Sports Training for Babies and Toddlers: Have We Gone too Far?

In an age where parents are looking to advantage their children in an ultra-competitive world, kids are being started earlier and earlier in academics, arts and yes, athletics.

And not even children anymore, but babies and toddlers are getting very early starts in sports-related training.

Enter entrepreneurs like Doreen Bolhuis, founder of "Gymtrix", a company that offers a library of videos starting with training for babies as young as 6 months. "With the babies in our family," she said, "I start working them out in the hospital."

Yikes...

Companies have jumped on the insecurities of parents, with outfits like Baby Goes Pro, and Athleticbaby.

Even fitness facilities are fully on the bandwagon, with The Little Gym boasting 20,000 children under the age of 2 enrolled in their programs, accounting for a quarter of total enrolment.

My Gym, based in Sherman Oaks, California, said 55 percent of those who attend classes at its 200 locations -- 157 in the United States -- were 2 ½ or younger.

Youth fitness experts aren't overly enthusiastic of the trend.

Dr. Lyle Micheli, an orthopedic surgeon and founder of the first pediatric sports medicine clinic in the United States, at Children's Hospital in Boston, says this of the phenomenon;

I don't know of any evidence that training at this infancy stage accelerates coordination.

Dr. Micheli also notes that there is a risk of overuse injury.

Dr. Kwame Brown, of the International Youth Conditioning Association, and proprietor of an excellent Youth Fitness blog called "Move Theory," had some very lucid thoughts on this topic;

Children need opportunities to create. Adults often don't realize how stifling encouragement can be. We think encouragement and direction are always positive. In the long term, for a child, these things can be the kiss of death to creativity, and they can actually kill enjoyment when misapplied... Even biomechanically for a child, if they are always being "taught" how to move, it stifles the development of skill.

Read Dr. Brown's entire blog entry here.

Eric Chessen, founder of Autism Fitness went so far as to call the trend an "epic disgrace". He adds,

Play has become known, whether openly stated or not, as "unproductive" because it does not teach a toddler how to take the SATs effectively or drive a golf ball 400 yards.

Chessen's solution; Establishing healthy movement patterns, the opportunity to play, and reinforcing creative and social aspects of exercise... beneficial to ALL populations, and the basis for lifelong fitness, rather than the golden opportunity of a forty year-old obese guy talking about how he used to play high school football.

I agree wholeheartedly with the aforementioned Youth Fitness practitioners. An urgency has been created and people are lining up to cater to parent's fears that their children will somehow be left behind without them.

Play with your toddlers. Give them opportunities to explore their worlds with very little inhibition, and they'll be just fine.

Image Credit: Hygienematters

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