Understanding Athletic Development through the Sports Mastery Pyramid Model: Part 3 (last part)

Developmental Progressions for the 14-16 Age Group:

As the players progress to the 14-16 year old age range you will begin to see players emerge within a particular sport. Assuming you have set a solid foundation in the lower levels of the Sports Mastery model, at this level you will need to start a balanced approach to training. As you can see below, at this level players will need to focus equally on developing Techniques and Tactics, Specific Speed (Functionally Integrated Training), Speed / Power (usually in max speed and plyometric activities) and Strength / Conditioning. Not to be lost in this is the fact that the athlete will

Understanding Athletic Development through the Sports Mastery Pyramid Model: Part 2

Applying the System to Athletes within an Age Group:

When developing training programs off of these blocks we want to look at the total weekly training time and break up our training program into blocks of time that meet the needs of the individual. If you look at the model below we have put in red lines to represent training age and maturity within the program.

If you look at the red lines below you will see that the 9-10 year old boy who just began training, might need a fairly even distribution of all 7 modules within his weekly workouts, whereas a 11-12 year old girl

Understanding Athletic Development through the Sports Mastery Pyramid Model: Part 1

When designing programs we fall back on this model of athletic development and constantly reference it to insure the safest, most effective progression possible.

First we have to understand that this pyramid has 3 sides: