Long Term Athlete Development: Event Alignment

[im]

So AO has posted changes for the upcoming season based on LTAD.

Indoors:

Bantam: 60m, 150m, 800m and 1200m races in place
of the traditional 60m, 200m, 400m, 800m 1500m and 3000m format

Midget Boys and Girls: 60m, 200m, 300m, 800m, 1200m, 2000m in
place of 60m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 1500m and 3000m

Outdoors:

Bantams will contest the 80m sprint (instead of the 100m), the 150m, 800m, 1200m, 80mH, 200mH, High Jump, Long Jump, Triple Jump and the three traditional throws

Midgets will do the following events at the provincial championships: 100m, 200m, 300m, 800m, 1200m, 2000m, 80/100mH, 200mH

What is interesting is, i was talking with a friend who runs elementary school meets and he didn't know of the changes. How is this model going to work if elementary meets continue to run 400 and 1500m races?

Shouldn't everyone be on the same page?

[nscoach67]

Heard this was coming.

Everyone should be on the same page if we could get everyone to agree.

Do we still send Junior Women to international games in the 5000m even though our National Juniors run 3000m?

Will this affect the Legion Games distances?

[skuja]

Oct 15, 2009 18:51:16 GMT -5 im said:

So AO has posted changes for the upcoming season based on LTAD.

Indoors:

Bantam: 60m, 150m, 800m and 1200m races in place
of the traditional 60m, 200m, 400m, 800m 1500m and 3000m format

Midget Boys and Girls: 60m, 200m, 300m, 800m, 1200m, 2000m in
place of 60m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 1500m and 3000m

Outdoors:

Bantams will contest the 80m sprint (instead of the 100m), the 150m, 800m, 1200m, 80mH, 200mH, High Jump, Long Jump, Triple Jump and the three traditional throws

Midgets will do the following events at the provincial championships: 100m, 200m, 300m, 800m, 1200m, 2000m, 80/100mH, 200mH

What is interesting is, i was talking with a friend who runs elementary school meets and he didn't know of the changes. How is this model going to work if elementary meets continue to run 400 and 1500m races?

Shouldn't everyone be on the same page?

My first reaction to this is....YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING! Don't tell me.....someone did a study and determined that 400m races are "bad" for Bantams-Midgets.

HOGWASH!

They very erroneously base their findings on how mature athletes race and the demands of the event at that level. It's absolute stupidity to transfer these findings to Bantam-Midget age.

[skuja]

They also think that "development" is all about using the "correct" race distances. It isn't.

1200m and 2000m for Midgets.....what a joke!!! 80% and 133% of the 1500m, but, the 1500m is "bad".

[coachj]

sigh....*

[moorezy]

were going backwards!

[skuja]

Oct 16, 2009 9:33:55 GMT -5 coachj said:

sigh....*

Tell me how you really feel, asterisk and all.

[random]

As a developmental coach working with these age groups I have no problem with the changes.

There have been a number of studies on lactic power and lactic capacity in young athletes. They've found that athletes doing hard efforts that are anaerobic in nature do not have the ability to cope with the event demands and do not recover properly.

Looking back at top-10 lists or provincial rankings for young athletes, specifically in the 400m, you'll see that a lot of the top runners at the ages 10-14 never pan out, due to either mental or physical burn-out. In some cases you have the freaks that continue on, but for the most part they fall off the face of the earth. These changes are made to help the majority of the athletes. You'll note that of our best 400m/800m runners over the past decade many have come to the events from shorter sprints 100m/200m or jumps. Think Gary Reed, Diane Cummins, Tyler Christopher, Shane Niemi...

I do like the fact that a good bantam male should be able to cover the 1200m in 3:30-3:40 or 150m in 19-21 seconds. Get these athletes used to running hard for that period of time.

