Gymnastics and Soccer Classes: What Age Is Best to Start?

Why this topic is on your mind

Once children pass age 3, talk about other children’s activities suddenly increases. “○○ has been going to gymnastics since nenshō.” “△△ moved up a level at swimming.” “□□ joined a soccer club.” Talk like this flows in almost every day, at pick-up time at daycare or kindergarten and in parents’ group chats.

In this situation, questions like these come up at home.

• What age is best to start? My child is already 3 and a half; isn’t it too late?
• Gymnastics, soccer, swimming: which should we choose in the end?
• Should my child do several at once? Or will they improve more if we focus on one?
• What sport suits my child?
• Is it true that “you mustn’t miss the golden age” and “it’s too late if you don’t start at 3”?

Research gives fairly settled answers to these questions. “What kind” matters more than “from what age”, and “a variety of movements” matters more than focusing on a particular sport: this is the shared view of motor development and sports medicine at present. Let’s look at them in turn.

What does the research say?

On sports activities in early childhood, theoretical research on motor development and research in sports medicine on “the risks of early specialization” have each provided important findings from different angles. Let’s answer the three questions that mothers of 3-and-a-half-year-olds worry about most with each body of research.

Question 1: Does “starting at a certain age” lead to the most improvement?

This is probably the question you are most concerned about. Research gives a fairly clear answer here. The conclusion is that “how you are involved” matters more than “from what age”.

concluded that the relationship in which “children who are good at movement are more active, and children who are not avoid it” is still weak in early childhood and grows stronger from the school years onward. In other words, whether a child is “good at soccer” or “can do the horizontal bar” at age 3 or 4 has almost nothing to do with later success as an athlete or lifelong exercise habits.

What matters instead is experiencing the whole repertoire of fundamental movement skills, “running, jumping, throwing, catching, kicking, climbing, rolling”, in early childhood. These are movements that are naturally acquired through several kinds of play and activity, without intensive practice in a particular sport.

And this is the biggest point about sports in early childhood: early specialization in a particular sport in early childhood is, in research terms, actually not recommended.

states clearly: “Until around age 12, participating in several sports reduces the risk of injury, stress, and burnout” and “In many sports, delaying specialization until late adolescence gives a higher chance of achieving competitive goals”. The summary is that “start early and narrow down early” does not necessarily produce future athletes.

likewise concludes that “for most sports, there is no evidence that specializing in one sport from early childhood is necessary for reaching the highest level of competition”.

In other words, in research terms there is almost no need to agonize at 3 and a half over “which sport to choose” or “from what age to start”. The shared view of experts at present is to position early childhood as a time for enjoyably experiencing several kinds of movement.

Question 2: Are there differences between gymnastics, soccer, and swimming?

This is the question you most want answered: “So which should we choose?” The honest answer in research terms is that “at ages 3 to 5, there is almost no strong evidence comparing which sport is better”. Classes for ages 3 to 5 in each sport are almost all aimed not at training athletes but at “opportunities to move the body enjoyably” and “experience of fundamental movement skills”.

On that basis, there are some differences in the kinds of movement that are easy to experience in each sport.

To sum it up:

• Gymnastics classes: children can safely experience movements that are hard to do at home, such as climbing, jumping, rolling, and balancing, through mat exercises, vaulting boxes, balance beams, horizontal bars, and so on. Many preschool courses for ages 3 to 5 aim not to compete in skills but to “build up a repertoire of ways to move the body”.
• Soccer classes: preschool courses are at the stage of “getting familiar with the ball” and do not yet do serious tactical practice. Movements such as running, stopping, changing direction, kicking, and interacting with other children, and social skills, develop at the same time.
• Swimming: centers on whole-body movement in water, breath control, and getting used to water. Because it provides a different kind of stimulation from movement on land, thinking of it as something to combine with other sports widens the repertoire.
• Dance / eurhythmics: develops a sense of rhythm and bodily expression through varied movement to music. There is more “free movement” than “set movement”, so children can experience the joy of expressing themselves.
• Free play in the playground: surprisingly, in research terms this is an option that offers as wide a range of movement as “classes”. Tag, play equipment, ball games, the sandbox: all naturally include several fundamental movement skills.

What we want to emphasize here is that “attending a class” and “play at home or in the playground” are not an either-or choice. What matters in early childhood is “how much variety of movement the child experienced in total”, and whether the setting for that experience is a class or a playground does not make a big difference in research terms.

Question 3: Is it better to do several sports at once? Or should we focus on one?

