LTAD Best Practices with Dr. Mike Young

Uh, a little bit about Mike Young before we start. Dr. Mike Young has a PhD in biomechanics, a masters in coaching science and a bachelor's in Xfizz. He's recognized as a CSCS with distinction, an RSCC with distinction by the NCAA and a level two coach by the USAW. He's the owner of Athletic Lab where he coaches and oversees the development of athletes from youth to professional. Uh Mike has coached six NCAA track and field Championship teams and has served as the sport coach for six Olympic or world championship competitors. Uh he's a regular consultant for

some of the top teams in America uh andmies and including four World Cup rugby teams, three Premier League soccer clubs. He has a decade of experience preparing athletes for the NFL combine and is the private sector coach for over a dozen NBA players. Micah has contributed to the coaching education curriculums for USA track and field, the Athletic Lab Coaching Academy, and the Long-Term Athletic Development Network, and has given two TED X talks and lectured in 23 countries. Mike, those last two are a really good fun fact. That's a great I did not know that about

you. This is a good fun fact. But, uh, Mike, we're excited to have you. Um, and without further ado, I'll kick it to you and uh you could take it away. Thank you, Phil. Uh, first off, thanks to Output for hosting me. Uh, this is a a great little opportunity. They've been hosting some great uh coaching education events lately and uh we've worked with Output for a little while and uh thankful thankful for everyone that could attend. So, I'm going to make a whirlwind tour on long-term athletic development best practices uh based off of both

some science as well as experience working in a variety of Different environments. Towards the end of this, I'm going to give you some really straightforward openbook look at what we do at my facility uh kind of a real world example and hopefully along the way also give you some ideas that you could maybe implement for yourself. The idea would be that this is something that could be uh have information for all whether you're at the high performance level or the youth level. We take a cradletograve approach uh with Both athletic lab coaching academy and the

long-term athletic development network of which I'm both affiliated for uh LTAD. So we don't look at it as something that's just confined to youth. Really, we're looking at everything from uh younger athletes, maybe as young as seven years old or so, all the way up through high performance with the objective of creating healthy lifestyle and uh resilient, strong individuals even after their athletic Career. Uh, if you leave with nothing else in this presentation, go to athlet go to long-term athletic development ltadnetwork.com and use the coupon code output web for one free access uh to a

lot of brilliant presentations including uh some for myself, my colleague and uh genius LTD genius James Baker as well as a lot of other resources some of which I'll touch in this presentation. So without further ado, what is LTD? It refers to the habitual development of Athleticism over time to enhance health, fitness, and physical performance as well as reducing the likelihood for injury. We all have a basic understanding of this. Hopefully, we're looking at it from this cradletograve approach and not taking a very siloed or uh closedminded view of this and thinking that uh perhaps

what we do for uh older athletes is the same that we would do for younger ones. Uh really what we're trying to develop is a high Level of athleticism using a progressive curriculum. I liken long-term athletic development much to academic development, right? We wouldn't take uh quantum physics and try to teach it to someone who hasn't taught physics or hasn't been taught physics and likewise can't teach them physics unless they've learned calculus. Uh can't teach them calculus unless they've taken some basic math etc. So we recognize that there is a pedagogical soundness, a progression To

skill development, to learning, and we need to apply the same level of understanding to long-term athletic development. It's sexy and cool to look at what is done at the high performance level with elite level athletes. And certainly there's a lot of that available to us right now with YouTube and Instagram, but the reality is that that's not best practice for uh a younger athlete. In terms of where this came from, really the origins of LTAD Are ancient, thousands of years old. Uh but more recently we see that there have been models proposed by Espanali where

we are looking at a breakdown of development and a recognition of that we need to do things differently for uh younger athletes to allow them to have success later on in their career. This is going to encompass things like physical, psychological, and lifestyle factors and recognize that the Physiology, the hormonal profile, the maturity of younger athletes is not what it is for older athletes. Uh again, I'm giving a crash course on the history here. More recently, we have a quadrrenial plan kind of built around the four-year school system that is available in many Western schools

using a freshman, sophomore, junior, senior approach. This is a very flexible and objective based system proposed by Ian Jeff that recognized specific training Needs at different stages. Uh this has again been advanced a little bit uh with something that I think was a great advancement splitting by male and females looking at uh maturation status something that we'll talk about briefly as we move forward here uh and then classifying different forms different types of training and associating them with the varying states of maturation. We have taken this a step further based largely off of the work

of my friend and Colleague James Baker to develop the long-term athletic development YPD model. And here what we've done is break things down into three clean areas or three clean uh subcategories of athletic development. The foundation phase, the development phase, and the performance phase. This is something that I'm going to be talking about quite extensively through this presentation. Uh you see that there are ages or both male and female associated with these different Phases. You see that there are range. Uh we're also taking into account training age, how long someone has been exposed to a

training stimulus. uh those two things need to go hand inand. If you for example you had someone who was the chron an older chronological age but had a very young training age then you need to take that into account. Uh here you have uh deep instructions, guidelines in terms of what you should what you should be doing as well As some benchmarks for things like PHV, peak height velocity and uh peak weight velocity and where the individual sits within that continuum. As I mentioned, this is not something that you need to take extensive notes on.

I'll be going through the basic outlines of this and what it will really look like in each one of these phases as an athlete progresses through this uh maturity uh Progression. So here it is in slightly greater detail. You can see again we're breaking down by age, chronological age, training age, uh talking about the structure of the training, something that you're going to see extensively as I move forward here. And it and taking into account different focuses of attention, whether that's foundational movement skills uh or sports specific skills. And you can see what we're looking

at here is uh for example, how To read this. Foundation movement skills should be a primary target early on. We want to develop a large movement library where athletes learn many skills that are not necessarily sports specific. We want individuals who can skip and jump and crawl and climb and throw and kick. Uh and those foundational movement skills will be eased off as we ramp up our sports specific skills. So, we're seeing a shift in terms of general athleticism and overall movement Qualities to more sports specific movement skills and physical development as the athlete continues

along this progression. Now, there is tons of research uh over the past 15 or so years on youth strength and conditioning. And I point this out because as someone that owns a facility, as someone that works with hundreds of uh youth athletes and multiple teams in a given year, one of the most common complaints Is should our athletes be training at all? Should they be weightlifting? Should be should they be doing should they be exposed to the actual types of training that we would introduce? Well, the answer, the short answer is yes. Of course, that

should there's an overwhelming amount of research to suggest that uh weightlifting not only is not harmful, but it is extremely beneficial, especially given the current state of health and wellness in teens And adults. Later on uh in in this continuum we see that athletes who participate in or individuals not necessarily but athletes individuals who participate in resistance training and structured training and are exposed to a wide range of movement uh categories and uh will perform better in in classrooms will have better adult health profiles even if they stop training. training. So, we see that there's

this window of Opportunity for us to really have a a large impact on these individuals life by following best practices for long-term athletic development. Likewise, any notion of being harmful has been completely refuted. There's really no evidence whatsoever that things like resistance training or uh sprint training or plyometric training has any negative effects whatsoever on youth or developmental athletes. Uh in fact, it's quite the opposite. We can expose younger athletes to safe forms of resistance training at any age as long as they have the maturity to do it. So I presented that more so because

