More About Physical Literacy at the Learn to Train Stage

This is the most important stage for the development of sport specific skills as it is a period of accelerated learning of coordination and fine motor control.

While it is still too early for specialization in late specialization sports, many children at this age will have developed a preference for a certain sport. For full athletic development they need to engage in a broad range of activities, playing at least two to three different sports.

Competition is important, but learning to compete should be the focus – not winning. For best long-term results, 70% of time in the sport should be spent in practice, with only 30% spent on competition.

Things to think about:

• This is the time to develop and refine all fundamental movement skills, and learn overall sport skills.
• Work on flexibility and build endurance through games and relays.
• The brain is nearing adult size and complexity and is capable of very refined skill performance.
• Late developers (those who enter puberty later than their peers) have an advantage when it comes to learning skills as this stage lasts longer for them.
• By this age, children have developed clear ideas about the sports they like and feel successful in. This should be encouraged.
• However, focusing only on one sport year round should still be discouraged.

Learn to Train – Physical literacy activities

• Continue to encourage children to engage in daily unstructured physical play with their friends, regardless of the weather.
• Enrol them in minor sport programs each season, and have them try different positions or events – they might discover an unexpected affinity.
• Entice children to take to play different sports at school, during physical education classes, intramurals or on school teams if their possible.
• Try to have them take part in some land-based, some water-based and some snow- and ice-based activities.
• Keep children working on flexibility, speed, endurance and strength.
• For strength activities they should use their own body weight, Swiss balls or medicine balls – not heavy weights.
• Keep sport and physical activity FUN.

Tracking the end of childhood

The Learn to Train stage of development ends with the onset of puberty and the rapid growth that accompanies it. There is a simple way to track the onset of adolescence.

Many parents go through the birthday ritual of measuring how tall a child has become – and often have the birthday heights etched on the kitchen doorframe. Recording these heights shows us how tall the child is. If we look at how much the child has grown since their last birthday we get a measure of how fast they are growing. This is called “height velocity”.

During the years from about age six until the onset of puberty, children grow at a fairly constant rate – usually five to six centimetres per year. If the value increases, you’ll know the child is starting the adolescent growth spurt and that puberty is not far behind. Recording and plotting height every three months from about age eight onwards provides an even more accurate picture. See “The Role of Measuring Growth in Long-term Athlete Development”.