This is the question that mothers who have already started an activity worry about next. The research answer is clear: “especially in early childhood, it is better to experience several kinds of movement. Narrowing down to one can wait until much later”.

reported that young athletes doing training specialized in a single sport (8 or more hours a week, one particular sport only) had a significantly higher risk of injury, especially serious overuse injury, than children who did several sports. Specifically, the specialized children had about 1.5 times the risk of serious overuse injury compared with non-specialized children.

This was a study of children aged 7 and over, but in motor development research it is generally considered that ages 3 to 6 are all the more a time for experiencing “a variety of movements” without narrowing down to a particular sport.

Both the AAP’s 2016 clinical report and the AOSSM’s 2016 consensus statement describe states of early specialization, such as “spending 8 or more months a year on one sport” and “focusing on one sport to the exclusion of other sports”, as a direction to avoid in childhood.

What to do if you actually go ahead

Based on the research, here are points that are easy for families to put into practice.

1. First, put “attending classes” and “no classes” side by side as equal options

Before thinking about “whether to send your child to a class”, if you line up what you gain from attending a class and from not attending, the decision becomes simpler.

Attending classes does not have “unique value that is absolutely necessary”. It is fine to choose based on your family’s situation, the household budget, how easy it is to get there, and how your child is doing. There is no need to decide just because “everyone goes”.

2. Choose a sport by “whether your child enjoys it” and “how easy it is for the family to get there”

At ages 3 to 5, there is almost no research basis for working backward to choose a sport because “we want them to become an athlete in this sport in the future”. Rather, both the AAP and the AOSSM agree that “specializing in a single sport from early childhood is not recommended”. So the criteria for choosing a sport are simply these.

• Whether your child says “I want to do it again”: whether they enjoy the trial session, and whether they are in a good mood afterwards
• Whether you can get there from home without strain: if the burden of taking your child there and back is heavy, it is hard to keep up, and it eats into the mother’s peace of mind too
• Whether the monthly fee fits the household budget without strain: if you overstretch thinking of it as “an investment in education”, the pressure to continue grows stronger
• Whether it includes movements that are hard to experience at home: sports that include movements hard to do at home, such as being in water (swimming), mat exercises and vaulting boxes (gymnastics), and ball games in a group (soccer), are a reason to choose them in themselves

3. Avoid “early specialization in early childhood”

To repeat, this is a point on which the research consensus is clear.

• Sending a child in nenchū or nenchō to the same single sport 4 to 5 times a week: a pattern not recommended by research
• “Keeping the child at this sport even if it means giving up other play”: associated with the risk of burnout and leaving sport
• Deciding early that “among children their age, this child stands out in this sport”: it is known that differences in motor ability in early childhood have almost no power to predict later competitive performance

For activities in early childhood, it is enough to have the attitude of “continuing something once or twice a week for about an hour loosely over several years, or stopping if it doesn’t suit”.

4. Even if your child does not attend classes, be conscious of “kinds of movement” at home

Choosing not to send your child to classes is no problem at all. In that case, it is enough to look back loosely at whether “a variety of movements” all appear over the course of a week.

• Running, stopping, changing direction: tag, chasing games
• Jumping and landing: jumping on flat ground, jumping from low steps
• Throwing and catching: soft balls, balloons, paper airplanes
• Kicking: rolling a soft ball in the park and kicking it
• Climbing up and down: jungle gyms, low play equipment, sofas and cardboard boxes indoors
• Rolling and spinning: somersaults, rolling sideways on grass
• Getting into water: bath play, water play in summer, municipal pools

If these all appear over the course of a week, that is plenty as a foundation of fundamental movement skills. There is no need to include them all in one day; it is fine to have the attitude of noticing “This week we had tag and the vaulting box, but not much throwing play” and adding ball games next weekend.

5. Keep in mind that “swimming” also has a different context

Compared with gymnastics, soccer, dance, and so on, swimming alone has a somewhat different context. The American Academy of Pediatrics has reported that formal swimming lessons may reduce the risk of drowning for children aged 1 to 4. This is covered in detail in the related article “Baby swimming from age 0: is there really any point?”, but there is a rational reason why a certain number of families choose swimming from age 3 and a half onward, from the perspective of safety (survival skills around water) rather than motor development. Even so, this too is not something “you absolutely must send your child to”; it can be judged by your family’s living environment (how easy it is to get to the sea, rivers, or pools) and the family’s wishes.

For the overall framework of motor development in early childhood, please also see the related article “Sports and physical activity in early childhood: when and what to start”. It presents, in the same direction as this article, the basic guide of “180 minutes of physical activity a day” based on the WHO 2019 guidelines and the summary that “particular activities are not essential”.

Closing dialogue