I'm not trying to sell anyone on this call about those facts, but one of the things that we need to do as practitioners is make sure that we can make a case for what we're providing. Whether that is a business case or whether that is an altruistic long-term athletic development case, we need to be Able to share with the stakeholders, uh whether that is the parents, the coaches or the athletes themselves how important this approach is. And sometimes that means we're pulling individuals back and saying, "Hey, you shouldn't be doing that thing you saw on

YouTube. We should be following a little bit more uh tempered approach to your development." Or in other cases it may be saying yes you want to be a highle performer in your given sport but the best way to do That at this age is not necessarily to play your sport more but to be exposed to what we'll talk about in this presentation. uh long-term athletic development best practices. Again, lifetime worth of benefits, but also reducing reducing the likelihood for injury, uh improving performance, and ultimately that's what's going to matter the most regardless of your of

of what demographic we're speaking with, whether it's parents, coaches, or athletes. So, Being able to make that case is really really important. Just telling someone it's important is oftentimes not enough. Uh why do we need to consider this LTE approach from a early sport perspective? Well, here's a really interesting case. We're in the midst of one of the best NBA playoffs in recent history. Uh here's a NBA all-star, Anthony Ed uh Anthony Davis, excuse me. Uh I'm a big fan of Anthony Edwards, but this is Anthony Davis. At the age of 15, he was 6'2

175. uh pretty tall, pretty big guy. But for NBA standards, this is um you know, someone who's very small. The average guard in the NBA is 2 meters tall, maybe slightly above at 66 or so, and about 195 pounds or 90 kilos. Here you have Anthony Davis at 15 years old, uh smaller than a small guard in the NBA. Well, he had an incredible growth spurt uh that actually extended much later than most to the point where he reached a height of uh about 214 tall, 610, and is now about 110 kilos. So, if a

coach or a parent had looked at this individual at 15 years old, he may be considered too small for his sport. He may have a better uh future elsewhere. Uh but the reality is recognizing there are different growth and maturation curves uh different starting and ending points different rates and without knowing the rate we could overlook individuals like Anthony Edwards who is uh certainly one of the Better players in the NBA. Uh and there are plenty of stories such as this. Likewise, you might look at a peer of Anthony Edwards, someone like LeBron James, who

was effectively a grown man when he was 15 years old. Uh you may have mistakenly looked at him and said, "Well, he's going to be uh you know, has so much more ahead of him." When in reality, he was at about his adult height at around the age of 15 or 16. Um, and they both reached very similar Status in terms of their playing in the NBA. But if we looked at where they were at 15 years old, be really easy to overlook an Anthony Davis and spend all your time looking at a LeBron James.

Uh, as I've alluded to, growth and maturation will differ a little bit between boys and girls. Uh, let's start off by looking at growth and maturation among girls. PHV as I already indicated refers to peak height velocity. Uh postph is a period in girls associated With increased fat mass and this will coincide with PWV or peak weight velocity. Peak height velocity and peak weight velocity as the name hints towards is effectively associated with the growth spurt. Right? like when the the height is increasing at the greatest rate or the weight is increasing at the greatest

rate. Uh so what this means though is that in girls they will generally get taller earlier than their male counterparts. They'll stop in terms Of their growth of stature but they will add increased body mass typically in the form of increased fat mass after they have uh move beyond peak height velocity. So what this means if you understand relative strength and relative power is that girls are oftent times stronger relatively speaking in the pre and circa PHV. They may even jump higher during this period and you may see uh indicators of relative strength and Power

actually decrease postph and it's because there is this increase in fat mass and they have not yet adjusted or accommodated by increasing their strength. they will catch up catch up to their prephs but there is a period where it could be very frustrating for the coach as well as the athlete if you weren't aware that this was going on. Also during this period we're going to see that there's a change in the Q angle. Research literature is mixed on this. Uh this is a the angle of the knee with respect to the hip and the

ground. uh the Q angle has been associated with uh knee injuries such as the ACL tears in women. It's not a conclusive but again this is something to pay attention to at this point in time for girls. Uh for boys we see that they will reach peak peak height velocity several years later maybe as many as two years later. uh and unlike their female Counterparts, we'll see that peak weight velocity, the increase in body mass will actually coincide with peak height velocity. Meaning that while girls will see a disadvantage peak post peak height velocity, males

will actually see a distinct advantage post peak height velocity because they're actually adding additional muscle mass. So they not only get taller but they add more muscle mass and tend to decrease their body fat percentage. Now as I uh clued in on with the example of Anthony Davis and LeBron James, we see individuals have very different uh maturity timing. Meaning there are some individuals who will be early, some who will be on time so to speak and some who will be late. The time of the growth spurt is going to be different for everyone. It

will be experienced by everyone, but it's different for everyone. And we need to cater to those who are both early and late to make sure That they're not missed out or unidentified. A good way of doing this if you have this at your disposal would be something like a quarterly height and weight measurement. uh this can be done seamlessly especially if you work in a team or an academy environment and that would help you identify those individuals who are early on time or late. Why does this matter? Well, let's take a look at an example

from the sporting world. These are some Individuals from the same cohort, the same team at Aspire Academy. Uh if you would look down at the bottom in that white box bounded by the black line, you see the groups average uh age range in terms of the chronological age range. So we've got a span of 1.8 from the high to the low. 1.8 years from the high to the low. So we've got one individual who's 13.6 and another individual who's 11.8 uh or two individuals who are 11.8. Now, if you look at the scalidal age range,

And this is something I'll talk about very briefly uh moving forward here at Aspire Academy, they're actually determining the individual's level of physical maturity and how close they are to their adult height with a very high level of accuracy. And using this they can determine that the scalidal age range from top to bottom is 6.5 years. So there's a a significant gap there even though They're relatively clustered in terms of their chronological age. The gap is as much as 6.5 years or about another way of putting this or about half of the lifespan of these

individuals. So we have some individuals who are very very mature and we have other individuals who are still childlike. Uh if for example you take this uh individual on the upper left corner second from the left you can see that he is the oldest in terms of uh his chronological age. But if we look at Where he sits on the scalidal age arrow down the middle of the chart he's actually one of the youngest. So this is the type of individual who might be overlooked in the selection of teams or the attention of coaches when

in fact this individual is just someone who is a late developer. U now let's briefly take a look at what happens during growth for boys and girls. We see that that peak height velocity will be quite similar about 10% higher for boys than for Girls. Peak weight velocity again very similar about 10% higher for boys. However, that peak weight velocity that increase in peak weight velocity on the male side will tend to occur with more muscle mass and on the female side will tend to occur with more fat mass. So one case an advantage and

the other case a disadvantage in terms of uh strength and power related qualities. Uh, boys in general will increase about 28 cm or almost a foot and girls about 25 cm or about 9 in or so. What's the impact of peak height and weight velocity? Well, we see it's obviously going to be somewhat similar between boys and girls. Both will increase leg and arm length. Uh, both will have a higher center of mass. With boys that body mass will be significantly larger as much as 20%. This is where we start to see a true separation

