Long Term Athlete Development Model

I first started playing football at the age of 8, beginning with recreational activities at my primary school and then progressing to girl’s grass roots teams. At this time, I began competing in occasional matches against other local schools. At this point, the key focus of training was ‘FUNdamentals’ according the Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) model. This stage emphasised developing key movement skills, such as agility, balance, passing, kicking. etc, by using fun drills in a variety of sports. I then began playing at Cherry Hinton Lions FC a year later in the S-Tech Cambridge Girls Country League. According to Balyi et al (2013), I would now be entering the ‘Learn to Train’ stage where time would be spent developing fundamental sports skills in training sessions. There was a large focus on training with a 70:30 ratio of training to competition. This stage also tends to narrow down on 3 sports, which for me tended to be football, netball and swimming to avoid early specialisation. …show more content…
The main objective of this stage was to development my physical capacities in various components of fitness, such as speed, cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance, agility, reaction times. etc. This was aided by continuing participation across a variety of sports, although at this point I had narrowed down to football as my main sport. Where I had been previously been involved in various positions for football from striker to goalkeeper, by the age of 11, I began to settle into the role of centre back. At this stage, I began to develop routines, learn set plays, and get a greater understanding of the rules and increased my participation in competition as the ratio increased to 60:40 for training to competition (Balyi et al -