[Sport] Developing a youth athlete development roadmap - Sportsmith

[Aronus]

High performance sport plays an increasingly important role in our world and culture. As a result, an assortment of stakeholders is making large financial investments and devising sophisticated strategic approaches to develop athletes worldwide. One consequence has been the systematic approach to talent identification and youth athlete development.

Young athletes are entering formal training and competition environments at increasingly younger ages. One example of a high-performance athlete development program is the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP), a long-term strategy within English football aimed at developing more and better homegrown players. Within such youth training environments, strength & conditioning has become a recognised and important discipline to enhance athleticism and help reduce the risk of injury. However, working with youth athletes – and I use the term “youth” to include both childhood and adolescence – requires S&C coaches to possess specialist knowledge, a variety of interpersonal skills and a passion for development as opposed to performance.

“Children are not mini adults” remains the youth development mantra. But in order to facilitate development safely and effectively we need to better understand the holistic considerations associated with training youth po[CENSORED]tions. The aim of this article is to highlight a broad range of those factors for those who are already working with or have ambitions of working with youth po[CENSORED]tions, using the youth athlete development roadmap I have constructed based on the literature and my experiences.

 

Developing a youth athlete development roadmap - Sportsmith