While geared to sports medicine professionals, the 2014 position statement from the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (DiFiori JP, et al.) provides helpful guidance to sports parents on the causes, risk factors, diagnosis, and treatment of burnout in youth athletes.

Response to chronic stress

Burnout is considered a response by a young athlete to chronic stress in which he or she ceases to participate in a previously enjoyable activity, withdrawing from the sport because they perceive it is not possible to meet the physical and psychological demands of the sport. 

Burnout is considered by experts to be part of a spectrum of conditions that includes overreaching and overtraining syndrome.

Overreaching may either be functional or nonfunctional:

While much is known about the causes and risk factors associated with overuse injuries and burnout, more research is needed, concludes a new position statement from the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine. (DiFiori JP, et al 2014)

"The position statement provides a nice review of the literature that is available," says Jennifer M. Weiss, MD., an orthopedic surgeon with the Southern California Permanente Medical Group at the Los Angeles Medical Center, who was not involved in the preparation of the statement.  

"We do not know how many children and young athletes are affected by overuse injuries. Adolescent girls may be at the highest risk for overuse injuries. Early specialization in sports may put young athletes at risk for overuse injuries, and doesn't necessarily lead to long term success in their sport," says Weiss. 

As a recent Aspen Institute research paper notes, just about every signal parents and youth athletes receive today from the prevailing youth sports culture supports the idea that high doses of one sport at an early age is the only pathway to athletic stardom. 

Well, not every signal.

We at MomsTEAM, for one, have been fighting that culture, and trying for the past 14 years to debunk the many myths that have grown up around the supposed need for kids to specialize in a single sport before adolescence.