SDI Sport Development International SDI
The Sport Training Optimization Experts
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SDI Sport Development International SDI |
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The Sport Training Optimization Experts |
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Youth
Multilateral Sport
Development: The Child & Junior Athlete Path to Success |
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Multilateral Sport Development: Initiation Development Phase At 6 to 10 years of age, young athletes are mainly action oriented. Their attention span is very short and long explanation, discussion are futile. Coaches must keep the briefings short, emphasize doing over listening, but meanwhile be sharp in correcting motor skills so that the children practice the correct form of exercises right away. It is very easy to develop bad habits in the early stages and spend years thereafter to correct them. Show them the correct form and emphasize it from day one! Here are some guidelines we used to integrate our programs. These are progressively developed and periodized through the developmental stages. Participation should take place through a variety of exercises, drills, relays, games, aimed principally at having fun. Competition spirit and winning should not be emphasized to create a stress-free learning environment. Children are prone to positive reinforcement and should be encouraged constantly in their practice. Encourage the young athletes to improve their own performances, use "competition spirit" only in team relay drills. Young children have a very poor anaerobic tolerance and are building their cardio-respiratory system. Most aerobic activities at low intensity are ok for this age group, but not repetitive fast running. Ample active recovery periods must be provided. Children can't stay still... Very low intensity exercises can be use as rest periods. The designed program will emphasize motor-skills development through running, jumping, swimming, dancing, throwing, catching, rolling, balancing. Program will emphasize circuit training with fun activities and divide equally in sessions skill development and game time. Sessions should be kept short (50 minutes to an hour) with adequate volume of activities at low intensity. When using games or specific sport activities such as basket-ball, handball, soccer, or using hurdles, throwing medicine balls or heavy balls, the environment should be adapted to the size and capacities of these young athletes. Therefore, use modified, resized equipment at will: smaller balls, lower basket hoops, smaller goals, shorter fields, lighter medicine balls etc... It also is important to keep in mind that young athletes will not voluntarily abide by any games' rules until around 12 or 13 years of age. So rules should also be simplified and adapted at this stage to keep games fluid, fun and out of strict competition context. Children should be encouraged to participate in as many sports as possible. It is also important to note that sex differences are irrelevant for this age group and mixed boys and girls activities should be the norm. Only at puberty and post-puberty times will it be necessary to dissociate boys and girls training and development due to future physiological changes. The aim of this multilateral approach is to optimize the coordination development of the children. The Initiation Development Phase is a "rapid gain phase" during which the young athletes will fast develop simple and complex motor skills which will be of utmost importance for the later development phases. Towards the end of this phase, coaches or parents should notice an important improvement in general coordination, better timing of the actions and a drastic improvement in reaction time, mostly due to a better neuro-muscular adaptation. The young athletes will then smoothly drift towards the Athletic Development Phase... For any inquiries, please contact us at: info@sportdevelopmentinternational.com
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Sport Development International, 2007, 2008 |
