Swimming on the web

The 10-Year Rule and Long Term Athlete Development

This information came from the Canadian Long Term Athlete Development web site. It is interesting because it tells you just how much of a time commitment it takes to make it to the elite level, and for those of us that didn't train in our youths just how many hours it might take to get competitive with people who did...

The web site also provides some food for thought as to what sort of development process might be ideal for people who come to swimming without an age group background. Even though adults are not going through the same development process as children and adolescents, the insight that chronological age is a weak predictor of development and performance is at least as true in Masters swimming as in youth swimming.

The 10-Year Rule

Scientific research has concluded that it takes a minimum of 10 years and 10,000 hours of training for a talented athlete to reach elite levels. For athlete and coach, this translates into slightly more than 3 hours of training or competition daily for 10 years.

This factor is supported by The Path to Excellence, which provides a comprehensive view of the development of U.S. Olympians who competed between 1984 and 1998. The results reveal that

• U.S. Olympians begin their sport participation at the average age of 12.0 for males and 11.5 for females.
• most Olympians reported a 12- to 13-year period of talent development from their sport introduction to making an Olympic team.
• olympic medallists were younger — 1.3 to 3.6 years — during the first 5 stages of development than non-medallists, suggesting that medallists were receiving motor skill development and training at an earlier age. However, caution must be taken not to fall into the trap of early specialization in late specialization sports.

http://www.ltad.ca/Content/10 Key Factors/10Year Rule.asp

The stages of development in the LTAD model are:

1. Active Start
2. FUNdamentals
3. Learning to train
4. Training to train
5. Training to compete
6. Training to win
7. Active for life

On initial inspection one might think that Masters is primarily about the Active for life stage, but for people who didn't train in their youth, some of the earlier stages seem pretty relevant. Sometimes it seems that some people assume that Masters swimmers come from an age group swimming background, but it isn't at all clear that a majority of our members, let along our potential members do.

Posted at 06:49PM Nov 09, 2008 by Lindsay in General  |  Comments[0]