In an ideal world all coaches would be training their developing athletes in the proper fashion, with long term development in mind. This is not the case as most just train their young athletes to win, and competition is a poor guideline for this. Racing a 400m isn't going to kill a kid, it's all the training that is going to be detrimental. So these event changes are the start of an education process. A shocking majority of coaches have not heard of Long Term Athlete Development. The best coaches have been doing it all along, before it was even a catchphrase.

The Europeans have switched away from the traditional events for developing their athletes, and have had positive outcomes. I prefer going with that model, rather than doing what we and the United States have done too often, and basically ruined/turned away a lot of potential by training them as mature elite athletes at 10 years old.

The hard thing is going to be getting everyone on board. All the AC branches will have the same events and specifications from PeeWee to Youth (The IAAF will still apply to the Juniors and Seniors). The Legion will likely adopt these events as there is a strong collaboration with AC and the Legion. The schools will be tough, it'll be part education and part equipment upgrades.

[pq]

random,

have I misread the changes? It looks to me like the change in emphasis is to move toward generally shorter (i.e. more anaerobic) events.

[Steve Weiler]

I believe it was stated that the school boards are hoped to be on board by 2011 or 2012, something like that.

My understanding is that the changes center around avoiding the events that produce the highest amounts of lactic acid (and as random points out it's not just the racing but the training) as well as setting up a progression in the longest distances.

Rather then someone running 3,000m from elementary school through CIS and then bawking at the mention of a 5,000m/10,000m/longer, we will have athletes 'moving up' from 1,200m to 2,000m to 3,000m in their early years and setting the precedent for continuing to move up in their late teens, should that be appropriate.

It may help to think of the time it takes such athletes to run these events compared to a senior athlete, which again random already mentioned.

im, change takes time.

[Steve Weiler]

This is based on the AC Long Term Athlete Development model sent to coaches/clubs back in 2006 or 2007 which was designed by Istvan Balyi, Derek Evely, Alex Gardiner, Wynn Gmitroski, Martin Goulet, Les Gramantik, Donna Kaye, Bruce Pirnie, Daniel St. Hilaire, and Kevin Tyler.

www.athleticsontario.ca/Groups/Resources/LTAD_EN.pdf

Also:

"The Legion programme is scheduled to align by
the 2010 outdoor season. It is hoped that the
schools will follow in 2012."

[skuja]

Oct 16, 2009 13:35:06 GMT -5 Steve Weiler said:

This is based on the AC Long Term Athlete Development model sent to coaches/clubs back in 2006 or 2007 which was designed by Istvan Balyi, Derek Evely, Alex Gardiner, Wynn Gmitroski, Martin Goulet, Les Gramantik, Donna Kaye, Bruce Pirnie, Daniel St. Hilaire, and Kevin Tyler.

www.athleticsontario.ca/Groups/Resources/LTAD_EN.pdf

Also:

"The Legion programme is scheduled to align by
the 2010 outdoor season. It is hoped that the
schools will follow in 2012."

I do admire this document very much, Steve, but I missed the part where certain race distances are recommended, or frowned upon. (Not trying to be smart - can you provide the page# or quote. Thanks.)

[Steve Weiler]

That was the starting point, upon the expert input I would hope any further AC LTAD concepts are based upon. As the most recent AO newsletter states:

"Several years ago Sport Canada issued a requirement for all sports to align their competitive programmes for their age groups with the Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) Model that each sport had prepared earlier. After considerable information gathering, at east two nationwide meetings and a great deal of compromise on everyone’s part the age group event alignment for Athletics is ready to roll, beginning with the track events in the upcoming indoor season."

I'll admit I cringed a bit when reading "at (l)east" and "compromise."

Not saying it's perfect - not that I would know better - just trying to provide some info and voicing my opinion that I like the progression in the longer distances event for the reasons I stated earlier. I don't know which of the original authors were involved in deciding these events; obviously some have left Canada, but I hope others have remained involved in this LTAD project.