in terms of the genders and their uh physiology and their Anthropometry. And because of this large increase in testosterone that occurs in puberty, we see that there's that increase in lean mass. Uh conversely, women don't have the boost in testosterone, but they do have an increase in estrogen. they will have an increase in fat mass. So again, this these are important points to keep in mind. The practical implications of which are that during this time period where they are in peak height and peak Weight velocity, there will likely be a period of awkwardness. Uh especially

in women, there will be a negative impact on relative qualities of strength, power, and speed. I've seen things like the ability to do pull-ups go from being well above average uh to well below average in females just during this period. Uh similar observations that I have seen with uh vertical jump height as well. uh we may see a reduction in flexibility, mobility and there's going To be a large range during this period in within a given cohort uh between early and late matures. As you can imagine from the previous slide, uh we also see some

changes in the muscle physiology itself. So we're not just growing, we're actually seeing that there are changes within the muscle fiber composition, muscle architecture, muscle activation patterns, tendon size, and tendon structure. Those of you who have small children or have have Children who have now reached uh full maturity, you may be have been able to identify this by their body simply changing. What looked like perhaps a short Achilles tendon may look like a long Achilles tendon. What looked like muscle distribution in one area may look like uh was weak before but is now above average.

And furthermore, what we see is that there are actually studies that indicating that there are difference differences between children's muscle Physiology and adults. In fact, children have greater cross excuse me, adults have greater muscle cross-sectional area. This is of course what we would expect. This change during peak uh height and weight velocity is going to be of course much greater in males than females. We're going to see an increase in muscle fiber or a change in muscle fiber composition with a lower percentage of type two fibers in children. Uh the tendon size both the Length

absolute cross-sectional area and thickness will increase in adulthoods. The tendons in youth are tend to be much more compliant. We've probably all seen children fall asleep and uh pretzel-like positions. This can pretty easily be explained by the compliancy of their body and and the uh soft tissue in particular the tendons and the cartilage. And then tendon stiffness is greater in adults versus children. Tendon stiffness is very Important for elasticity. So, when we combine the fact that we have stronger, bigger muscles associated with that greater cross-sectional area and greater tendon stiffness, we see that there's the

horsepower for being strong, powerful, and elastic uh to a degree that is not observable in children. So even if you were to do the types of training that we oftentimes see as sexy and cool amongst high performers, if you were to do that with a youth athlete, it Wouldn't be appropriate because they don't have the underpinning uh mechanisms to take advantage of it. Not only do they not have the hormonal profile, the greater testosterone, but if we're trying to train something like muscle stiffness or elasticity, and they don't have this tendon stiffness necessary to really

take advantage of it, now we're going to be at uh a position where we're potentially not spending our time very efficiently. Uh well, how do we determine maturation status with uh short of doing X-ray scans and DEXA scans and everything else that may be cost prohibitive? Well, there are several options out there for you. Uh we are in the process of releasing this calculator uh on LTE network. It will certainly be released at some point if you sign up for that free trial. If you just take a look at this here, we'll be able to

show you what goes on. This uses what's called a Camas Roach equations looking at the individual's chronological biological age and biological age taking into account their gender and uh their parents' height. And using these very these inputs you can determine the uh height the predicted height of the individual uh with a very high level of accuracy. So simply by putting in birth date, gender, parents height, you'll be able To determine an individual's projected adult height with a very high level of accuracy, as well as determine their maturation status, whether they are preph. And this might

be not only a cool thing to understand but also uh something that would be useful for coaches and parents in terms of things like talent selection or sports selection um etc. Using information like this we can do things like bio banding. So this is Where we take an approach where we are not simply clumping everyone of the same chronological age together but we're taking into account the different m maturation status. Uh during preph we're of course going to have people who are late developers. uh and then approaching PHV and circa PHV will have people who

are in that normal so to speak range and postph would probably be our early developers and you can see the Differential between what we might expect to see in terms of heights, weights, uh and even the serum testosterone levels amongst this population with a fivefold increase between individuals who were the same chronological age but of different maturation status in testosterone levels. Here's a more practical example of it looking at some athletes from Aspire Academy uh in youth track and field. Two athletes roughly the same Age, both under 15. You'll notice here I want to point

out that we have uh we're calculating not by age as a whole number but using an age to at least a tenth. This is really important because with age many individuals oftentimes lump groups by whole numbers when in fact uh age should be looked at as a continuum. You know uh 14 years and 360 days is effectively 15 years and we should treat it like that. So we have in this case two individuals both under 15 a very Marginal difference in terms of their age difference. Uh but you'll notice that here that they have pretty

significant differences in terms of their 60 meter performance, 60 meter sprint performance and their long jump performance. So u one looking fairly precocious and looking like they have a lot of talent uh and the other one looking like perhaps they should find another sport. But in reality, what we see is that they the individual who we Might at first glance overlook is really only at 88% of their peak adult height. So if you look four lines down on this chart here, athlete A 88% of their peak adult height. Meanwhile, athlete B is effectively in their

full adult body. So one is approaching peak height velocity, not even there yet. They are a late mature. And the other one is peak post peak height velocity. They were in early mature and is effectively not going to have too much more to gain in terms of Their anthropometry and physiology. Uh they're just going to have improvements from training status. Now this does take some monitoring of development. It's important to track if you can. In the United States in particular, this can be very touchy subject. Whether we weigh athletes, whether we measure athletes, there are

ways to do it. Uh if you use force platforms, if you are even if you are just uh measuring limb Lengths, you have some idea of maturity status, some indication. But what this will allow you to do is outline a pathway forward for your LTD journey. Remember it is a nonlinear process and not everyone hops on that pathway at the same time or moves through it at the same speed. In terms of monitoring physical development, we want to look at growth and maturation. Uh movement skills, how efficiently does someone does someone move? Again, this isn't

Relevant for sport specificity so much as how well does can someone handle basic tasks, especially early on. Strength and power tend to be uh very important in particular in younger athletes. So they are really the foundation of speed and agility and jumping. So we want to make sure that we're about not only measuring strength and power but also uh placing a focus on it an age appropriate focus of on it uh during these periods. Speed and agility Of course is one of the most important things in sports. So we it would be really nice to

longitudinally monitor this. We use the same test for our youngest athletes uh as we do for our oldest athletes and we have a longitudinal track over time to determine how well they're progressing in terms of speed and agility and if they should falter or they should fall off during periods of post EHV for females. We now have a pretty good Explanation of why that might actually be the case. Cardiovascular fitness across the entire lifespan is an important part of monitoring for health, well-being, and performance as well. Let's move on now and talk about foundation and

development phase strength. So remember foundation was the first stage and development is our second phase. We're going to take a look at both of them here. Uh referring back to this previous slide here, I think It's really important to look at this. If we have someone who is prephid who is postphold differential observed in their testosterone levels. Testosterone is going to be our primary anabolic hormone uh facilitating growth and strength development especially um muscle growth and development. So we can of course make improvements in terms of coordination and skill and um neuromuscular efficiency but Testosterone

