Overuse is the biggest cause of injury for young athletes
Does being a one-sport athlete make you more prone to getting injured?
Brandon Peterson, the strength and conditioning coach at Minnehaha, said the answer isn’t straightforward.
“As far as injury prevention goes, it really comes down to, ‘how much you are you playing that sport?'” he said. “A one-sport athlete that plays it just during the high school season, probably [has] no increase in risk of injury.”
But like Brandon Peterson, the University of Georgia found that more one-sport athletes will get burned out of their sport than actually get injured. But the main way of getting injured is actually from overuse.
“Somebody who’s playing all year round the same sport runs the risk of some overuse injuries,” the report said.
According to researchers from the University of Georgia, athletes that focus on one sport are prone to get burned out of their sport rather than getting injured. Getting burnt out of your sport means you lose passion and interest in your sport. Athletes become one sport athletes because they want to focus on one sport, but that can not be the best thing for sports because when you play only one sport you only use certain muscles with that sport.
So if you play more than one sport you use more muscles so you are more stretched out and you won’t get hurt. The University of Georgia found out of 975 high school students 1 and 5 are one-sport athletes. Researchers say if you are a one-sport athlete you are more likely to play in college.
Overuse injuries are for example your throwing arm for baseball or softball. Your arm will just get so tired or your arm angle is off and that really affects your elbow. Some ways to prevent all this from happening are working out, stretching, and doing mobility workouts.
Other ways of preventing this and using different muscles are playing a different sport when you warm up, for example, baseball teams will bring a football with them and warm up with a football because when you throw a football it is better for your arm.
So a lot of times you will mainly get injured if you have bad form in your sport. So being a one sport athlete doesn’t really make you more prone to getting injured if you do other things that involve different muscles or you have the right form.