How Much Practice is too Much For Young Athletes?

Nowadays, more youth participate in sports at an earlier age. Practices are longer, harder and more intense and games and matches are demanding and sometimes include long days in the heat and inclement weather.  While practice is needed to master sports, there is such a thing as too much practice for a young athlete.  It is important to find the balance between enough practice to ensure progress and improvement and not too much that it can cause long term damage and burn out. 

How Do You Know if Your Child is Practicing Too Much?

There are some basic signs that you can watch for that will give you a heads up that your young athlete is practicing too much.

·       Gets tired easily

·       Becomes Uncooperative or Surly

·       Gets irritated when practice is mentioned

·       Reduction in performance during games or practice

·       Lack of motivation

If your child is showing any of these signs, take a look at how often they are being required to practice and how long the duration of those practices are.  If the practice sessions don’t appear to be in excess, then the reasons for exhibiting the above signs may be something else that needs examining.

For a young athlete who wants to excel in a certain sport, it will require more practice than community sports participation will, but there is a fine line there and it’s up to the parent to make sure that their child is not being over trained. 

Training too much can cause injuries and can also cause the young athlete to want to quit.  This doesn’t mean not to push them.  Excellence in sports does require a certain amount of pushing limits, discipline and other traits, but push too hard and all that is accomplished is making the child hate what they’re doing.  As they get older, they will be able to handle more and more pushing and practice, but work them into it.

How much Practice is the Right Amount?

Much of this depends on the age of the child and the sport that they are participating in.  The younger the child, regardless of their talent, the more important it is to regulate practice and make sure that injuries are not sustained due to pushing them too hard.  In general, 18029 hours per week dedicated to practice is a good amount. Anything more than this, needs to be monitored closely by a sports doctor that is well versed in the training of young people.

A good rule of thumb to follow when increasing the amount of time a young athlete spends training is to raise the training time NO MORE than 10% each week.  A gradual building of training and practice time is much safer, healthier and easier for the child to adapt to and the likelihood of injury is slim. Also, in the young years of an athlete’s life, make sure that the majority of practice is spent on technique which will also prevent injuries as the training time increases each week.