Four days a week, after a long day of school, junior Cara Augustine drives to her Sunnyvale gym. After a quick warmup, she sprints across the floor, jumps and flies into a sequence of cartwheels, back handsprings and flips before sticking the landing. Starting gymnastics when she was 2, Augustine has been competing since she was 7.
Sports specialization is defined as intense training in a single sport for at least eight months per year. Specializing in a sport from a young age can have consequences on mental and physical health due to overexertion and the repetition of straining movements. Because of this, some researchers and health professionals recommend waiting until high school to hone in on one sport, even for people aiming for elite competition.
Over the years, Augustine said she has broken her ankle, fractured a vertebrae in her back and torn her Achilles tendon. She said burnout in gymnastics that some athletes feel is largely due to the extreme physical strength demand of the sport.
“I feel like it is a common experience for every single gymnast,” Augustine said. “Not constantly, but very often, you’re like, ‘Should I quit?’ I’m so tempted to quit. Part of it is how physically demanding it is. I want to do the sport for my whole life, like the rest of my life, but I know that, physically, I can’t handle it … There are other points where it’s just so mentally draining.”
Sarah Squires is a captain-coach for The Hidden Opponent, an organization that seeks to support athletes and raise awareness about athlete mental health concerns. Squires said she played soccer from the age of 5 to her second year of college, when she quit because of injuries that continue to impact her.
“I’ve had a couple knee surgeries — like an MCL surgery and PICA — and then a lot of concussions,” Squires said. “I currently have post-concussion syndrome. I still go and coach and play very lightly from time to time, but I can’t play competitively anymore.”
While there can be physical harm involved with specializing in a sport, it can also take a toll on the mental health of athletes. Lisa Post, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Stanford Department of Medicine, said being in a high-pressure environment can create mental health issues and contribute to burnout.
“Sometimes you can have stress from trying to balance your sport and your other obligations like academics and friends because they have a pretty rigorous practice schedule with a lot of hours and travel,” Post said. “If you have a bad relationship with a coach or teammates, or if you don’t fit in for some reason, there are issues there that can be problematic, and sometimes it’s hard to decide to give it up, right?”
Still, Post said participating in sports can improve mental health by providing the opportunity to exercise and engage in a close community.
“Exercising is good for your mental health,” Post said. “So is coming into college and having a built-in set of friends on the team. And it gives you a sense of identity, for sure.”
Augustine agrees and said while gymnastics can stress her, it has also helped improve her mental health.
“It’s what I do when I’m upset, and it’s what makes me happier,” Augustine said. “So I’d say it has a positive impact on my mental health. But in general, the set-in-stone practice times can be hard when you don’t want to go to practice, or it’s been a hard practice. If your coach is mad at the beginning of practice, you’re gonna have a rough four and a half hours.”
However, when she started soccer, Squires said the conversation around mental health was extremely limited, creating unaddressed stress, stemming from the pressure to perform, which began in sixth grade.
“As a youth, growing up, I don’t think I totally had all the outlets to deal with (anxiety),” Squires said. “I just dealt with it by doing more soccer or doing more schoolwork, whatever it was. It was not the healthiest of coping strategies, for sure.”
Post said the early push to choose an interest exacerbates anxiety for many athletes.
“Something that stresses people out is when everything just gets so focused on, ‘What am I going to do next? I have to plan out my entire life,’” Post said. “And there’s a lot of, ‘I’m not good enough,’ on social media. I think those are the kind of things that take a lot of the fun out of it.”
Sacred Heart senior Paola Reinosa didn’t start specializing in volleyball until her freshman year of high school and said the pressure she felt to perform varied throughout her volleyball career. Despite focusing on a sport later in her adolescence, she said she was still able to reach high levels of achievement.
“It’s the number one question you get if you play a sport: Where are you committing?” Reinosa said. “And that’s a really big pressure for high schoolers because they’re not really thinking about (enjoying their season). They have to be thinking about performing well for colleges.”
Gabriela Bolivar Villalobos, a psychologist who works with elite youth, college and professional athletes, said the competitive nature of sports draws in ambitious people — people who typically struggle to prioritize their mental and physical health over performance.
“Sometimes people can be perfectionists around sports,” Villalobos said. “They fall into trying to achieve unhealthy expectations regarding their performance. They fall into self-critical thinking and other traps.”
Villalobos said research that supports waiting until later to start specializing conflicts with professionals’ and athletes’ opinions.
“Most high-achieving athletes do start young,” Villalobos said. “It may just depend on the sport — gymnastics and figure skating, for example, are very technical sports. In swimming, athletes absolutely start as young as possible. But I think that in certain sports, you can get away with starting later in life. That doesn’t mean you can’t play well if you pick up a sport later. I just think if you’re talking professional level, then you need to start young.”
But Reinosa’s experience goes against this. Despite not starting volleyball until her freshman year in high school, she is captain of the varsity team and has received offers to play volleyball in college.
“I think it could have gone two ways because I’ve seen various people burn out,” Reinosa said. “I’ve seen people playing since they’re 7 years old up until right now, come a long way, and they’re dropping the sport because they don’t enjoy it anymore — whether it be like coaches or just that you’re literally doing the same thing for nine years of your life. So I understand, but if you’re really passionate about it, those are the people who move on to be successful.”
The best way to support athletes, Squires said, is to have an open conversation surrounding mental health.
“(Supporting athletes) is having that open communication and being able to recognize and say, ‘Yeah, mental health is a thing, and we’re here to support you,’” Squires said. “These are resources you can reach out to. Coaches and people need to recognize that we’re students before athletes and humans before students.”
But in terms of overall health, Squires said it’s likely better for most young people to wait before specializing.
“I think you can wait a little bit longer,” Squires said. “I hear of kids specializing like I did in elementary school, and you don’t need to. It puts too much stress on you, mentally and physically. You do have more time to improve, especially in junior high and high school. High school is a great time to get into sports and work your way up.”
Despite the stresses, Augustine said she’s grateful she started early to get a head start in gymnastics.
“It really depends on what you want,” Augustine said. “It might sound crazy, but for me, the injuries are worth it for the outcome, the teammates, the people I’ve met and how happy it’s made me. But for other people, it’s not worth it. I think starting that young was good for me because it gave me so much more time to do it. But I think it just really depends if you’re willing to take the risk of the injuries, and if you’re able to find ways to separate yourself from your sport.”
Squires said it can be hard for many athletes to give up something that has been an instrumental part of their lives for so long.
“If you’re young and specializing, your identity gets wrapped up in sports so much, and when you lose that, it has such a detrimental effect on mental health,” Squires said. “Your identity is so many other things, but because you know you’ve spent so much time doing that one thing, it’s hard to unwrap that from your identity.”
