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Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) - from Child to Champion

7D Athletics is charting the path for the long-term athlete development of exceptional athletes. By using scientifically established principles of growth and maturation in youth to map training to optimal windows of trainability, we allow our athletes to elevate their maximum athletic potential.

Starting as a child, the appropriate phases of athletic instruction leads to more and more advanced training during their development. The physical fundamentals are always present in the training, but over time we shift the focus slightly towards physical robustness and sport-specific skills needed to perform in their chosen sport.

 

Long-term athletic development is a strategy to develop the entire person and allow athletic talent to root and thrive over a career.
— Carl Valle

What is Long-Term Athletic Development?

Children are not ‘miniature adults’. A range of physiological and psychosocial differences occur across the development from a child to a young adult heading to college. Both children and adolescents will experience fluctuations in developmental rates of growth and physical fitness, and will also show variations in degrees of psychosocial and biological maturation. These fluctuations in development will impact on the way a child or adolescent responds to training, while also affecting the relative risk of injury. The best training programs are designed on an individual basis wherever possible using these differences to optimize the training effect. This is particularly important for youth due to the highly individualized nature of growth and development. While training prescription may vary, one thing that is certain is that youth of all ages and abilities should be encouraged to develop physical fitness from early childhood.

 
 

The quest of developing ‘athleticism’ should be a primary objective for all children.

During the childhood years, children should be encouraged to adopt a sampling approach to development and should avoid specializing in year-round training in a single sport. This is due to emerging concerns surrounding early sport specialization and the associated increased risk of injury, potential ‘blunting’ of motor skills, increased risk of dropout from sport, and the non-guaranteed achievement of elite level performance. It is therefore beneficial to implement effective training strategies into programming to improve health, well-being, and growth, in addition to the opportunity to maximize the athletic potential of each individual. We allow these young aspiring athletes the chance to avoid being underdeveloped for the demands of their sport. Each individual is taken through a long-term athlete development program via appropriate training principals and methods, ensuring that progress is monitored, and education is paramount to achieving their goals.

 

Strength and conditioning support offers them the chance to develop attributes needed to maximise their sporting potential:

  • Strength qualities

  • Speed

  • Change of direction/agility

  • Ongoing stability and mobility

  • Co-ordination and rhythm

  • Injury prevention/reduction

We work with 6-18yr olds, both on an individual basis and in a team setting, and our focus is to improve and optimize the key areas of athleticism, as we notice time and time again that many young athletes are over-trained by excessive sport specialization and underdeveloped through lack of physical literacy and competency. As these young athletes make the jump from elementary to middle school we look to further their athletic progression with an emphasis on training to compete.

While all youth should follow a multidimensional training program, we first work to develop fundamental motor skills and foundational muscular strength, using integrated neuromuscular training (e.g. motor skills, strength training, plyometrics, speed and agility training).

Developing a range of motor skills and muscular strength qualities enable youth to succeed in a variety of environments, but also be sufficiently robust to withstand the physical demands of sports. Importantly, while the development of athleticism is important in order to improve physical fitness, it is also crucial to reduce the relative risk of injury.

We systematically progress and individualize training programs for our youth athletes, and where possible use relevant monitoring and assessment tools to optimize the development of physical fitness. Specifically, growth rates, measures of physical performance and psychosocial well-being are tracked over time using the most valid and reliable techniques available. Together these strategies synergize to allow each individual to achieve their highest level of athletic potential.

 
 
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