Dec 21, 2022
Sports Specialization is the focus on a single sport year-round oftentimes at the exclusion of other sports. It is a practice seen increasingly in our youth athlete population that aims to improve an athlete’s competitive advantage but sacrifices rest and has been associated with physical and psychological stress that can lead to attritional musculoskeletal injuries and burnout. We welcome Dr. Nirav Pandya, Pediatric Sports Medicine Surgeon from UCSF, local Sports Medicine authority for the San Francisco Bay Area, and trusted social media presence. In November’s OJSM, Dr. Pandya’s group published “Youth Sports Specialization and its Effect on Professional, Elite, and Olympic Athlete Performance, Career Longevity, and Injury Rates: A Systematic Review” which examines simply whether Sports Specialization works in terms of accomplishing its goal to better prepare an athlete to get to the next level, and at what cost.