In an effort to vault their children into athletic success, many parents have hopped on board the 10,000-hour rule made famous by Malcolm Gladwell in his best-selling book, Outliers.

That is the benchmark for the amount of time, Gladwell argues, to make kids experts in their sport. Kids play year-round on competitive travel teams and their parents pay lots of money for specialized training, with the promise of reaching an elite level of play in a specific sport.

The study found that athletes specializing in one sport – and especially those who train for that sport year-round – are 70 percent more likely to sustain a lower extremity injury.

What often happens however, is that instead of hastening their success through specialization, children who over-focus on a specific sport at a young age often end up injured or burned out or both.