[random]

From my understanding the meetings involved the technical directors and coaches from each province and represented all event groups. I know the AC Coaches (Gramantik, Gmitroski, Bondarchuk) reviewed the changes and made several recommendations. The fact that there was compromise is a little disheartening.

[runningispain]

Oct 16, 2009 11:21:12 GMT -5 random said:

As a developmental coach working with these age groups I have no problem with the changes.

There have been a number of studies on lactic power and lactic capacity in young athletes. They've found that athletes doing hard efforts that are anaerobic in nature do not have the ability to cope with the event demands and do not recover properly.

Looking back at top-10 lists or provincial rankings for young athletes, specifically in the 400m, you'll see that a lot of the top runners at the ages 10-14 never pan out, due to either mental or physical burn-out. In some cases you have the freaks that continue on, but for the most part they fall off the face of the earth. These changes are made to help the majority of the athletes. You'll note that of our best 400m/800m runners over the past decade many have come to the events from shorter sprints 100m/200m or jumps. Think Gary Reed, Diane Cummins, Tyler Christopher, Shane Niemi...

I do like the fact that a good bantam male should be able to cover the 1200m in 3:30-3:40 or 150m in 19-21 seconds. Get these athletes used to running hard for that period of time.

In an ideal world all coaches would be training their developing athletes in the proper fashion, with long term development in mind. This is not the case as most just train their young athletes to win, and competition is a poor guideline for this. Racing a 400m isn't going to kill a kid, it's all the training that is going to be detrimental. So these event changes are the start of an education process. A shocking majority of coaches have not heard of Long Term Athlete Development. The best coaches have been doing it all along, before it was even a catchphrase.

The Europeans have switched away from the traditional events for developing their athletes, and have had positive outcomes. I prefer going with that model, rather than doing what we and the United States have done too often, and basically ruined/turned away a lot of potential by training them as mature elite athletes at 10 years old.

The hard thing is going to be getting everyone on board. All the AC branches will have the same events and specifications from PeeWee to Youth (The IAAF will still apply to the Juniors and Seniors). The Legion will likely adopt these events as there is a strong collaboration with AC and the Legion. The schools will be tough, it'll be part education and part equipment upgrades.

The reason for burnouts is for people getting physicaly mature early and not having the talent to continue on later in life or they think they have better things to do (which they dont). Races are all hard (maybe not the sprints) but it all depends how hard you run it. For the record I believe the 800m is the hardest race out of all of them and they didnt edit that one. Thats my opinion I race 400m-xc

[coachc]

Didn't AO just increase all the distances for XC last year for those very age groups because the old distances were too short and now we're talking about decreasing the length of distance events for track because somehow they're all too long and bad for their development. The two changes don't seem to be going in the same direction.

[Steve Weiler]

Oct 16, 2009 17:35:48 GMT -5 coachc said:

Didn't AO just increase all the distances for XC last year for those very age groups because the old distances were too short and now we're talking about decreasing the length of distance events for track because somehow they're all too long and bad for their development. The two changes don't seem to be going in the same direction.

That is one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that AO was petitioned to (voted upon, and agree to) change the Championship XC distances to better align with AC/International distances as well as to provide a consistent, long-term progression. If you agree that this is sound reasoning, then you may be happy to imply similar reasoning from the consistent, long-term progression of 'longest' track distances.

Looking at the set distances, I personally expect to see scenarios as 'allowing' a 2nd year midget to race 3,000m at an open meet (longer then the championship 2,000m) in the summer leading up to where he'll race 6k xc. Actually, between the school meets for the next few years and open/twilights, there may only be 1 meet where he'd have to race 2,000m. Anyway, I don't see that as any different then say a 2nd year Youth boy (17) racing his first 5,000m, if he is ready for it.

If you believe athletes should race the same distances on the track as on xc/roads at the same age, I believe that is a different topic but perhaps one worth exploring.

[journeyman]

Interesting. I believe the distances in Quebec are already something like this for kids.