will play a key role in terms of increasing cross-sectional area and and getting stronger in general. We have three stages of strength development uh performance development and foundation. You notice here how foundation really does serve as the foundation for our subsequent levels. briefly going into each of them here. During the foundation period, we're learning how to train. During the development period, we're training to Train. And then in the performance period, we are training to compete. We don't want to jump this progression uh and pursue immediate goals at the cost of long-term success. So, what we're

trying to do is set us up and have a longer term vision for success. And what that means is there are phase appropriate types of training that we should do for these individuals. Uh here You see some basic guidelines early on. We're trying to establish a basic movement library teaches that we'll talk about moving forward. Make sure that the individuals can move their own body weight well as we progress to the development phase. Now we're trying to develop relative strength in the major compound lifts and introduction to things like the barbell and a kettle bell

and a dumbbell. We'll start to progress external loading. And then in The performance training phase, this is where the training starts to look like some of the things that you might commonly see in YouTube and Instagram where we are training in a manner that is more suitable for high performance athletes. there's a greater emphasis on strength development maybe in particular concentric and eccentrics. Uh we are going to start having some hard periodization to fit the sport schedule and then more advanced training systems Overall. Again let's let's start by looking at the foundation phase. Our objectives

are to develop excellent technique through full ranges of motion in basic strength exercises as well as body weight. Uh technique should always be emphasized overload here. There's a time and a place to do partial ranges of motion or maybe even to be permissible on poor technique, but this is not the phase in an individual's uh athletic development Journey for that to happen. The default should always be full range of motion. The default should always be excellent technique. And if we're not seeing that, we want to make sure that we are regressing as needed. Um, we're

going to find that some athletes are high performers in some areas and poor performers in others. You're not necessarily going to have everyone clustered amongst the same level of development or same level of uh Skill. So, learn how to train safely and effectively more than anything else here. These individuals will get stronger just simply based off of an exposure to a physical fitness and development program. Some basic examples here that we might see in foundation level strength. This is from a middle school environment uh where James was working. You're seeing a variety of different movement

patterns, exposure to things Like overhead squatting, press ups, pull-ups, rolling, crawling, etc. And again, one of the things I'd like to highlight here, as I'll talk about this moving forward, is that look at the faces on these kids. They look like they're having fun. They're enjoying themselves. They don't recognize that this is an introduction to training. They're uh effectively doing something more akin to structured play. During this period of training, I Love to incorporate gymnastics and parkour. Uh if you have an opportunity to have a gymnastics flooring, that's fantastic. At my facility, we have a

open uh 500 square meter, 5,000 square foot turf area where we can do some basic gymnastic type activities incorporating things like rolling, crawling, monkey bars, tripod movements, handstands. We have high gymnastics rings, we have low gymnastics rings. This is great for developing body Awareness, body tension, control, stability, etc. Uh, and as you'll see as I move forward here, we incorporate this on a weekly basis into our warm-ups. Moving on here more specifically on strength during this foundation phase. One of the things that I like to do that we have really tried to impress upon individuals

during this period is that we don't need to get incredibly strong in any one particular lift. Really what we're trying to do is expose the Individuals to our basic movement patterns. So things like a squat, a push, a hinge, a pull, a lunge, a brace, and some rotation. And this is an example of progressions and regressions for those different movement patterns. Generally speaking, we want to add volume and complexity before external load. So if for example you had an individual who was at level one on the hinging pattern here highlighted by the deadlift, you might

start them with a Kettle bell deadlift. The mass is right between their feet. Really technically very complex very simple before you move to more complex variations. So, do the master the kettle bell deadlift. Do it at volume uh before you're adding external load or moving to uh other alternatives such as the trap bar deadlift where you can actually move a lot of weight. Really, we're trying to gain confidence here. And we can actually create charts and Grading systems to allow individuals to feel like they're progressing up. So rather than someone who was at level one

feeling like they had been held back or that they were less than, we could instead of emphasizing the fact that they maybe are at level one, that they now have a position to to progress to on these more advanced stages. And I've seen that treated in a very similar manner successfully as has been done in the in the classroom. Uh we want to follow what's called a multilateral approach to training looking at speed, power, strength development, endurance. So there are different physical capacities depending on what literature you read. There may be five, maybe seven PS

or biomoter abilities. Without going into too great of a depth on that, what I just would want to emphasize here is that we're not just strength training these individuals, Especially at this age bracket. We need to make sure that we have a holistic all-around multilateral pro programming emphasis that addresses all of the different skills, whether that is speed skills such as you see here, different sprint drills like A skips, B skips, etc., power development using plyometrics or maybe multi-throw activities with a medicine ball or shot and then some form of age appropriate strength development. Uh

warm-ups can be A hidden gem in terms of long-term athletic development. They allow you to continue to address foundational strength qualities perhaps with uh different circuit style fashions. You can create really fun and engaging activities and you can also touch on areas that may not be addressed earlier or or uh emphasized otherwise in the program. Here are a handful of ramp warm-up examples or ideas that you could conceivably use in this developmental Phase. uh as I show you some real world examples that I have programmed for us at Athletic Lab for our developmental phase athletes.

You'll be able to see even more of these uh during this area during this period of an individual's development. It's good to have assessments of body weight strength. uh this is actually much easier to do than assessing their growth and maturation at least in my environment. And what we try to do is Make sure that we are regularly charting these types of strength markers over time and providing that information back to the parents or the coaches. As I mentioned, we work with hundreds of athletes at Athletic Lab and this has been really useful for us

not only to create buyin but also uh to show that what we're doing is very effective. This particular chart is from my my friend Dan Baker who put together a bodyweight strength assessment tool for uh youth Athletic youth athletes uh using a variety of different body weight movements. Uh we have also we are also in the process of putting together this uh similar movement calculator very similar to the one that I showed you for growth and maturation where you could chart out your uh movement skills uh on this spiderweb chart simply by adding in how

well someone performed both in Technique as well as in volume on a host of different body weight activities ranging from a squat to a push-up to a lunge to a row and uh side and front plank. And by entering some simple data on these various tests, you can have an indication of where someone sits in terms of their readiness to progress, whether they're behind or uh leading in terms of their physical development. Moving on now to the development phase. Here we want to make Sure that individuals can do body weight strength movements with excellent technique.

