Long Term Athlete Development Model

1007 Words3 Pages

In our society, we value sports and athletes very highly. We spend countless dollars on tickets and merchandise to be “fascinated” at the skill of the athlete. We praise them like it’s a miracle, when in actuality it is a result of hard work. I think we overlook the hard work and the different stages of youth training the athletes went through throughout their lives and just look at the end result. This hard work and growth can be explained by two different but very similar types of youth development models, the LTAD model, and Gallahue and Ozmun’s model. The long-term athlete development model, otherwise known as the LTAD model is a scientific research that concludes it takes eight-to-twelve years of training for a talented player/athlete …show more content…

It is essential that in the LTAD we set long and short-term goals according to their chronological age. To determine what the goals we should set we split the model into 6 stages depending on their age and gender. The first two stages, the fundamental stage and the learning to train stage, are important in motor learning but they are more for children under the age of 12. These kids are usually in elementary school still branching out and looking for their specific sport. In these two stages, it is crucial that we understand that it is more about structuring and movements of the skills rather than perfecting the skill. We have to build the overall motor abilities, and focus on building the athleticism and the fundamental sports skills of the athlete in these stages. The next two stages are the training to train and training to compete stages. With the training to train, athletes are about 12 – 16 years old for males and 11-15 for females, so mainly kids in middle school heading into high school. This is trying to set up more of a base for the athlete to understand the sport specific tactics and skills. We also place a special interest …show more content…

Both of these models have unique motor stages that athletes go through to obtain skills. However, they are different in the fact that the LTAD has six stages and Gallahue and Ozmun’s model has only 4 phases. Not only that but the LTAD has more specific chronological age limitations than Gallahues’ model. It also has less of an environmental influence than Gallahues model. Also with Gallahues model the start of motor development is from utero while the LTAD starts when the child can walk. In both models however, it evident that both speak about how the athlete uses their current ability to achieve a different skill. For example, a child learns to walk before he can run. The last real difference I saw was that in the Gallahues model it speaks about eventually losing the skill after we go through these stages, but the LTAD just speaks about retiring into a job in that specific sport. Although both have different methods, they ultimately lead to motor ability skills improving with

Open Document