Youth Sport Specialisation and Overuse Injury: A Perspective on When Association Should Drive Policy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22548976Keywords:
Sport specialization, Overuse injury, Youth athletes, Training volume, Injury prevention, Sports policyAbstract
A large observational and case-control literature consistently associates early and high-volume youth
sport specialisation with elevated odds of overuse and serious injury, and professional societies have
issued position statements urging caution around early specialisation on this basis. Yet the underlying
evidence remains almost entirely observational, confounded by training volume, competitive level, and
likely reverse causation, and specialisation itself is inconsistently defined across the literature it is meant
to inform. This perspective examines the specialisation-injury association literature, the position
statements it has generated, and the specific points at which current policy recommendations outrun what
the association evidence can actually support, arguing for policy grounded in training-volume and
load-management principles rather than specialisation status alone.
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