Coaches Long term development program.

[Deleted member 9865]

I've heard it mentioned a few times, and I was wondering if anyone could give me a little help setting on up, the parts Im confused with :

How to make time to learn new skills while retaining old ones.
Should I advance at a groups pace or for each individual?
When learning new elements how long between sessions should I do prep work? e.g
if I do a prep for a front salto on a monday, but dont do it again until friday, will the work/progress be wasted?

Also any other tips would be appreciated, please and thank you

 

[Aussie_coach]

There are no simple answers to those questions. Everything will vary depending on the group, the age of the kids, the level of the kids, the differences in their abilities, the time of year you are at, how many hours they train and so on.

Your year should be organized based around the competition season in your area. So you will have the pre season time which is the time where you will do a lot of conditioning work, as well as focus on developing the skills needed for the upcoming season, with some upgrading work intermixed, but it would not be your focus. Then during the actual competition season there is less focus on conditioning and more focus on maintaining current conditioning level and major focus on routines. The post competition season is your main skill development time as well as a major conditioning development time. If you mix everything up randomly during the year, rather than have a year plan you will get poorer results. Skills are best learned when there is a solid period of time to work on them daily. Not working say routines one day and new skills the next.

In general the group will advance together in many ways. If the kids are a similar level to each other and are on a similar level. So you would set up drills and develop skills for the whole group but at the same time an individual focus is needed. Generally it is best to have goals for the group as well as goals for the individual.

If you are learning new skills its best not to go too long between preps. Muscle memory lasts around 3 days, so if you wait longer the kids have to relearn a lot each time they go to the skill. So it is best to work on the drills each session if you are aiming for new skills. This is why its important to work in seasons. It gives you a chance to have a good solid period of time to drill the new skills you need every day without having to focus on routines.