Long Term Athlete Development - Success is Long Term
Scientific
research has identified that it takes at least 10 years, or 10,000 hours for
talented athletes to achieve sporting excellence. There are no short cuts!
There are two ways in which young swimmers can improve their performance:
• Training.
• Growth and development.
Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) is about
achieving optimal training, competition and recovery throughout an athlete’s
career, particularly in relation to the important growth and development years
of young people. If a long term approach to training is not adopted there is
likely to be a plateau in performance, when growth and development slows
significantly. Which for some swimmers may result in their performances getting
worse. At this point the short-term training approach cannot be reversed. This
often leads to drop out before a swimmer has achieved close to their potential.
Reasons For LTAD
There are five clear reasons for introducing a long term athlete development approach:
• To establish a clear swimmer development pathway.
• To identify gaps in the current swimmer development pathway.
• To realign and integrate the programmes for developing swimmers and swimming in Britain.
• To provide a planning tool, based on scientific research, for coaches and administrators.
• To guide planning for optimal performance.
It is anticipated that the principles of LTAD will be used to review
existing swimming initiatives led by the governing body and inform any future
initiatives. It is hoped that all swimming providers will use LTAD in a similar
way. This will enable the swimming community to pull in one direction towards
achieving Swimming’s goals and targets.
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