Long Term Athlete Development: How Smooth is Transiting from one Phase to Another?

Oleksandr Krasilshchikov, PhD, Professor

Exercise & Sports Science Programme

School of Health Sciences, USM;

High Performance Sports Consultant

ELMS Sports Foundation

Long Term Athletic Development Patterns have been explained, discussed and debated for many years first among the coaches, shared later with sports scientists who eventually have been publishing papers and book chapters related to the topic (Harre, 1971; Platonov, 1984; Singh, 1991; Bompa, 1994).

The logic of the issue never radically changed in time, although certain modifications and new ideas have emerged from from one author to another (Balyi, 2005). It typically revolves around certain stages or phases of training which are usually defined as Foundational/Initiation training, followed by General/Basic training before becoming Specialized or Advanced training and eventually getting transformed into High Performance or Masters’ training. Each phase is typically associated with certain age of the athletes (but surprisingly not always with their sport of specialization, whereby the age of recruitment differs significantly) and with certain time allotted to each phase of long term training.

Some authors describe the contents of training, expressing it in training hours and also in percentage of training time dedicated to major training factors, i.e. physical, technical, tactical, theoretical and psychological with some (Krasilshchikov, 2014) also quoting integral training as one of the major factors and distinguishing training loads volume from competitive load volumes (Platonov, 1984). All of them unanimously support smooth transition from phase to phase and sort of smooth and steady progression from one phase to another. Practical training and coaching shows however completely the opposite.

Surprisingly, none of the researchers in the field of Training Methodology paid any attention to what happens while transiting from one age group to another in terms of training and competing adjustments. No one ever raised a research question on what happens for instance while progressing from U-14 age group to U-17 age group in terms of training loads, weight categories, strength and conditioning, nutrition and eventually performance structure. More importantly: how do those adjustments reflect on within the training phase load distribution and dynamics and also on between the training phases links and associations.