Sports initiation and risk factors in the development of school athletes.

Abstract

Sports initiation is highly relevant today, whether in academic, sporting, or sports literature aspects. However, when this initiation is not developed within an appropriate pedagogy, risk factors quickly emerge, negatively impacting the development of school athletes. These risk factors trigger a process of abandonment in sports practice. The purpose of this study is to analyze sports initiation and the risk factors in the development of athletes. The relentless pursuit of impressive results in the development of athletes goes against the pedagogy of sports initiation in sports modalities, a reality that frustrates children and adolescents who experience training stages that do not correspond to their maturational and psychological reality. Among the risk factors in the development of athletes, it is evident that the methodology used by many sports professionals is not adequate for sports initiation, since the immediacy sought by these professionals adds numerous risk factors such as stress, overtraining, and physical and mental exhaustion. This does not mean that adult athletes do not suffer from these types of problems, but children tend to be less prepared to deal with the systematic practice of high-performance sports and become more susceptible to various factors that are detrimental to their development. The objective of this study was to analyze sports initiation and risk factors in the training of athletes, seeking to assist professionals in the field of physical education and sports regarding risk factors in sports initiation in the training of athletes.