Central aspects of the identification and development of sports talents: A systematic review

Abstract

The detection and development of sports talents has been for decades a strategy used internationally with the purpose of obtaining elite athletes, for this, it recruits boys and girls from a very early age who are subjected to high levels of training. Objective: The purpose of this review was to identify and synthesize the most important literature on the effects of relative age (ER), training volume (TV), early specialization (ES), and diversification of sports practice. (DSP) in sports success. Methodology: online search was made in PubMed, ScienceDirect, SPORTDiscus (EBSCOhost), Science, Social Science, Web of Science, Scirus, Hinari, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsychINFO, Scopus and Ovid using the keywords: relative age effect, early sport specialization, volume training, sports diversification. After selection based on the established criteria, 77 articles were included. They were completely reviewed and contained relevant data on ER, TV, ET, and DSP. The quality of the evidence reviewed was excellent in general terms. Conclusion: scientific evidence indicates that success in elite and super-elite athletes is not correlated with TV, ES, ER. These findings must be carefully considered by all those involved in the identification and development of athletes.