at IMG, which receives a steady stream of kids who have focused on a single sport just about from the cradle. They have missed out on what David Donatucci, director of the academy's International Performance Institute, calls ''important neural parts of athleticism.'' ''We've got tennis kids who can't hop, skip or jump,'' he said. ''We've got golfers who if you threw them a ball, they'd duck -- basketball players who can't swing a baseball bat. We've got some kids who are really good at their sports, but if you looked closer, you'd be surprised at how unathletic they really are.''
They are also more at risk for injury. ''We're seeing stress fractures, overuse injuries of all kinds,'' Jordan Metzl, medical director of the Sports Medicine Institute for Young Athletes at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan, said. The day before we talked, an 11-year-old boy came into Metzl's office complaining of a sore arm after throwing 120 pitches in a game -- more than a typical starting pitcher throws in a big-league game. The boy had an injury to the growth plate, which had been ''pulled off the inside of the elbow.'' Metzl had also recently treated a 9-year-old girl for a pelvic stress fracture. She had been playing soccer six days a week, two to three hours a day.
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