Last week, as we set out for the mandatory 2.5 hour Little League skills assessment in the torrential rain, it occurred to us that the game had changed and nobody warned us. By which we mean that sometime around age 8, sport seems to get a little more serious.
So we talked to Jennifer Hood, a Long Term Athletic Development (LTAD) specialist and owner of Jump! Gymnastics to find out what’s developmentally appropriate for 8 -12 year olds.
Q. What is Long Term Athletic Development (LTAD)?
A. LTAD is a framework for athletic development that helps people reach their personal potential based on activities suited to each developmental stage, starting with the building blocks of physical literacy. Interestingly, LTAD works for both playground or podium meaning it has been identified as the best model to produce elite performers and also to help all children grow into healthy, active adults. It has been adopted by Federal, Provincial and Territorial Ministers of Sport as the framework for sport development in Canada, and is used by many amateur sporting associations.
Q. What is physical literacy?
A. Physical literacy is the combination of skills learned in the first two stages of the LTAD framework. From 0-6 years, in the Active Start stage, the focus is on using play and movement to develop fundamental movement skills such as agility, balance, coordination, strength and flexibility. From ages 6-8 (girls) or 6-9 (boys), most children are in the FUNdamentals stage, where fundamental sports skills are developed in fairly unstructured sport/play environments. For a child to be physically literate means they have acquired both the fundamental movement skills and the fundamental sports skills.
Q. What stage should our 8-12 year olds be at?
A. For girls 8-11 and boys 9-12, they are generally ready for the Learn to Train stage. They should be building on their foundation of fundamental movement skills, and moving from introductory sport skills to developing better technique. They are ready to begin training according to more formalized methods (games, relays etc.). This time, when the fundamental movement skills are in place but before their growth spurt begins, is the magic window for sport skill acquisition and refining performance. This is an important time to work on flexibility, stamina and strength. But that doesn’t mean circuit training! Sports programs should develop these attributes through games, relays and own body weight exercises.
Q. Can you give an example of how a specific sport skill might develop during this stage?
A. Sure, let’s look at soccer. A child will have developed their running and kicking skills during the Active Start stage, and in the FUNdamentals stage learned to direct that kick and start to combine those two movements. By the Learn to Train stage children are learning to kick the ball with speed and direction (which includes the ability to change direction, use the side of the foot, etc.). A relay exercise at this stage might be dribbling a ball through a course of cones.
We covered lots more good stuff about practice time, specialization, the reluctant athlete and scary coaches, which we’ve posted on our blog.
Yo mama, looking for some more pointers on physical literacy?