[ronb]

omg.....Where to start on this one?
Firstly, let us all pray that the Jamaicans and Americans and Kenyans and Ethiopians don't get hold of this vital information. As long as it's just the Europeans, they are still running like shit, so that's cool.
How much did this cost us? All these "experts"? And the provincial technical directors and coaches? Even more experts? How many of these "experts" actually developed an athlete from a school age to the top level? If not, obviously they just went to meetings, and regurgitated theories, with 1 or so obvious exceptions.
I had a meeting with 2 of these experts one day, to deal with an elite female athlete I was coaching at the time......all they really wanted to know was how much creatine she was taking. The answer was none, but this did not seem to be a satisfactory response.
Anyways,
Who ever was "training them as mature elite athletes at 10 years old", random?
How many of our top ranked athletes "shouldn't" be there, according to this document.
If I had to name 20 ways to improve the world standing of our top athletes, spending a bunch of time changing age-class events would not be ranked in the top 20. I understand there is much more to our sport than achieving a high National ranking, but that seems to be the critical metric, and the anticipated outcome here.
You would have to be less than an idiot to whip a bunch of anaerobic training on a young kid.
Did we really have to develop this document to confirm that there are some idiots in the world?
I guess it's better than sending "losers" to the World Cross Country Championships.
The exact distance of aerobic events is basically irrelevant at a young and intermediate
age. Aerobic fitness and efficient running form will prevail over a wide range of distances.
Make it fun, and build the pool, and they will come.

Current rant over...

[coachc]

Oct 16, 2009 20:33:06 GMT -5 ronb said:

The exact distance of aerobic events is basically irrelevant at a young and intermediate
age. Aerobic fitness and efficient running form will prevail over a wide range of distances.
Make it fun, and build the pool, and they will come.

Well said and FREE. I wonder how much these so called "experts" extracted from AC to come up with this idea or is this just another example of making changes so you can justify the money paid to you to come up with some ( any) kind of plan to change our fortunes in the world of elite track and field.

It will be interesting to see just how many schools, municipalities seem willing to pay to have these new staggered start lines painted on the tracks considering most of them get very little if any attention/maintenance.

[skuja]

Personally, I think that document is wonderful. It's the right "philosophy" imho.

But these distances, and the reasoning behind them....(linked to the document? I lolled! I think the wrong conclusions have been made.).....

Someone spoke about how wonderful it is that 300 and 1200 will take about 45 and 3:30 for many.....ironic that this is EQUAL in duration to those "nasty" distances at the top levels. If 400m takes 65sec to traverse, is it still "bad for you"?

Show me one study please, which concludes that a 14yr old racing 400m is a bad thing.

[skuja]

Oct 16, 2009 11:21:12 GMT -5 random said:

Looking back at top-10 lists or provincial rankings for young athletes, specifically in the 400m, you'll see that a lot of the top runners at the ages 10-14 never pan out, due to either mental or physical burn-out. In some cases you have the freaks that continue on, but for the most part they fall off the face of the earth. These changes are made to help the majority of the athletes. You'll note that of our best 400m/800m runners over the past decade many have come to the events from shorter sprints 100m/200m or jumps. Think Gary Reed, Diane Cummins, Tyler Christopher, Shane Niemi...

First of all those top 10 lists for that age should be burned. Secondly, this "failure" has 100 reasons, and imho, keeping distances at 100-200-400-800-1500-3000 is NOT one of those reasons.

[skuja]

Oct 16, 2009 22:34:31 GMT -5 skuja said:

Oct 16, 2009 11:21:12 GMT -5 random said:

Looking back at top-10 lists or provincial rankings for young athletes, specifically in the 400m, you'll see that a lot of the top runners at the ages 10-14 never pan out, due to either mental or physical burn-out. In some cases you have the freaks that continue on, but for the most part they fall off the face of the earth. These changes are made to help the majority of the athletes. You'll note that of our best 400m/800m runners over the past decade many have come to the events from shorter sprints 100m/200m or jumps. Think Gary Reed, Diane Cummins, Tyler Christopher, Shane Niemi...

