The Relationship Between Multirateral Development and Specific Sport Skill Acquisition in Middle Childhood
Abstract
In the first stages of the long-term athlete development is recommended the so called multilateral development. It means that children should engage in a variety of different sports during the formative youth sports years.
It is assumed that children with a higher level of multilateral development will acquire skills faster and more easily than children with a lower level of multilateral development. However, there is a lack of prospective longitudinal studies that would confirm or reject the importance of multilateral development in sport for specific sport skill acquisition.
The aim was to investigate the relationship between the multilateral development in sport and specific sport skill acquisition, specifically in ice hockey and athletics. This work is a correlation, non-experimental, and longitudinal research.
For the proband selection, we used a purposive nonprobability sampling method. In the first phase of the research, we assessed the level of multilateral development in 6-7-year old children.
A year later, in the second phase of the research, we evaluated the level of specific sport skill acquisition in these same children. Using canonical correlation analysis, we confirmed a strong positive relationship between the set of multilateral development indicators and the set of selected skills in both sports, specifically in athletics (Canon Cor. = 0.901; p < 0.05) and ice hockey (Canon.
Cor = 0.726; p < 0.05). There is a high probability that children with a higher level of multilateral development have a higher level of specific sport skill acquisition or vice versa.
In other words, children with a higher level of multilateral development acquire specific sports skills easily than children with a lower level of multilateral development.