Picture this: your sports-loving 12-year-old has started showing some promise at Australian rules football.

Not only are they now pleading to stay up later on Thursday and Friday evenings to watch games, but your weekends are fast becoming filled with car trips, the packing and unpacking of footy bags and cold mornings spent supporting from the sidelines.

Then one day, a state-based talent development academy invites them to attend a pre-season training camp in summer.

What was once a winter passion may soon become a year-round sport, leaving you pondering several questions:

what’s the best way to support their ambitions?

what’s the best way to support their ambitions?

how can you help them juggle their workload?

how can you help them juggle their workload?

how young is too young for a child to focus solely on one sport?

how young is too young for a child to focus solely on one sport?

Thankfully, sports science research has answered these tough questions.

How early is too early to specialise?

We’ve all heard the proverb “practice makes perfect”. Perhaps we should dig a little deeper and ask: is the acquisition of skill actually proportional to the time invested in its practice?

At first, it may seem logical to assume young athletes need to start practising as early as possible if they want to excel.

But is this the case?

A recent systematic review found most professional and........

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