Athlete Development - The Process

During the mid-20 century, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries had well developed sport schools whose main aim was to identify, select and train young athletes to succeed at the regional, national and international level. Athletes entered these schools at a young age – usually between 6 to 9 years of age.  During this period, the young athlete was exposed to wide variety of skills and sporting activities.  As the child developed and began to display athletic potential and personal interest in a particular sport, they were nurtured along the path of athletics.  Selection, assessment and evaluation were a continual process, with training priority given to those athletes who displayed the most potential in the chosen sport.  As the athlete increased in chronological age, athletic skill was developed and a greater refinement of direction and level of training for the particular sport occurred.  This was the development process was the first step in the ‘Process of Achieving Sports Mastery (PASM),’ or performance at the highest level.

The athletic development curriculum at these school was schools was based on the research of  A. Novikov and N.G. Ozolin on the concurrent system of long-term training. During the first few years, all children performed a variety of sports such as soccer, running, skating, gymnastics, rowing, track and field, and team sports.  This period of multilateral development was known as general physical preparation (GPP).  The main goal of GPP was to order develop functional work capacities and a wide variety of motor skills that would serve as a base for increased athletic development and performance at the higher levels. During this time, sport-specific training was limited, and constituted only 5-10% of the training load.  There was also a considerable amount of the time during the training directed to educating the athlete on sport-specific basics and fundamental techniques.

Specialized physical preparation (SPP) programs began between 15 –17 years, once children were selected for a particular sport.  SPP included training that was aimed at developing physical, technical, tactical and psychological adaptations that would be necessary to succeed in the given sport.  During this period, the training was more structured and exercises were chosen were specifically prepare the athlete to succeed in the sport of choice.  As the athlete progressed in training age, GPP was not totally omitted from the training program.  GPP was kept in the program to some degree to help build and maintain strength and physical work capacity, as well as providing a break from the specific training of the particular sport. However, as the training of the athlete advanced, the ratio between GPP (multilateral development) and SPP (specialized training) decreased.  When the athlete first began the athletic development process, GPP constituted roughly 60% of the total training activities, while 40% was dedicated to sport-specific education and activities.  As the athlete’s work capacity grew and the training process progressed, the proportion of SPP in the program increased, while the proportion of GPP included decreased. This trend gradually increased as the athlete progressed towards high performance level – sports mastery.  GPP was never totally eliminated, and even at the highest levels GPP constitutes approximately 20% of the total training volume, while SPP comprised the main body (80%).

Talent

A fairly popular discussion on the interwebz of late revolves around the idea of talent, or lack there of, and US Weightlifting. 

The US model of talent identification and development might be best described as a talent funnel. In this case, large numbers of athletes are encouraged to participate in a variety of sports, and via the process of natural selection, those individuals with the innate characteristics to succeed or with the innate characteristics needed for success in that particular sport, become better, gain reinforcement, are enrolled in programs with increasing quality of coaching and higher levels of competition. 

Over time, these are the athletes who develop to the highest, and hopefully, internationally competitive level.  Think of this as the youth to high school to college to the professional level seen in most team sports.  In many individual sports, such as weightlifting, the funnel is not as defined due to lack of participants at the wide end and lack of professional opportunities at the concentrated end. 

It is thought that if the number of participants (or talent pool) was to increase, the performance at the concentrated end would improve. The talent pool argument is something I have debated for a long time and something that I am not sure there is an easy answer for or against either way. A greater number of competitors could dramatically improve results and our worldwide standing, but I do not think it is the final answer. 

Marathons have 10s of thousands of participants every single weekend in this country, more than any other country. Currently, our best American marathon competitor Ryan Hall is ranked around 10th in the world. Since the mid-1970s we have had a greatest number of competitive distance runners of any country yet our worldwide standing has remained stagnant. Same argument for soccer; it has been one of the top youth participant sports in the country for at least 25 years. It is a high school varsity sport and numerous college offer athletic scholarships. Our worldwide standing has not improved much in the past 40 years, and for the past 20, it has been said we are on the verge of breaking into the top but it has yet to happen. We could also throw the American past time of baseball into the argument. It is "our" sport but we have lost our status to many of the Latin American countries. 

In all of these sports (Marathon, Soccer, Baseball), countries with less than half our population and a 1/3 of our resources routinely kick our butts in international competition. 

Numbers will definitely, definitely help us improve from the high 20s where we currently reside, but to get in the top 5 and eventually on the medal platform, we need more than just more average lifters.  There needs to be a systematic plan for the development of talent if and when it arrives at in the sport.  Additional thoughts will come in a future post regarding the development of talent specific to weightlifting in the US.