Abstract
In recent decades, specialists have observed a decrease in the age at which children start performance activity in most sports as a result of increasingly higher athletic performance worldwide. Moreover, the dynamic of growth and development processes has changed, and one can notice the early onset of the signs of puberty and adolescence. The purpose of this paper is to highlight some important benchmarks of sports training for preschoolers and young school children, as a theoretical support for coaches involved in performance sports activity. Coaches obviously want to prove that they have effective training strategies to force the preparation of children in different stages of growth and development when their biological potential prevents them from providing the expected response to a demand. A good coach will always consider the physical, cognitive, emotional and social development of the child, being directly responsible for their long-term modelling. The training of preschool and young school children follows different strategies compared to advanced athletes, starting from the premise that a child is not a miniature adult. Thus, coaches should look beyond the need to achieve the best possible result in the shortest time and establish long-term training objectives for children. Such an approach will be possible only by knowing in detail the growth and development characteristics specific to each age stage, as well as children’s motor skills, predominantly playful manifestations and their desire to prove to others that they can. In conclusion, successful training for preschool and young school children is based on the interaction between play – train – compete – repeat!
Highlights
Predicting performance at young ages is difficult to achieve because not all functional abilities can be identified early and not all directions in which performance capacity will progress can be anticipated, given that motor development does not always have the same pace as physical development.Even if obtaining good results in competitions is a priority for any coach, there is no guarantee that young athletes in beginner groups will remain in performance activity
The purpose of this paper is to highlight some important benchmarks of sports training for preschoolers and young school children, as a theoretical support for coaches involved in performance sports activity
The training of preschool and young school children follows different strategies compared to advanced athletes, starting from the premise that a child is not a miniature adult
Summary
Predicting performance at young ages is difficult to achieve because not all functional abilities can be identified early and not all directions in which performance capacity will progress can be anticipated, given that motor development does not always have the same pace as physical development.Even if obtaining good results in competitions is a priority for any coach, there is no guarantee that young athletes in beginner groups will remain in performance activity. A number of children will only benefit from appropriate sports practice for an active lifestyle, without achieving remarkable results in competitions. Specialists have observed a decrease in the age at which children start performance activity in most sports as a result of increasingly higher athletic performance worldwide. The dynamic of growth and development processes has changed, and one can notice the early onset of the signs of puberty and adolescence. This dynamic, which is contained in secular trends along with children’s predilection for sedentary lifestyles and reduced time spent outdoors and which is influenced by macro-environmental and demographic changes (Dollman et al, 2005), is directly reflected in performance sport
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