We're still going through full range of motion, but now we want to make sure that we incorporate some traditional strength training methodologies like barbells, uh, kettle bells, dumbbells, etc. So that we can begin to start loading. We are trying to develop whole body relative strength, uh, high general strength in particular in the areas like the trunk, the hips, The shoulders, and the ankles. Really what we're developing here is a platform for them to train with more intensity in the subsequent phase. Here are some examples of what we might see in the development phase. And you're

hopefully starting to recognize there is a blend. This is a continuum. So, we're playing rock, paper, scissors on a plank exercise. That's maybe taking some concepts that we might see as being appropriate for The foundation phase and starting to incorporate it into development phase. So, the training shouldn't necessarily make a full jump to what we might be thinking as appropriate uh for adults or performance level athletes. We can still incorporate fun and games and making things age and movement appropriate for this uh middle period of development. Nothing magical here, but uh again, we want to

have a balanced strength development. So, here's a Classic AB type of an example. We're addressing all of the major movement patterns in just two days. So in my environment, we oftentimes have individuals who will train with us maybe just once a week or sometimes twice a week. And then we may have individuals who are with us three or four times a week. Those individuals that are with you just once or twice, you have to take what I call a desert island approach. Meaning that you have to create a Hierarchy of what's important. uh don't spend

a lot of time on isolation type activities or on uh too many sets and reps on one movement pattern if you only see them one day a week. Make sure, especially during these first two uh developmental phases, that you are addressing all of the movement patterns as best as you can. Of course, there's going to be some crossover that if you only had someone for 30 or 40 minutes once a week, you're of course going to Have to be limited and you may have to make a assessment of whether do I want to squat or

lunge. But don't just do all upper body pressing for example. Make sure that you're addressing uh the most in ter most movements that you can uh in the most efficient way possible. uh in terms of the developmental outcomes, if we look at following a similar approach to what might be seen in the Ian Jeff LTE proposal earlier on in this presentation or perhaps uh Applying it to a western grade grade 1, two, three, four, or freshman, sophomore, here are some basic guidelines here of what we might want to start seeing during this time period. uh

now we're increasing the relative strength values in activities like the squat and the deadlift uh bench press etc. So we should be seeing that progression over time during these and having benchmarks being good with recordkeeping and tracking of Performance is really really important. Now let's talk about session planning and delivery. Uh this is critical to success in these types of programs. Uh especially with youth athletes. Make sure you create a motivational learning environment where they're enjoying what they're doing. Oftentimes, these are individuals that spend all time their a lot of their day in class and

they're bored and they're maybe mentally fatigued. You have to Create an environment that encourages them to learn, provides them with choices, provides them with a level of autonomy that is appropriate for where they are and an engagement whether that is them coaching themselves, uh you coaching them, uh group coaching that allows them to stay engaged and motivated in this process. I always start with why uh at the system level, the session level, and the athlete level to explain why we're doing something. If An individual knows why we're doing something, a lot of times they will

better understand and relate to what why it is what we're doing, even when it doesn't look like something that might be appropriate or uh specific to their given sport. Physical education has really led the way, especially best practice physical education. And there's some fantastic uh documentation out there and Guidelines about how to lead uh younger athletes and make sure that they are engaged in this learning process. Follow big picture aims, provide the phase objectives, and share the athletes with why we're doing what we're doing. As the practitioner, you always have to look at what their

your time available is. We'd all like to work in the perfect world where we have individuals for five days a week for 90 minutes a day, but the reality is we're Oftentimes lucky to get them for 30 or 45 minutes per week. And you again have to make a choice in terms of what is most important for you. So what's your time available? How's the session going to play out? Uh how do you cluster individuals by friendships or maturity level? How do you transition efficiently between tasks? what happens when the weather is poor or when

someone else is using the piece of equipment that you need. So, having all of these things Planned in advance, having a being able to think quickly and be agile with your decision- making will go a really long way. In terms of behavior management, make sure we're setting standards and expert expectations. Uh I've heard James say, and I love this quote, what you permit, you promote. Meaning if you let an individual get away with uh poor behavior, bad movement standards, whatever it is, that you're effectively promoting it because other individuals Will see that same behavior and

they will copy it. They will children are adolescents are accustomed to observing what they can get away with and getting away with the most that they possibly can. We want to build routines, build relationships. This will help to make us more efficient in the gym. sustain activity levels. Uh no laps, no lectures, no lines is a great way of keeping things efficient. Uh I like to stay no standing in my gym. So uh we're Not just wasting time. We are purposeful with what we're doing. Uh in terms of the principles of training during the foundation

phase, we're going to move from uh very general to specific over time. We're teaching individuals during foundation. We want to make sure that we can juggle multiple things at one time. Effectively, what is known as conjugate training, but at a at a lower level. We're developing multilateral athletes who are good all-around athletes with uh Progressions that are appropriate for different exercises and physical qualities. Uh in terms of uh the training foundation or foundation phase, we are going to go on one to two days non-consecutive per week in an ideal world. So that might mean three

days per week. Sometimes we only have athletes for one time a week. Our program at Athletic Lab is designed so that there is availability for six days a week of Training. We don't dictate when these individuals will come in in our open classes. When they're with teams, we try to get the teams and themies that we work with numbering several hundred to come in two times per week. This allows us to have some level of continuity of training and we can have better progression. We're working up to body weights uh load body weight loads of

70% of one RM. Uh strength work is going to continue to be kept relatively short Because we're still trying to develop this large movement library. We've got a lot of things to do. And then I like the idea of using what might be called a focus on soft weights, meaning your own body weight, your ba bands, bags, medicine balls, etc., rather than kind of a quote unquote hard weight of a barbell and a weight blades, bumper blades, dumbbells, kettle bells, etc. Individuals will progress to that. They're going to spend most of their Career at the

hard weights. uh but while you can use the soft weights that will still be an appropriate stimulus uh for developing strength and movement during the foundation phase. Uh furthermore and perhaps equally important for every parent out there that says hey I don't want my kid to weightlift you can say fine uh even though I've showed you the research literature to say that you shouldn't be of concern on you shouldn't be concerned on that we're just going to Use an individual's body weight. We're going to use bands. we're going to use medicine balls. So, we're not

really weightlifting, so to speak, when in reality, the body doesn't know one way or the other whether it's what kind of resistance it is. Uh here is an example of an integrated approach to session design. Um several different days or examples here. I'm going to take you through a more detailed framework of this as I Show you what we actually do at Athletic Lab. In terms of the actual session design, we want to raise core body temperature, sometimes known as the warm-up or the ramp. I'll talk about that in a moment. In this example, using

a skillbased game, activate, mobilize, some form of dynamic flexibility, you could have studentled warm-ups, pick a stretch, etc. uh roll into a circle, individuals up in A circle, one rolls into the circle and picks of uh dynamic flexibility, movement, etc. Potentiate doing jumping and landing activities, maybe even some sprint drill activities, and then the main session might be body weight strength. In terms of the coaching process, I always follow something along these lines. Introduce what we're going to do, demonstrate what we're going to do, instruct, observe, and then provide feedback. This loop in particular, Observe

feedback is very very useful. Uh you can use coach and teacher-led approaches. I've oftentimes found it's very useful for individuals to coach each other especially in very large groups. Peer assessments they they should learn to give each other good feedback and the motor learning research literature suggests that this allows them to learn better if they're uh forced to look at what a bad movement looks like. and then some self Assessments as well. Uh in terms of foundation strength again multilateral some games some power development some strength development allow for individual rates of progression and regression

as needed. Terms of the facility here is the facility from St. Peters in uh where James previously had worked. Pretty humble facility but he built out something from nothing. six racks. He'd go three racks per athletes using Additional space for larger groups. He had a gymnasium right next door and astroturf down the middle for speed, agility, sled pushing, etc. Now, what's interesting here is that this really is a best practice design in terms of space usage and being able to follow the same types of protocol we'll talk about uh throughout this presentation. If you look

