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Flyers Track Team includes biographies of my Squad, Current training programs, Blue Mountains images and more.

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The Complete Book of Running for Women : Everything You Need to Know About Training, Nutrition, Injury Prevention, Motivation, Racing and Much, + more by Claire Kowalchik(Introduction)

 

 

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The Triathlete's Training Bible : A Complete Training Guide for the Competitive Multisport Athlete by Joe Friel

Coaching Resource for Developing Athletes
How to develop a young star athlete into an Adult superstar.
(Dedicated to all the budding Cathy Freemans and Matt Shirvingtons out there!)

There are many very talented young athletes out there. Some are capable of incredible performances. eg Girls age 9 that can run 14.0s for 100m, Boys age 9 that can run 2:25 in the 800m, Girls age 11 that can 61s for 400m. etc. Some of these athletes are early developers and have an advantage. Some have very rare talents that could indicate huge potential.

Not all successful adult athletes however were talented as youngsters. Their talent appeared late eg a Boy that has gone from being an ordinary 2:15 800m athlete at age 14 to being capable of 1:53 just 18months later.

A good percentage of adult stars (many female) were however showing talent and importantly a love of the sport from an early age. eg Cathy Freeman, Marion Jones, Tegla Loroupe, Catherine Merry .

It is worth considering some of the characteristics/qualities that an Elite Senior Athlete will need:

1. Love of the Sport - love of the training process, a large friendship group within the sport, supportive family, enjoyment of competition.
2. to be able to have a body that can withstand the appropriate training and competition stresses. They will need to be biomechanically resilient and will need the psychology to prevent/recognize/treat/rehabilitate injuries.
3. Technical superiority - they will need this to be able to perform well and also to prevent injuries.
4. Good Balance in their life - Training/Employment/Education/Family/ etc
5. General and Specific Conditioning appropriate to the needs of their event. It would have taken Marion Jones many years to develop a body with the musculature to be capable of running 100m in 10.76s.
   

Young athletes need to have heaps of variety in their training. Many good ideas are the suggested in the pdf file below which was presented at the ATFCA National Congress in 2001.

The physical value of variety is that it creates development in many different areas. The psychological value of variety is that it is much more interesting for the athlete to complete training that is never routine. This is especially valuable in young athletes. Variety means there is also plenty of opportunity for assessment and competition. My younger athletes love competing against their PBs and each other in anything eg Standing Triple Jump, Standing Long Jump etc.

Many young athletes are in situations where participating in the sport is seen as going in lots of "events" during a given competition day or night. I believe this is a common mistake that will lead to a compromize of technical development and is a situation where there is unnecessary risk of injury.

I believe young athletes need to compete in a variety of settings where they are matched on a performance basis not on age. Competing rapidly gets boring when the competitor is far to strong for the opposition. Super talented young athletes often can get sick of the sport or be embarassed into becoming very lazy in their participation by not being matched close enough in competition. In Sydney there are some competitions that are open to everyone and athletes compete in races of similar ability regardless of being boys, girls, veterans,disabled. I think this is ideal and helps young athletes keep their performances in perspective. I think it is imperative that we would not expect kids to compete more than adults.

The Psychological Development of a Champion is something that is not often discussed. I believe athletes need to develop these abilities by living with an attitude of being willing and able to grow from whatever happens to them. Nearly all champions have grown out of tragedy of some kind in their background. Young athletes need to gradually be guided in a way that nurtures their mental toughness. Some athletes love the sport when all is going well but the moment they have a run of bad races they feel like quitting and many actually do quit instead of growing from the challenge. The skills of looking at life with a positive attitude are things that are taught by the combination of wise guidance from family and from good coaching. It is often these things that an athlete will take away from the sport that will be beneficial in every other area of their life.

Young athletes need to be trained to steadily develop their bodies so they are conditioned to have the physical abilities that are required for the event. At the same time they need to be steadily developing skills and optimizing their technical model for their event. (Getting the body and then learning how to use it) Learning tactics by being taught by wise people and also importantly by learning from their mistakes. Improving technique is commonly compromized in favor of people allowing the desire to improve at any cost to cloud the issue of good planning.

Common mistakes that people make with Talented Young athletes are that they train the athletes to improve their performances and do not develop a big enough variety of areas and maintain enough fun.

Fictitious Examples
eg (1)a Talented Cross Country runner just does steady runs and races and does no postural work,strength training,sprinting, hill training etc. The athlete improves heaps by doing 5 x 20min runs a week and a race.... but that is all that is done.....the athlete does more as they get older and improves....but has lots of accumulated technical bad habit and poor speed development as an older junior or Senior.

eg(2) a Sprinter does 2 Track sessions a week where they do 6 x max starts and 6 x maximum effort 40m sprints then they go home and they race twice a week. They play netball also. The problem is also lack of variety, of lack of endurance training and many other things. If the athlete is talented they may win a National Title off this training but if this is all that is done they will be missing out on many other areas of development. Some people will say that the rest can come later , but the problem is that this repetitive training is likely to be training in bad habits that will have to be fixed later.

eg (3) a Talented 400m runner does no training at all just races on Friday night and plays soccer on Wednesday and Sunday. Basketball at school. This regime stays the same from age 11-16.
The athlete performs well but has various injuries to knees and hamstrings at about age 15. At age 16 they run 47.8s and have 11.20 speed but have a very rear side mechanics running action with an extreme bum out position and are assessed with very poor core stability. Also they are very tight and run on their toes with a large forward lean. ......All of this may have been avoided with some good simple technical training from age 11 when they started athletics and a steady development of running specific conditioning. Now because of the lack of this work the coach will need to spend 3 years playing catch up with core strength work. They will also have the more difficult task of getting the athlete to "un-learn" bad technical habits and replace them with better ones. The athlete ofcourse will want to retain or improve on their 47.8 throughout this process!

I have recently released an E-book.

Index

The New Biomechanics of Sprinting

Sprinting & the Nervous system

Strength Development

Power Development

Endurance Development

Improvement of Technique

Training Session Ideas

Recommended Resources

More information is HERE

Body Control: Using Techniques Developed by Joseph H. Pilates
by Lynne Robinson, Joseph Pilates, Gordon Thomson

If you've ever wondered how ballet dancers get that graceful, calm-looking, perfectly postured stance, one of the reasons is a series of exercises named for the late trainer Joseph H. Pilates. Long a staple of dance studios, his techniques are becoming a staple in gyms as well. Body Control provides an excellent introduction to the Pilates method and easy-to-follow instructions for doing them at home, without the need for special machinery that instructors often use. The book describes 40 different exercises and explains how to relax and breathe correctly while doing them. Even more important, it explains what you may be doing wrong (since some of the exercises could worsen a painful condition if done incorrectly). The very clear illustrations, which mix photographs with line drawings, will allow most people to get the hang of it right away. Because it works muscles you may not ordinarily use that much, these exercises take more effort than you might think. And while they don't promise huge muscles, adherents say the method helps them stand up straighter and move more easily, without pain. Nothing can turn an ordinary person into a ballet star, but these exercises could make you almost as graceful as one.