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Alex Gardiner |
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Long-Term Athlete Development -
The foundation of performance and personal
excellence
Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD), acknowledged as the basis for
sport success in the former Eastern Bloc system, has finally achieved
its proper place in Canadian sport. As an athletics coach beginning my
career in the late 1970s, I was exposed first hand to LTAD thinking and
program design through the leadership of Gerard Mach, still
acknowledged as the man who revolutionized track and field in Canada.
Mach was the complete package—high performance athlete, coach and sport
scientist—who relentlessly pursued a better understanding of training
and performance, always against the canvas of LTAD. For those of us
fortunate enough to have worked with Coach Mach, this was a very
practical, stimulating and always challenging approach.
Today, through the exceptional work and leadership of Istvan Balyi and
the coaches he has worked and learned with throughout the world,
including many brilliant Canadian coaches, we have a model for athlete
development that can serve all sport. The template guides the
application of training methodology throughout the athlete’s career.
Fortunately, this model is before us now to benefit from, whereas in
the not too distant past many of us had to piece together our own
design via foreign publications, seminars, conversations with
colleagues and sport experts, and the like—not always a sound or
professional approach.
Even more significant, however, is that the LTAD model will help
reshape coaches and coaching by challenging our thinking. Every
coaching decision we make will be more completely informed by a sound
model. We will make better decisions based on current and leading
research in the areas of growth and development, learning, correct
application of general and specific training, and emotional and social
development. LTAD will encourage coaches to think more clearly and to
think more deeply. The high performance coach will be better prepared
and over time will become a “coach-scientist”, where the art and
science of coaching merge to drive the highest levels of performance.
The community and club coach will also have a map to follow allowing
him or her to be more effective and efficient. Most importantly, we
will have a common language for sport that can enhance dialogue and
discovery within and across disciplines. Coaches, sport scientists and
medical practitioners will all have a similar basis for query,
discussion, innovation and application.
I am excited about where this will lead us. Coupled with the
anticipated and welcome changes in the NCCP program, Canadian athletes
will be supported by coaches who will be at the front of the line in
coaching education. Andy Higgins, certainly one of our most respected,
provocative and curious master coaches, has asked the next big
question: “Where’s our Long-Term Coach Development
model?”
Alex Gardiner is
Director,
International Performance, at the Canadian Olympic Committee. He is a
certified Level 5 coach, a charter member of Coaches of Canada and the
former Chief Technical Officer of Athletics Canada.
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COACHES OF CANADA
