Player Development Junior-Senior

[GordonSim]

I was intrigued to read a succession of papers recently on LTAD or long term athlete development.

I place this in the context of many of the recent posts and indeed articles on this site about why and why not various countries succeed in badminton. Nearly without exception the views expressed are subjective.

LTAD is a fundamental scientific based system utilised by all the top performing nations in a variety of sports. I can now also see that it appears to be the basis for the BAofE and the Scottish Badminton Unions junior development policy.

There is an abundance of information on the web about the system and I won't go into it here; however there are several points that harbingers of doom about the state of badminton may want to consider...

Scientific research (not someones half baked thoughts on the matter) has identified it takes 10-12 years or 10,000 hours training for talented athletes to achieve sporting excellence. There are no short cuts!

If the long term approach to training is not adopted performance will plateau and the athlete will often drop out without achieving potential.

Amongst general observations about sporting systems that fail to produce were that young athletes under train and over compete, adult competition and training superimposed on youngsters, male training superimposed on females, training focusing on outcomes (winning) rather than processes(optimal training), chronological age influences coaching rather than biological age, poor training between 6-16 years and the best coaches working at elite (when it is too late) rather than junior level.

Does the above ring any bells with anyone?

[ArtTatum]

what you say makes perfect sense to me. I feel that coaches gauge their success within coaching depending on how old the players they are working with are - the older the better.

Young players naturally want to move on to more complex skills and routines more quickly than they should. This is not their fault and coaches should be able to underline the importance of learning the basics well and ingraining good habits from a young age, such as making no errors.

That said, I think that there should still be an effort made to support the seemingly endless wealth of talented players who don't make it into senior national squads at the age of 18-20. These players can still continue to develop and with most, all the skills are learned, they just need some encouragement and exposure to higher standards of competition.

[PeteG]

Stewart, I think your ending point is a very good one, there are a lot of players who peak late in their career and should be given the same opportunities as others, instead of being cut off.
In terms of players being exposed to higher levels of competition, I won't name names, but anyone who attended the Cheshrie and Lancashire satellite tournaments may have noticed some of the younger age group players entering. Whilst some of the very young ones are providing some easy early rounds for the more experienced players on the circuit (I'm referring to players who are in some cases as young as 13). They are being exposed to an adult game earlier on, which by its nature tends to be more consistent, therefore they are picking up the more adult skills, such as whena faster shuttle will suit them, an opponnents game style, when to alter their game and also having the patience to see out a rally without going for a winner before its on.
Even something as basic as dealing with a clear that is hit full length and responding appropriately as well as hitting a good length themselves is an invaluable skill to learn at such a young age. The skills that they will develop later on will mean that they are far stronger players once they have been given time and nurtured.

[GordonSim]

I think this debate will develop but an additional thought to play around with is this one...Bill Sweetenham the revolutionary National Performance Director for Britains swimmers had this to say before he brought British swimming to medal winning world class. It's equally applicable to badminton I am sure...

"Right now we have too many clubs in GB offering too little training time and in most cases too much competition. This leaves many athletes in the twilight 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 atletes train between 8 and 14 hours per week.

This is the twilight zone, too much volume to be fun and achieve the social and happy benefits of the participation level(8 hours and under) and not enough to achieve the competitive results or optimum performance that an athlete expects.

In other words it is too much for participation and too little to be considered really serious in terms of the competitive nature of the sport.

Changing this twilight zone should be the major focus of every club and national programme."

[GordonSim]

Pete I personally think it is a bad thing to play juniors in senior level badminton...16/17 year olds maybe and particularly if they have a greater biological age...big, strong build etc or are particularly talented but it should be very structured with particular objectives.

Playing up one junior age group may be different for very competent youngsters who should be able to compete in the class above but is not a given.

In Denmark kids are not allowed to compete outside their age group.

Up until they are 16/17 years 75% of the time should be spent building the technical/physical base and only 25% on competition under LTAD.

The essence of being world class is investing kids with the technical skills and physical and mental abilities to prepare (not necessarly compete effectively) for top class play from 18 years onward.

There is no way that 18 year olds are on the scrap heap because they are not in national squads, talent needs to be combined with effort and if they have been trained effectively to that point under LTAD they still have the chance (if they want it enough and are prepared and supported to train for it) to go all the way

They still may not be competing effectively until they are 25 years old plus and only after a hell of a lot of work within a systemised regime with access to top class coaching.

Several of the UK players are at a plateau and will not improve any further supposing they were sparring with Chen Hong every day!

This has happened because they were not properly trained at the right time, it's not their fault it's just the way it was.

What we all need to ensure is that todays kids are not overcompeted and undertrained.

Junior success is very nice but means nothing at all and the eye needs to be kept on the big picture.Invariably big and strong boys and girls beat small and weaker ones but this doesn't mean they have superior potential. Talent is notoriously difficult to spot...

Lleyton Hewitt was tested by the Australians when he was 12 years old at a Tennis championship after he had been hammered in the early rounds by a boy the same age. He came middle to bottom in a wide range of agility and skill tests...the rest is history.


Bottom line is that the technical training and physical conditioning can't be skimped it's long and hard and success may be several years away.

[player]

I couldn't agree more with your points Gordon. Pete, I would agree with your point about moving into senior badminton through playing them, but perhaps it might be better to invite these juniors down to MK to train with seniors rather than playing against them. At least then if games are played they can be stopped and analysed frequently so that the juniors learn from this. My concern about such young juniors in senior tournaments is that they become better juniors, but can be burnt out by senior badminton and are lost. I'm sure people up and down the country can name players who excelled as juniors and have disappointed in senior badminton, or don't even still play any more.
The focus throughout junior badminton has to be on coaching the correct technique above anything else.