When we see the suc­cess of ath­letes like Shelly-Ann Fras­er-Pryce, or Us­ain Bolt, we can eas­i­ly imag­ine the years of com­mit­ted train­ing it took for them to achieve their lev­els of suc­cess.

We are then faced with ques­tions like: Who will be the next Us­ain or Shelly-Ann? And with the per­for­mance stan­dard for elite ath­leti­cism be­ing con­stant­ly raised, the fol­low up ques­tion is usu­al­ly, “How do we train the next gen­er­a­tion of ath­letes?” bear­ing in mind the goal is to match or sur­pass cur­rent ath­let­ic per­for­mance.

As med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, we some­times see our young ath­letes pre­sent­ing with pre­ventable in­juries. These are usu­al­ly the re­sult of over/un­der­train­ing, cou­pled with poor re­cov­ery and nu­tri­tion. We some­times fail to con­sid­er a few fac­tors that are crit­i­cal to the longevi­ty of a young ath­lete’s body and ca­reer: aca­d­e­m­ic oblig­a­tions, oth­er co/ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties, phys­i­cal and men­tal de­vel­op­ment. Young ath­letes need time to ad­just to the phys­i­cal changes as they grow and learn how to move ef­fi­cient­ly.

With that in mind, it can be detri­men­tal to our ath­letes to “train” all year round, with­out ap­pro­pri­ate breaks for men­tal rest and avoid­ance burnout.

Top coach­es around the world who train ju­nior and ado­les­cent ath­letes have rec­om­mend­ed a staged ap­proach. One such mod­el is the Long-Term Ath­let­ic De­vel­op­ment [LTAD] mod­el de­vel­oped by Cana­di­an sport sci­en­tist Ist­van Ba­lyi in the 1990s. The mod­el fo­cus­es on both the needs and stages of de­vel­op­ment of in­di­vid­u­als. There are five key stages fo­cus­ing on pre-pu­ber­ty to pu­ber­ty, and post-pu­ber­ty in­to ma­tu­ri­ty.

FUN­da­men­tal stage

(Ages 5-9 years)

In this stage, the pri­ma­ry fo­cus is on de­vel­op­ing co­or­di­na­tion, bal­ance, strong mus­cles and bones, and ba­sic move­ment skills. Ac­tiv­i­ties in this stage should be pri­mar­i­ly un­struc­tured and in­for­mal and in­volves the in­tro­duc­tion to a va­ri­ety of phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties and games.

Dur­ing this de­vel­op­ment phase, chil­dren learn through dis­cov­ery and de­vel­op their cre­ativ­i­ty and so­cial skills. Ac­tiv­i­ties like run­ning, chang­ing di­rec­tion, throw­ing, kick­ing, and games like tag, sit­ing, hop-scotch etc are rec­om­mend­ed for this age group.

Coach­es can be­gin to in­tro­duce the con­cept of dy­nam­ic warm-ups in this stage, bear­ing in mind that per­fect form is not a re­quire­ment at this stage.

Learn­ing to train

(Ages 8-12 years)

The fo­cus at this stage is on de­vel­op­ing gen­er­al ath­leti­cism and in­volves co­or­di­na­tion, bal­ance, speed, agili­ty, and the men­tal dis­po­si­tion to­wards sports.

This is best achieved through par­tic­i­pa­tion in mul­ti­ple sports (struc­tured and un­struc­tured), and func­tion­al move­ment and strength train­ing.

For most sports, spe­cial­is­ing is not en­cour­aged at this stage of de­vel­op­ment, as it leads to an in­creased risk of overuse in­juries, burnout, and a de­cline in ath­let­ic per­for­mance.

Coach­es can in­tro­duce short, struc­tured warm-ups, that in­cor­po­rate dy­nam­ic move­ments (butt kicks, lat­er­al hops, high knees etc.). Ath­letes may al­so be­gin a struc­tured strength train­ing pro­gramme that tar­gets the core and func­tion­al move­ments.

Pro­grammes should last no longer than 30 mins and can in­clude light weights or body weight. Prop­er form is es­sen­tial, and the aim is im­prove­ment and ex­er­cise pro­fi­cien­cy, not per­fec­tion.

Train­ing to train

(Ages 11 to 16)

Dur­ing this stage, the fo­cus is on skill de­vel­op­ment and func­tion­al strength.

Coach­es can in­clude dy­nam­ic func­tion­al warm-ups be­fore prac­tice and may in­cor­po­rate as­pects of strength train­ing in a prac­tice ses­sion. Ath­letes must be­gin a struc­tured strength train­ing pro­gramme at this stage. Sport spe­cif­ic train­ing will im­prove skills, but strength train­ing will give the func­tion­al strength re­quired on the field of play. There should be a fo­cus on prop­er tech­niques for ba­sic func­tion­al move­ments like squats, dead­lifts and push ups, while work­ing on im­prov­ing core strength, agili­ty, and bal­ance.

Ath­letes may start spe­cial­is­ing in a sin­gle sport, but it is not nec­es­sary to give up all the sports they love. What is more im­por­tant is that they are giv­en time off from struc­tured sports to avoid overuse in­juries and burnout. The rec­om­men­da­tion is at least two (2) weeks off for every six months of sport for those who are not spe­cialised and 4-6 weeks off every six months for spe­cialised ath­letes. Dur­ing the down time, ath­letes should en­gage in oth­er phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty not re­lat­ed to their pri­ma­ry sport.

Train­ing to com­pete

(Ages 15-18)

Most teenagers would have de­vel­oped adult bod­ies. There is in­creased em­pha­sis on the de­vel­op­ment of team and in­di­vid­ual skills along with strength and con­di­tion­ing as they train to com­pete suc­cess­ful­ly. Coach­es should en­gage with a strength and con­di­tion­ing spe­cial­ist or sports phys­io­ther­a­pist to de­vel­op and im­ple­ment pro­grammes for ath­letes to use out­side of prac­tice.

Train­ing to win

(Ages 17-18)

Most ath­letes have a sol­id foun­da­tion for be­ing a suc­cess­ful ath­lete by this time. Their phys­i­cal and men­tal ca­pac­i­ties have grown, and the fo­cus shifts from de­vel­op­ment to per­for­mance en­hance­ment and max­imi­sa­tion.

The lines be­tween over­train­ing, op­ti­mal train­ing and un­der­train­ing can be­come eas­i­ly blurred when work­ing with de­vel­op­ing youth. Long term ath­lete de­vel­op­ment mod­els pro­vide a struc­tured ap­proach out of which the next Olympians can be eas­i­ly iden­ti­fied.

Ta­jay Grant is a phys­i­cal ther­a­pist em­ployed to the Mona Acad­e­my of Sport, Fac­ul­ty of Sport