LTAD??

I recently went to a Cycling South Africa coaching seminar on LTAD (long term athlete development) hosted by Istvan Balyi. (http://www.aball-ypi.com/balyi.htm ).

The seminar and discussions was pretty cool and the whole coaching commission learnt quite a lot about long term athlete development, which I believe is where we (South Africa) is lagging. Athletes are pushed to perform at very young age from parents, teachers, coaches and even the federations, thus causing the athletes to burn out before they actually reach peak condition in their sporting career and eventually just fade away.

South Africa is in the process of putting together a LTAD program for most of the sports which will focus on the development of athletes from an early age and carry them thru to Olympic level. Cycling in South Africa especially is in a good state, we have a good base to start from with a lot of passionate cyclists supporting the cycling community; if we can only separate the base and build towards National, International and Olympic level, we will develop world class athletes. The cycling base, which are the riders riding for fun or called “funriders” will take of the base itself.

Let’s have a quick look at the different stages of LTAD:

Stage 1: Active start- ages from 0-6

Stage 2: FUNdamentals- 6-8 (males) and 6-9 (females)

Stage 3: Learn to Train- 8-11 (males) and 9-12 (females)

Stage 4: Train to Train- 12-16 (males) and 11-15 (females)

Stage 5: Train to Compete- 16-23+- (males) and 15-22+-(females)

Stage 6: Train to win- 223+- (males) and 22+- (females)

Stage 7: Active for life- any age

I will write more about the different stages and what it consists of later in the week.