Long Term Athletic Development (LTAD)
There are two ways in which young swimmers can improve their performance:
- Training;
- Growth and development.
There are five clear reasons for introducing a long term athlete development approach:
- To establish a clear swimmer development pathway;
- To identify gaps in the current swimmer development pathway;
- To realign and integrate the programmes for developing swimmers and swimming in Britain;
- To provide a planning tool, based on scientific research, for coaches and administrators;
- To guide planning for optimal performance.
"Right now we have too many clubs in Great Britain offering too little training time and in most cases too much competition. This leaves many athletes in a twighlight zone of training less than 14 hours a week, hoping for international results and expecting overseas tours and camps and national level success.
For an athlete training 8 hours a week the benefits are social, fun, participation, team building and health benefits.
For those athletes wishing for an international career and who are serious about optimum performance at the national level then swimming in a programme with a high performance objective of 18-25 hours is approximately what it will take to achieve these objectives. However, in most countries and in most clubs, the vast majority of athletes train between 8 and 14 hours per week.
Learn more about LTAD on the links below and use the download as a quick reference.
LTAD Framework
- Stage 1 - FUNdamental - basic movement literacy;
- Stage 2 - SwimSkills - building technique;
- Stage 3 - Training to train - building the engine;
- Stage 4 - Training to compete - optimising the engine;
- Stage 5 - Training to win - maximising the engine.
Downloads: