Monitoring Growth in LTAD (Istvan Balyi)

When a coach designs a training, competition, and recovery program for an athlete, the age of the athlete must be taken into consideration. However, along with chronological age, other factors must be taken into consideration as well. This cannot simply be done by checking the athlete’s date of birth.

Obviously athletes with the same chronological age but differing developmental age need different fitness and skill programs. As well, coaches need to consider mental, cognitive and emotional development in planning and programming. Too often, programs are based on chronological age and disregard developmental age (early, average and late maturers).

The tempo of the maturation process can vary greatly between athletes. A child with a chronological age of 12 years could be nine or fifteen years old developmentally. The difference between a nine-year-old and a 15-year-old is huge; in spite of this biological difference, these athletes are often trained the same way and participate in the same age group competitions. The solution is to track growth, monitor developmental age, and adjust training and competition programs accordingly for each athlete.

In order to track growth, coaches need to collect data on a longitudinal basis. Measurements should be done quarterly – every three months – and standing height (stature), sitting height and arms span should be measured. By these measurements coaches can identify what part of the body is growing faster; legs are usually first, arms are second, and the trunk is third.

By measuring standing height and sitting height the tempo of growth of the legs and the trunk can be identified, which yields important information to the coach. During the growth spurt the centre of gravity is rapidly changing and it has a negative effect on skills and often on speed (acceleration, deceleration, change of direction) and other capacities.

Refer to The Role of Monitoring Growth in LTAD to learn more about how to measure correctly, why and when; and use Appendix 4 from the document to help track growth over time.

Some key points to remember:

• Take measurements quarterly (every 3 months).
• Take measurements as close as possible to the same date in the month and also at the same time of day.
• Set aside part of the training session for measuring.
• Take measurements after a day of rest (this will ensure there are no confounding effects of training from the previous day).

Istvan Balyi
Istvan Balyi is a member of the Canadian Sport for Life Leadership Team and a world renowned coaching educator; his series on Long-term Athlete Development (LTAD) and periodization have been published in numerous countries. He has worked with 16 Canadian National Teams as high performance advisor and planning and periodization consultant for Major Games.
Istvan is currently LTAD advisor for The Kingdom of Bahrain, South Africa and Sport Canada. He worked with 19 sports in the UK on LTAD, and presently works with 21 Canadian sports to develop sport-specific LTAD models, including Athletics Canada, Basketball Canada, CanoeKayak Canada, Rowing and Speed Skating Canada. He has authored 3 books, published over 75 chapters and articles and delivered over 400 presentations at national and international conferences on LTAD and Planning and Periodization.