First of all those top 10 lists for that age should be burned. Secondly, this "failure" has 100 reasons, and imho, keeping distances at 100-200-400-800-1500-3000 is NOT one of those reasons.

In fact, what random wrote there is priceless for so many reasons, and please don't see this as me beating up on you, random.

Gee....the top 10s at a young age never pan out....some freaks continue but fall off the face of the earth......well what the? What could possibly be wrong here?

Note the sarcasm, and Oldster, do step in at anytime.

[Steve Weiler]

Skuf, I re-read the document carefully; I was assuming (hoping) this was based on the '06 LTAD, but I do not see direct ties, as you have pointed out. I hope that both are part of a clear, cohesive vision. I wish I didn't have to use the word hope so much

[skuja]

Oct 16, 2009 23:14:24 GMT -5 Steve Weiler said:

Skuf, I re-read the document carefully; I was assuming (hoping) this was based on the '06 LTAD, but I do not see direct ties, as you have pointed out. I hope that both are part of a clear, cohesive vision. I wish I didn't have to use the word hope so much

Skuf, LOL. There's something very funny about that typo.

You know, actually, it's exciting to do these new distances. Hell, I'd enjoy a meet that has 80m, 150m, 300m, (why not 600m?...is it "bad"?), (ditto 1000m), 1200m, 2000m.

But the reasoning, imho, is completely flawed, and cannot possibly be directly related to that document. Can it?

[coachj]

I can't even find words that describe how silly this is going to be...

Look at hockey - Lets make bigger nets..No lets make smaller equipment no lets have nobody in the blue zone...no no lets take away the goalies ability to play the puck- no hang on...Lets allow 2 line passes... I hear that they are thinking of not allowing passes in the third period??!!

Baseball, we play on smaller diamonds because they can't hit/ throw the ball far enough - not because they cant run the 90 feet -

Soccer, it was all about control and the ability to keep the flow of the game -

WAIT!! it should be 84m and a 168m -- Ahhh yes Gerry, the MINDS!!

Somewhere in the world every 15 seconds another persona laughs at us...

The only way we will ever catch up to the other side of the world is when they get PS3's - School buss , drive thru's and Guess Jeans.

Ronb as always, a good read...

[SI]

Oct 17, 2009 7:06:35 GMT -5 coachj said:

Look at hockey - Lets make bigger nets..No lets make smaller equipment no lets have nobody in the blue zone...no no lets take away the goalies ability to play the puck- no hang on...Lets allow 2 line passes... I hear that they are thinking of not allowing passes in the third period??!!

Baseball, we play on smaller diamonds because they can't hit/ throw the ball far enough - not because they cant run the 90 feet -

Next thing you know, people will be arguing that easier standards will make us better.

[random]

No actually it's because they are stunted by the hard early workouts...well at least according to the research.

An 800m run by a 10 year old in 3 minutes has a much different physical impact than an 800m ran by a 23 year old woman in 2 minutes.

[skuja]

Oct 17, 2009 10:22:54 GMT -5 random said:

No actually it's because they are stunted by the hard early workouts...well at least according to the research.

An 800m run by a 10 year old in 3 minutes has a much different physical impact than an 800m ran by a 23 year old woman in 2 minutes.

Precisely! And a 400m by a 23yr old in 47sec sec vs a 400m by a 12yr old in 72sec, where they sprint for 150, "cruise" for 200, speed up the last 50, is also a very very different thing. And there's no need to make it 300m instead.

[skuja]

Oct 17, 2009 10:22:54 GMT -5 random said:

No actually it's because they are stunted by the hard early workouts...well at least according to the research.

I know it looks like I'm picking on you. I'm not.

Did this research only involve kids who were being coached very very badly? Why are kids doing "hard early workouts specifically for one distance"? THAT is the problem, not the race distances.

The tail has wagged the dog in AO.