at my facility in North Carolina, it follows a very similar format. We've got dedicated platforms. We've got rack Space, we've got a track, we've got a turf. Uh either indicating that fools flock together, James and myself, or great minds think alike. I'd hope that it would be the latter. In terms of facility design and session setup, really a lot of what you do is going to be dictated by the facility at this age bracket. So here again, if you had six platforms, most national governing body guidelines would suggest that you should have no More than

three, maybe four athletes per rack. So that might allow you to handle 18 athletes at a go. If you had extra space, you could use that space and cycle individuals through. I would suggest grouping individuals based on behavior and level of competency. You could also conceivably use things like strong athletes and weak athletes or height if you really had to. Uh weak movement, poor movement if you're doing massive progressions and regressions, Etc. But just clustering individuals randomly is probably not going to lead to a very effective session. Terms of speed and development, follow a physical

educationbased approach. uh generic games, closed drills, moving to an open drill, and then reapplying the basic concepts that you learned from those closed games back into a more game-like environment. You can similarly do these types of things in the warm-up. So, here are some sports Specific skills whether they are evasion or uh attacking uh chasing that could be incorporated in a warm-up or as part of a speed agility program uh in this phase to touch on some more sports specific skills. And because it's fun and engaging and competitive, you create more compliance and buyin into

your program. Now let's talk about transitioning from development to performance phase. This Is where we start to get into some of the more sexy training like training meaning uh we are actually training to perform here. I want to start this part off by saying engage with the key stakeholders. Uh we work with many teams uh Olympic development swimming swimming club uh the largest youth soccer academy in the world 14,000 kids as well as the pro sides and the semi-pro sides associated with North Carolina and the North Carolina courage work with cricket Teams hockey teams a

full athletic school I have won contracts and I have lost contracts. I have increased buyin and attendance and compliance and I have lost it based solely on my engagement or failure to engage with the stakeholders. We need to regularly communicate and build relationships with those people whether that is the individuals, the athletes who are in attendance, the coaches, the administrators or the parents. Take an athlete- centered Approach, but make sure that you're developing a program that is suitable for the training. Not just best practices and what's going to make them squat the most, but what's

going to make them perform the most in their competitive environment. The last thing that you want to do is to design the the perfect training program and the individuals are left to sort of compete. Uh it makes you look bad. It makes you look ignorant of what's actually going On. So making sure that you're providing the necessary information, you're taking the feedback from from the sport environment and designing your program appropriately. Terms of performance-based objectives, we're now trying to move the needle forward. The biggest difference will be that we starting to incorporate more advanced movements

like the Olympic lifts, more advanced methodologies such as isometrics and eccentrics, and perhaps Uh really focusing in on intensity. So we're going to increase intensity to a much higher level here to where we can uh start to move heavy loads, start to move mo loads fast, etc. These athletes, what are they experiencing? Again, female athletes, fat mass is going to be increasing at this period of time. There's going to be a greater risk of ACL injuries. Uh we may see that they actually get slower during this time period. They may not jump as high. Meanwhile,

the opposite would be true for males. So being cognizant of this fact especially the the differentiations between genders that boys uh may suddenly far exceed the females who they were being outperformed by during this period is important to not only make sure that the the girls don't feel like they're left behind or that they know why this is occurring. It's not a personal failure. Uh but as part of everything that's going on in their Life, whether it's school development, uh etc., that this is an important thing to recognize. What does this look like during this

phase? We're going to start to Olympic lift. Now, I'm a big advocate for Olympic lifts and Olympic lift derivatives. You don't have to do them, but I think they do have a lot of benefit in terms of uh coordination and strength and power development. We're going to move to primary lifts at a heavier loads. Very similar to what we Saw previously, but now we're moving heavy weights or we're moving weights fast. Uh so this is now looking like a training program in terms of strength that we might see for a high performance athlete. And then

accessory exercises here are some highlighted for the hamstring posterior chain group that uh you might see in more mature athletes. What are our outcomes? Well, we've talked about some outcomes previously for strength starting with body weight Strength measurements uh progressing to relative strength development focus during the development phase and now we have some physical benchmarks for the performance phase where we want individuals to get pretty strong. You know, I think uh these are some decent benchmarks that you could potentially use to give guidelines for where someone sits in terms of their physical development, where something

might be in terms of strength, uh a strength or a Weakness. We will see differences. These are proposed guidelines for a generic group of athletes probably best suited for individual sport athletes and then team sport athletes will be a little bit lower here but you see very similar similar benchmarks. These are performance phase metrics uh provided by the UK team sport athletes. And here you see some speed metrics, some jump metrics as well as some aerobic fitness metrics uh indicated by That last column, MAS or max aerobic speed. All right. Uh let's talk about how

we develop strength here. The biggest thing as I already alluded to during this phase is going to be intensity. What's the load? Uh what's the velocity or what's the perceived level of exertion? These are our three primary ways that we're going to be quantifying intensity. In terms of load, it's pretty simple. How much weight do I have on the bar? A higher Percentage is generally speaking going to be a more intense rep. For submaximal loads, you can base that off of repetitions performed. Uh, increasingly we're using velocity as a measure of intensity, especially when combined

with load. This has been very very useful for us not only in terms of the prediction but in the monitoring as well as the uh motivation for athletes and really I think tracking velocity in the weight room is a great way to enhance the Transfer of training effect to the actual sport. Um so on one day per week or one exercise on every day per week on our scholastic program our performance phase athletic development program we actually are using BBT in the gym along with planned progressive loading. Uh if you needed to, you could also

use perceived exertion if you didn't feel comfortable using rep max uh or one rep max percentage based loading or didn't have access to velocity based tracking. RP or rating of perceived exertion has been shown to be quite effective. Different athletes are uh more novice athletes are a little bit less u less it's a little less valid indicator of how intensity activity actually is, but it can be useful. Um, terms of optimizing prescription, let's take a look at the different training variables. We're going to focus primarily on our exercises and the intensity uh during this phase.

But we Of course need to understand that volume, density, the rest between sets and the tempo of the exercise performed are all things that we need to take into account. In terms of goalbased prescriptions, this is a little bit of a cheat sheet here. I won't spend too much time running through this, but if our goal, for example, is endurance, you can see in that upper row what our prescription might actually be, that tracks all the way down through maximum Strength, where we're, of course, using higher loads for a lower repetitions per set. The interesting

one that a lot of people lose focus on is power development. Power can't be well trained in an endurancelike environment. It has to be done fresh and with a high level of intent. I always say maximize output and minimize fatigue. So with power output, you're seeing that we are using moderate level loads or low repetitions per set Uh and multiple sets to achieve stimulus threshold. There are three primary qualities associated with strength. One of which is hypertrophy. We are not too concerned with that in terms of LTAD because uh outside of specific cases a lot

of times that takes care of itself. We don't generally believe that you need to specifically focus on hypertrophy. So I pointed out here because there are cases such as in contact sports momentum based sports like rugby, American Football and weight class uh combatants where hypertrophy may be of of use. Maximum strength and power development will be where we will focus. Maximum strength is the foundation for speed and power. Uh there's quite a bit of research that suggests that in younger and weaker athletes, power is better developed with maximum strength training than with power training. It's

one of the rare cases where we seem to fly in the face of specificity of training. Uh Power is the most important physical quality in many sports and it's important to train it at all times along with maximum strength to varying degrees as appropriate for the the sport and the level of the athlete. Uh as I said we want to talk about exercise selection when training for speed and power. Here's what I look at. What's our magnitude of potential for loading? What's the magnitude of potential for speed? And whether the Movement is compound or isolative.

