By Dave Crampton, Swimming World contributor
Posted on http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/long-term-athlete-development-not-winning-key-to-age-group-training/
Long term athlete development (LTAD) is a widely accepted concept
within high performance sport on how to best train and develop junior
athletes appropriately for elite sport competition.
Done well, it is focused on athletes, driven by coaches and supported by parents, administrators and sports organizations.
However it is misunderstood by many.
Top swimming coach Wayne Goldsmith, who was in New
Zealand conducting workshops for coaches and parents last month,
believes sports people are motivated too much by recognition, rather
than long term achievement through hard work.
He says the job of a coach is to create an environment where an
athlete can realize their dreams so that an athlete can give ‘everything
they are capable of giving’.
Goldsmith, who has had more than 25 years of experience working with
some of the world’s best swimmer and coaches, says a LTAD approach is
more about adopting a strategic athlete-centered approach to swimming
development, as opposed to working within a system.
“The essential ingredient is uniqueness and individual difference,” he says. “[Top swimmers] are not products of a system.”
“I’ve never seen a fool-proof system.”
Most recently the debate has become an issue of coaches choosing
winning or development, as if they are mutually exclusive. Coaches who
develop swimmers the right way don’t have to choose either or because
winning and development go hand in hand.
Dr. Craig Harrison, the director of athlete
development at AUT Millennium, a world class environment in New Zealand
for high performance sports training, says in terms of importance, LTAD
is ‘everything’, with a focus on process leading to achievement, as
opposed to one on outcomes.
“We are prioritizing outcome… and getting a little bit lost. Winning
is definitely over-prioritized at the young ages,” he says.
He says that achievement is more about ‘getting better’.
“That drives people long term.”
But getting better is a process. A long term approach is not about
getting age group and youth swimmers racing as quickly as possible as
young as possible. Rather it is a focus on correct training, competition
and recovery throughout their career, paying attention to their growth
and development years.
While coaches want their age group and youth swimmers racing as
quickly as possible, this will benefit swimmers only with talent and
commitment while adhering to LTAD principles.
While maximizing sporting talent is an important goal of long-term
athletic development, Goldsmith warns that physical talent is
over-rated.
The only thing that physical talent does is get you recognized,” he
says. “Hard work beats talent until the talent decides to work.”
Performance cannot be accurately assessed by times and results
achieved, but by determining how closely a swimmer follows their race
plan and how close they have gone to achieving their potential.
To do this requires what Goldsmith calls ‘performance practice’ – a form of deliberate practice.
“‘Performance practice makes perfect – it’s the way that you do it not what you do,” he says.
It is this deliberate performance practice that grounds the learning process, not short-term outcomes.
But even if a race plan is followed perfectly, a swimmer’s body is
not always capable of producing personal bests. A personal best is a
result, it is not a process. Too high an emphasis can be placed on the
achievement of personal bests.
The only thing swimmers are in control of in producing their best possible result is getting the process correct.
“Many don’t look at the next step,” Dr. Harrison says.
Focussing on the process rather than the result will make the sport
more enjoyable for all parties, while also being more likely to produce
positive competitive results over the long term.
The LTAD model has highlighted the importance of considering
individual variations in biological maturation instead of chronological
age when programming for youth.
There is conflict in that the competitive environment seeks and
rewards rapid development, whereas a long term athlete development
process attempts to ‘delay’ high performance long enough for all
athletes to arrive at the same point simultaneously.
If a long term approach to training is not adopted, there is likely
to be a plateau in performance when growth and development slow
significantly, which may affect some swimmers performances.
At this point the short term training approach cannot be reversed,
Dr. Harrison says, and swimmers often drop out before achieving close to
their potential.
“They`ll plateau and get to the point where they disengage as they
are not winning as they are not reaching the outcome goals they have
set.”
