Sports specialized youth athletes exhibit lower risk quality of motion than non-specialized adolescents

Background: Quality of motion and neuromuscular balance are noted predictors of acute injury risk. Early sports specialization and extremely high activity levels have been linked to high risk of injury, especially overuse injury. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate for any relationships between quality of physical movement, quantity of physical activity, and degree of sports specialization in a healthy cohort of children and adolescents. Methods: Healthy children between the ages 10 and 18 completed the HSS Pedi-FABS to assess quantity of physical activity and the Jayanthi scale to assess degree of sports specialization. Quality of motion was assessed using motion analysis sensors (DorsaVi, Kew, Australia) during 5 repetitions of 4 different jumping and squatting motions (Table 1). For each repetition, one point was given for low risk of injury anterior or medial/lateral motion, for a maximum score of 2 per leg. Quality of motion scores were summed for a maximum score of 100 per participant. Specialization level was dichotomized as high specialization with a Jayanthi scale score of 2 or 3 and low specialization with a score of 1 or 2. Independent samples t-tests were used to compare high vs. low specialization participants on physical activity quantity and overall quality of motion. A Pearson correlation was used to determine the relationship between quantity of physical activity and quality of motion. Results: Final analyses included 147 participants (72% male) with a mean age of 13.4 ± 2.2 years. For the entire cohort, the mean Pedi-FABS score was 22.9 ± 6.8, the mean quality score was 25.5 ± 13.5 and 73% were highly specialized. Participants that were highly specialized displayed low risk motion more frequently than participants with low sport specialization (27.6 ± 14.0 vs 19.8 ± 10.1, p < 0.01; Table 2). Highly specialized participants had significantly higher activity levels (24.6 ± 5.9 vs 18.1 ± 6.9, p < 0.001). Additionally, quality of motion was moderately correlated with physical activity level (r = 0.349, p < 0.001). Conclusion: Overall quality of motion as in jump-landing tasks in healthy children was better in highly specialized participants. Taken together with existing literature, although early specialization may put young athletes at risk for overuse injuries, highly sports specialized youth athletes may be at lower risk for acute injury. Future research should explore associations between sports specialization, physical activity, save movement patterns, and athletic injuries. [Table: see text][Table: see text]