The Long Term Athlete Development & Physical Literacy

Sport Canada’s Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) plan focuses on the general framework of athlete development with special reference to growth, maturation and development, trainability, and sport system alignment and integration. The LTAD provides opportunity for involvement in lifelong activities by connecting physical education, elite sport and recreational sports programs. It consists of seven stages: Active Start, FUNdamentals, Learning to Train, Training to Train, Training to Compete, Training to Win, Active for Life. 

PlaySport specifically looks at the first two stages encouraging physical literacy and sport for all.  Physical literacy is competency in movement and sports skills which should be developed prior to the onset of adolescent growth spurt.

Physical literacy provides the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that lead to healthy active lives. Increased confidence, reversal of adolescent and adult obesity as well as cardiovascular disease should become more apparent in individuals who are physically literate. 

Improving student’s physical literacy will help with a number of different issues and act as building blocks for future education.

Physical literacy, however, is more than just being able to perform skills with efficient precisions. It also ensures that individuals possess the knowledge and understanding, the critical thinking and communication skills, and are able to apply their skills across a wide variety of activities. It is important to remember that physical literacy is not only about the physical aspect rather the whole body approach, including the thinking and feeling dimensions of a person. It is critical to identify, understand, think, communicate, and apply skills taught in physical education to the rest of your life.

 PlaySport focuses upon three main categories of FUNdamental skills: Stability, Locomotion and Manipulation. The most basic skill is stability; it refers to state of gaining or maintaining one’s equilibrium in reference to the force of gravity.  Many skills require a stable base of support in order to perform a task.  For example, bending, twisting, stretching, and turning.  The ready position is the stable home base position for several skills.  Locomotion is the transference of weight from one spot to another.  This includes: walking, running, jumping, and skipping.  Manipulation is the ability to control and maneuver an object.  For instance, manipulating a soccer ball with your foot or throwing a bean bag with your hands. 

Each skill has three phases which comprise of the Preparation, Execution and Follow Through. 

a) Preparation is steps leading up to an action;

b) Execution is during the time of contact; and,

c) Follow Through is the steps necessary to complete an action. 

Each phase is important and will have a different affect on the outcome of the action.  Knowledge and application of these phases is necessary for a wide variety of physical activities.

A FUNdamental skill is focused upon for each PlaySport activity. Couched within PlaySport’s TGfU approach to games, participants learn about skills by playing developmental games. Instructors can then use the game to point out to the participants ways to improve their skill. By playing the game, the relevance of the skill becomes more obvious to the participant and he/she is more likely to be more motivated to improve their skill.

The FUNdamental Skills portion of each PlaySport game provides instructors with tips to help improve the overall quality of a skill that is used within the PlaySport game itself. Instructors may choose to stop the game from time to time to provide feedback on how to improve skills by using the cues provided or they could provide time for participants to practice the skill outside of the game environment. The key, however, is to play the game first, provide opportunities for skill development either within or outside the game, and then ensure the participants have an opportunity to go back and apply their enhanced skill competence into the game so that they have an opportunity to apply their knowledge. The PlaySport games provide the venue to help participants understand the relevance of skills and thus not only enhance the chances of higher levels of motivation to practice skills, but also foster the transferability of more efficient skills back into the game.