If we are a low potential for loading exercise, a low potential for speed, and an isolation exercise, let's think of, for example, a finger snap. That's an activity that I would never potentially train. If we were on the other hand to try to max out all of those high potential for loading, high potential for speed and a compound movement, we may be looking at something like a trap bar jump or an Olympic lift or perhaps a Medball throw vertically. Those would all check the boxes in terms of a great exercise selection or uh power in

particular. For our primary exercises, these are going to be where we spend our focus. Spend the most time, spend the most sets, secondary, this will be secondary to the goal of the day, whether it is strength or power might be what what we're looking for. And then assistance exercise. One thing that I like to say is that uh you effectively Vote with your time. You vote with your sets. Meaning if you are have a training program and every single exercise has the same number of time devoted to it, the same number of sets and the

same number of reps, you've effectively voted that none of them are more important than the other. So make sure that your training program reflects what you're trying to get out of it. In terms of maximum strength, this is the most amount of strength that you Can possibly produce. Force you can produce. We want to uh as a foundational quality for power we don't want to bypass this. Uh it has become vogue to kind of think that maximal strength is not important. This flies in the face of most of the research literature on it on this

quality that you do need to have an adequate level of strength necessary for uh power development. You don't want to jump the gun so to speak in terms of this. Sometimes this is referred to as Slow strength and as a result uh it gets a bad rap because it's slower than sporting movements occur. But the reality is that it's not it's slow but it's high force and it has a high potential for loading. It can be taxing on the neuromuscular system uh and maybe induce some soreness. What does our loading scheme look like at this

phase? Pretty classic stuff here. Two to six sets, one to six reps. Got to load reasonably heavy. uh making sure that The rest is appropriate between sets. In terms of max strength, lower reps, maximum load, multi- joint movements is going to be your short short uh path forward. These methods will increase tension and the expression of force and you'll increase maximum strength development. Uh how do we progress it? Put more load on the bar. Change the emphasis, change the tempo, eccentric focus, isometric focus, etc. Uh as always I think it's Good to benchmark especially during

this time this period to see whether you are strong enough. There is quite a bit of research out there to suggest that there is uh a a level to which we can be strong enough and we don't really need to progress too much beyond that. But up until that point we would still benefit in in every regard whether it's speed, power, change of direction, jumping ability by getting stronger. So if your athletes are not even at this strong Threshold for any of these given metrics during the performance phase, you may want to reflect and double

back and make sure that they get to those levels. For power, this is of course just how much work we do in a given unit of time. This is a great way of increasing rate of force development, making sure that we can produce force quickly. And because we're trying to move not only moderate loads, but we're trying to move them fast. Generally speaking, this is going To be a balance between load and power. You don't develop uh maximal p power efficiently by lifting really heavy loads or really light loads. It's somewhere in the in the

middle and a try time to move a moderately heavy load about as fast as you can. Our prescription here is going to be a little different. Four to 10 sets, one to five reps. in your traditional lifts like say a squat and a bench press, your more classic slow lifts so to speak, 55 To 75% of one RM, but for our inherently faster lifts like the Olympic lifts, peak power output might be occurring at 75 to 90%. Uh, if we're training for power, there's really uh a couple things that we want to be looking at.

In the traditional lifts, got to keep those loads on the lower side. If it's a Olympic lift where there is some speed and coordination involved, they're inherently faster. Now our Uh percentage based loading can be higher. In terms of how we train power, minimize fatigue, maximize intent, multi- joint movements. It's very similar to strength, maximal strength development, but now we're taking the gas off of load and putting it onto speed. Manipulate training volumes over time. We're getting much more into classic periodization during this performance phase. So, what might that look like for these three different

Strength objectives? Here's another little cheat sheet. What we're shooting for, what the prescription might be, what the methodology might be, uh, and how we would best do it. In a nutshell, our critical criterion for stimulus here would be if we do want to get increased cross-sectional area and muscle mass, work to muscular exhaustion. Doesn't matter if it's high rep or low rep. the current research literature suggested just work the muscular exhaustion and You'll you'll add a little bit of muscle mass. Uh if we're trying to improve strength, maximize the load, if we're trying to maximize

power, maximize intent while minimizing fatigue. All right, now we're at the most wrapping things up with the uh long-term planning and implementation. Really, what we want to try to do is reverse engineer this whole process. If we know where we want someone to be eventually, whether that's the end of the season or the end of Their career, we need to work backwards from that point. We know the destination. We know the time frame in which we have to get to that destination. We then make a determined whether determination whether it is reasonable to expect for

us to be able to do that and what physical qualities and skills we need to do along that pathway to get there. How much time do we have? Uh be realistic and honest with yourself. How much time can they devote To training? Is it a curricular extracurricular activity? Are you competing for time with uh the sport with academics etc. What are your facilities like? Uh at athletic lab we have un unbounded facilities. We can do whatever we want but there are times when we operate environments with some of our academy teams where we don't have

that luxury. We have to be a little bit more creative. How many athletes can we put in? How much equipment do we have? Uh do we have as many barbells as we need? So how can I maximize the training efficiency in the space and time that I have available? Ultimately the way to do this is to build a framework right if depending on how many years you have and most don't have the luxury of say a six or sevenyear LTAD curriculum you can develop a much longer vision again it should always start with that ideal

of developing a large movement library Before moving on to the more serious periodized planned progressive loading a basic framework might look something like this. Strength is going to be the development. So even if even at periods of time when we're not focusing on what is traditionally classified as strength like a barbell, kettle bell, dumbbell, etc., we're not lifting really heavy. Really what we're trying to do is prepare ourselves to lift heavy. Uh strength is a Foundational quality for all of these subsequent things like movement qualities, jumping, landing, gymnastics, sprinting, etc. U let's take a look

now at some examples from athletic lab. We have three programs within our long-term athletic development program. Business is called Athletic Lab. Our earliest program uh for foundation level athletes is called Lab Rats. Our middling program is called Scholastic Prep. The name alone indicates that it's leading Towards our final program, Scholastic. Here you can see the basic format that we see in each of these pathways. And these actually line up perfectly with the LTE network uh foundation development and performance categories. We move from very flexible to very planned progressive programming. Uh we have very broadbased skills

to more capacity specific skills. We're addressing things in in games and play early on and moving to more planned Progressive periodization following perhaps a short to long protocol for sprinting and more advanced weight training methodology. Uh we do assessments in each of these. So during lab rats, our assessments tend to be a little bit more subjective uh like the movement uh functional movement calculator that I showed you previously for scholastic prep. Now we're starting to integrate some tests of body weight strength uh Jumping tests, sprinting tests, many of which will actually carry over into Scholastic

so that we can see the long-term athletic development progression of these individuals. During the Scholastic program, we actually do daily monitoring every single day that an individual comes in for about two minutes every day. And then we end the session, end the block, a four-week training block with uh assessments. So, we tend in both Scholastic and Scholastic Prep. We have 13 four-week blocks that recycle throughout the course of the year. You can get on that training program at any point in time. And uh at the end of blocks in both Scholastic Prep and Scholastic, we're

doing some testing and assessments. And on a daily basis, we're doing some monitoring and assessments for the Scholastic program. A little bit deeper look at lab rats. Here's the basic structure. And these things work like a Conveyor belt. Uh we apply this same protocol in a team environment. However, as I'll talk about very briefly moving forward here, we have some luxuries that we don't have in this environment where we don't know when individuals might be coming in or their exact frequency and schedule. Here you see in that labrath program a lot of general movement skills

development, crawling, tumbling, catching, uh spending some time on games and speed agility. Our strength is going To be very very basic integration of movement patterns uh across every different p movement category. Really what I say about our lab rats program is it is fitness and motor skill competency masked as fun and games. So we're doing things like uh obstacle courses, things like balance games, things like rope climbing, gymnastics, tumbling, etc. gamifying to motivate and engage as much As possible. Uh incorporating some light age appropriate strength training. Here you see uh a very light bar and

light plates that looks like it's adult level stuff there, but that's about uh 10 kilos total, 10 20 kilos total. And then uh even our speed play might involve more engaging activities. In terms of the scholastic prep program, this is what's going to align with the development phase. Here you see that things become a Little bit more structured. We're now integrating some more structured plyometrics, speed development. Uh maybe even incorporating some conditioning at the end of the session. Our strength training is now a little bit more structured. It's not just uh kind of coach's choice

or athlete driven and technique focused. Now, we're starting to apply a little bit of progressive overload. Uh let's take a look at what this might look like in practice. Uh Here you see what an athlete might see uh when they came in for us and you'll get a good idea of what the program actually looks like. So if we look at earlier this week, the coach now has a choice uh based off of how many individuals came into the class, what type of activity they want to do. And this will change from cycle to cycle.

So the idea here is that I've incorporated a level of Structure and continuity within the given block but there is enough flexibility whether it is designated by how many people are in attendance on that day or by um what the coach feels like doing what they select that there will be a lot of variation. So there's a balance of structure and variation within this program. You can see here that uh on opposing days Monday and Tuesday, we're doing sprint type activity one day Versus plyometric type activity another day. Uh you can see that we're addressing

every single movement pattern in the gym for strength development and spending about 25 or so minutes on it. Uh and the coach has an opportunity to choose an activity as long as it's within that within that movement category. And then kind of our final peak of the pyramid program, Scholastic. Again, like a conveyor belt program. Now things are Much more structured, much more planned, progressive. We're keeping track of how much load is used on a given day, how fast sprints are. We're doing daily assessments at the start of every session. So it looks similar, but

you can of course see the uh greater structure, the tracking of the workouts, etc. So, uh, here's an example of the what might be seen from the athlete side on the, uh, Scholastic program. They've got a structured warm-up. It's going to incorporate different movement patterns. We're moving to some flexibility and some sprint development. We're doing a daily assessment with our output devices. We do them every single day. We have three different tests. Uh this really increases engagement. These are kids that spend all day oftentimes on a smartphone. So to see their progress and for us

to be able to reward and discuss and talk about uh their Their successes and maybe hint at the potential reasons for shortcomings is a great opportunity to start creating conversations. Uh each day has an element of speed training in it that is uh planned and progressive. In this program, this scholastic program, athletes are now able to enter their weights, track their weights. In some cases, they have uh suggested weights because we are now looking for progressive overload, forcing Progressive overload where necessary. Uh we do use output on a regular basis in these classes. As I

said, it starts with uh the daily assessment. So on a given day, an athlete comes in immediately after their warm-up, they're doing their daily assessment. Uh this day, week one, day two, this would have their daily assessment at the front end of the session. And then the weight set the portion of the weight room activity that is tracked using the output sensor when We do a amra or as many reps as possible that will then subsequently update their working max so that we get a planned progression moving forward for the next time they come in.

Uh we also do a lot of team training. This is very similar to what we do for scholastic or scholastic prep depending on the age category. But really what we're doing here is uh we're extensively engaging and attempting to integrate with the team Staff. So our best case scenario is we're wearing the team uniform even as the athletes come in and that's our coaches and we look like an extension of the staff. U the greater attendance and compliance is going to permit more advanced movement progressions. uh we don't because now we know when individuals are

coming in and even better equipment usage and maybe advanced sports technology. I know I'm a little bit over Here, but I want to wrap things up by saying long-term athletic development is something I'm very passionate about. It's an important process. We shouldn't jump forward in place short-term success over long-term success. To do that, we need to build a framework and document your pathway and processes along the way such as growth and development, physical development, um, and make sure that you are following best practices. Recognize developmental differences, especially During the foundation and developmental phase. Make sure

that you're adjusting training accordingly and not shortch changing any athletes that may be a late developer and spending too much time and attention on those who are precocious early developers. As always, you're going to be need need to be flexible and pragmatic in your implementation while following best practices for long-term athletic development. Uh parents can be a hassle. Sport coaches can be a hassle, But stand your ground. Make sure that you know what you're talking about. There's a wide range of research literature supporting everything that I've talked about here. I suggest that you have it

as so that you're armed and dangerous in terms of protecting what you know is best practice. To finish up here, remember, use Output Web coupon code for one free month access at ltadnetwork.com. Uh, I thank you Everyone for your attention. Apologize for going over by 20 minutes or so. Uh, this is my contact information here. I'm moderately active on Instagram. I have posted a lot of things in the past, but have been recently much less active. I have a coaching education course on Athletic Development or Athletic Lab Academy, excuse me. And then uh James and

I have worked very hard to put together a what we feel is the greatest library of information on everything Long-term athletic development from cradle to grave from youth through high performance on ltdnetwork.com. I encourage you to check it out. If you are ever in the area of athletic lab in North Carolina, you're welcome to stop in. We have visitors all the time. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you for output, for hosting me, and uh I if there's anyone still interested in questions, I'd be glad to take them. Oh, thank you, Mike. This

was Incredible. A a ton of really good info in there. Definitely has me reflecting on my time working with youth and high school athletes and uh a lot of the things that I could have done better. So, uh no, I feel uh I feel good. But I don't I don't know if we have any questions. If anyone has any, throw them in. But just got a lot of thank yous coming in. Yeah. And again, no, this is incredible. For everyone listening in, I'll make sure in the follow-up email There is the uh obviously the recording

will be in there. So, everyone who registered will get the recording and then also the output web coupon code for the long-term athletic development network will be in there as well. So, recording will be sent out soon and you'll have that uh coupon code in there as well. So, Mike, thank you. Man, this is uh absolutely incredible.