Long Term Athlete Development Plan

Football Coaching Essay:

Introduction

Growth and Maturation

Growth refers to the obvious changes to the body that are measurable and can be observed such as height, weight and percentage of body fat on the other hand maturation refers to the development of organisms within the body structure that are not directly observed.

The Long Term Athlete Development Plan was first developed by Istvan Balyi; “the concept of LTAD was to recognise that young people will ultimately be better athletes if they have reached their full potential with regards to physical literacy before they train sports specific (Roberts, 2015). and has been adapted to suit different sports for their specific development plan, research suggests that for a talented athlete

It is vitally important that coaches carefully consider what type of environment to create at this stage that should be fun but challenging at the same time, therefore the children should be exposed a variety of multi-sport activities which that allows them to learn these basic fundamental skills, if they have a preferred sport then they should be allowed to participate in activities based around that sport at least 2-3 times per week but nevertheless they should also take part in other activities to shy away from early specialization and encourage the development of a more all rounded athlete I have found that through my own personal experience that children who have good fundamental skills go on to be an elite athlete in specific sport or can perform at a high level in a number of

“During the Train to Train stage, athletes are entering their growth spurt and passing through puberty. As they do so, their growth can be measured and plotted to calculate the time when they reach peak height velocity (PHV). PHV is an important marker for determining which physical capacities can be trained effectively and safely during this stage. For example, aerobic training should be a priority after reaching PHV.” (Webpage, Train to train ,