Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD)
Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) is a developmental framework designed to guide athletes from childhood through adulthood, promoting their maximum potential in sports. Unlike traditional models that prioritize early competition and winning, LTAD emphasizes the gradual acquisition of fundamental skills in the early years, postponing competitive participation until later adolescence. This approach includes five key stages: FUNdamental, Training to Train, Training to Compete, Training to Win, and Retirement/Retraining. Each stage is tailored to the athlete's developmental age, ensuring a comprehensive focus on skill development, physical literacy, and lifelong engagement in sports.
The LTAD model has gained traction globally, particularly in response to rising concerns about childhood obesity and inactivity, as it encourages inclusive participation across varying abilities. However, while some principles of LTAD, such as the importance of early skill development, are supported by research, the model faces scrutiny regarding the scientific validity of certain concepts, like the 10,000-hour rule for achieving elite status in sports. Challenges remain in its implementation, particularly in reconciling the model with a competitive sports culture, necessitating an ongoing evolution of the LTAD framework to better meet the needs of diverse athletes.
On this Page
Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD)
Long Term Athlete Development (LATD) is a system applied to athletes from a young age and continued through adulthood in order to help athletes achieve their maximum potential. Unlike traditional athlete development, which places an emphasis on competing and winning, the LATD approach focuses on training and practice of fundamental skills in the early stages of a child’s career while delaying competitive sporting until the later stages of adolescence. LATD is a long-term commitment to cultivate elite athletes through a well-structured program of training, competition, and recovery over several years. There has been widespread adoption and application of LATD across the globe by national sporting organizations.
Because of worries over the prevalence of childhood obesity and physical inactivity among young people, the LATD model has attracted considerable interest. This is in part due to its inclusive approach, which allows for the long-term participation of persons of differing abilities. LTAD is geared toward increasing levels of physical activity, developing physical literacy as well as improving sport performance. However, despite increasing implementation of LATD there remain questions about the scientific evidence for its efficacy.
Brief History
As early as the 1950s, athlete development systems have been based strictly on age; categorizing participants as child juvenile, junior, and adult. The developmental pathway was divided into four successive stages: community sport, club, state/province, and national. According to this model, athletes begin at the community level, and at each stage poor performers are eliminated until only the top athletes progress to the national level to be a professional athlete.
In 1989, Sanderson presented a new athlete development model in an article titled "Growth and Development Consideration for the Design of Training Plans for Young Athletes." Sanderson’s model was ground-breaking in that it was the first to account for the developmental age of young athletes and not just their chronological age.
In 1995, Istvan Balyi and Richard Way introduced LATD as a new model of athlete development aimed at improving sports programs in a way that allowed all participants, not just the top performers, to achieve their full potential. This continually evolving development model initially comprised of four stages and incorporated the principles of coaching science, human growth, development, and psychology.
Overview
Under the LATD model, success is attained through a focus on training effectively over the long-term rather than on winning in the short-term. The model is essentially made up of five career-long stages designed to enhance general athletic skills and then develop specialized sport-specific competencies: FUNdamental stage, Training to Train, Training to Compete, Training to Win and Retirement/Retraining. Athletes progress from one stage to the next based on their developmental age and not strictly according to their chronological age.
During the FUNdamental phase, which takes place between the ages of six and ten, athletes are encouraged to participate and have fun while also developing their physical abilities and core technical skills, while at the same time learning basic rules and sports ethics. The athletes learn how to run, jump, and throw, through participation in a wide range of sports and exercises.
The Training to Train phase occurs between the ages of ten and fourteen. During this period, athletes are taught how to train productively and they are also introduced to the technical and tactical skills of their particular sport. Additional elements such as warming up, hydration, nutrition, and mental preparation are also taught. Athletes also engage in some competition. The ratio of competition to training at this stage is typically 75:25. This however varies according to the sport and individual need.
In the Training to Compete phase, from age thirteen to fourteen, athletes train to compete. At this stage the ratio of training and competing is adjusted to 50:50. Half the training time is dedicated to the development of technical abilities, tactical skills, and fitness. The other half is spent on participating in competitions and on competition-specific training. Having mastered basic and sport-specific skills, the athletes now apply them to competitive situations during training. At this stage more attention is also given to each individual athlete’s specific needs, with greater personalization of programs for fitness, recovery, physiological preparation, and technical development.
In the Training to Win phase athletes train to reach their optimal performance level at major competitions. The training increases markedly in intensity and volume, and 75 percent of the training is devoted to competition-specific training while 25 percent is general training. In order to prevent exhaustion and injury, frequent breaks are taken.
The final stage of LATD comes after an athlete has retired completely from competitive sport. This is the period in which former athletes maintain lifelong physical activity and take up sporting roles such as coaching, officiating, media, and sports administration. Limited studies have been carried out to test the concepts of the LATD, although there is scientific backing for some of the principles underlying the model with regards to the development of physical literacy and fundamental motor skills in early childhood. However, there is still a lack of experimental evidence for some elements of LTAD, such as the 10,000-hour principle (the number of hours of training it supposedly takes to become an elite athlete).
Other scientific studies have also questioned the methods used in LATD: The intensive training in the Training to Train phase has been found to negatively impact the development of good technique in some sports and can also be detrimental to motivation. There is also no evidence supporting existence of "windows of opportunity," which the creators of LTAD believe must be exploited for young athletes to reach their full potential.
There are a number of limitations and challenges associated with LATD. One concern is that it can become overly prescriptive when applied too strictly by coaches, leading them to overlook young athletes who do not adapt well to the model. LATD is also at odds with the current standing of sports in society, which revolves around competition. A shift in sports culture will need to occur for LATD to be broadly accepted and successful. LATD remains a work in progress (a fact acknowledged by its architects) and, as more evidence is gathered from sporting organizations that have adopted it, refinement of the system is likely to occur.
Bibliography
Balyi, Istvan, Richard Way, and Colin Higgs. Long Term Athlete Development. Human Kinetics, 2013.
Barr, Matthew J., et al. "Long-Term Training-Induced Changes in Sprinting Speed and Sprint Momentum in Elite Rugby Union Players." Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 28.10 (2014): 2724–2731. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Jan. 2016.
Cobley, Stephen, et al. "Variable and Changing Trajectories in Youth Athlete Development: Further Verification in Advocating a Long-term Inclusive Tracking Approach." Journal of Strengh & Conditioning Research 28.7 (2014): 1959–1970.
Eime, Rochelle M., et al. "Participation in Modified Sports Programs: A Longitudinal Study of Children’s Transition to Club Sport Competition." BMC Public Health 15.1 (2015): 649–655. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Jan. 2016.
Ford, Paul, et al. "The Long-Term Athlete Development Model: Physiological Evidence and Application." Journal of Sports Sciences 29.4 (2011): 389–402.
Lachance, A. "The Implementation of LTAD as a Template to Improve Youth Participation in Physical Activity and Sport. Introducing Change in a Sport Organization." Science & Sports 29.(2014): S37–S38. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Jan. 2016.
Lloyd, Rhodri S., et al. "Long-Term Athletic Development—Part 1: A Pathway for All Youth." Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 29.5 (2015): 1439–1450. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Jan. 2016.
Lloyd, Rhodri S., et al. "Long-Term Athletic Development, Part 2: Barriers to Success and Potential Solutions." Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 29.5 (2015): 1451–1464. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Jan. 2016.
Neal, Timothy, et al. "Update to NCAA Bylaw Raises Concerns about Impact on Student-Athletes' Mental Health." College Athletics & the Law 12.5 (2015): 1–5. Education Research Complete. Web. 9 Jan. 2016.