Sports: Too much, too little can harm our children

Posted by: Lauren Young on October 10

This entry is written by BusinessWeek contributing editor Mark Hyman who is the author of Until It Hurts (Beacon), a book about impact of parents, coaches and other adults on youth sports to be published in April 2009.

If you didn’t know that my two sons were, in fact, my two sons, there’s no chance you’d guess they were related. The older one – by two years – has bright red hair, a sprinkle of freckles and is solid as a middle linebacker. He towers over me at 6-foot-3. The younger one is wiry, almost painfully thin in the way teenagers tend to be. He doesn’t have a single red hair and, on tiptoes, stands 5-10.

There’s another difference between my sons that to me is just as striking. They have totally different comfort levels when it comes to committing to activities, especially to sports. The older guy is always looking for somebody to toss him a football or ready to head off to the batting cage. The younger one is probably the better athlete of the two, yet he’s less juiced up at the thought of practicing, playing and joining new teams. (Caveat: I’m sure both would dispute most, if not all my observations. But then, I’m their father.)

I’m raising this because recently I’ve been reading about the harm that can happen to kids from not playing enough sports – and from playing too much, too soon, too intensely. At both ends of the spectrum, the medical research shows that kids are at risk.

Research published this month concludes that “physically inactive adolescents have more emotional and behavioral problems than those who are physically active.” The study, conducted by a team of Finnish researchers, noted that boys who reported less than one hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity a week had more symptoms identified by researchers as “anxious/depressed” and “withdrawn/depressed.”

Girls displayed many of the same issues, and they complained of sleep problems. Raise your hand if these findings are a surprise. They shouldn’t be if your child, at times, seems to be a habitual TV watcher or holes up hour after hour with her/his video-game consoles.

The study’s lead author, Marko T. Kantomaa, noted that staying active helps teenagers cope with other stresses in their lives. “Adolescence is already a complicated and sometimes difficult stage of life — emotionally, mentally and physically. Compounding that with negative mental and emotional effects brought on by physical inactivity does not help young people ease into adulthood,” the researcher said in a statement released with the study.

There is danger lurking at the other extreme of physical activity. Twice in the past eight years, the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued policy statements warning against kids going overboard with sports. This is not a problem affecting a few, gung-ho families. By some estimates, half the youth sports injuries each year are the direct result of doing too much.

A few of the pediatricians’ recommendations:

-Young athletes should limit training in one sport to no more than five days a week, with at least one day off from any organized physical activity.

-Athletes should take time off from one sport for two to three months each year. Taking a break from a sport allows injuries to heal and the opportunity to work on strength training and conditioning to reduce the risk of future injuries.

-Weekly training time, number of repetitions, or total distance should not increase by more than 10 percent weekly.

-Join only one team per season.

Like most things involving kids, moderation is the key.

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