Lessons learned from building an LTAD pathway in a school setting
Stephen O’Hanrahan
21st Feb 2023
When I first started my current role in 2020 I was tasked with athletic development for two rugby teams, spanning roughly 70 of our 550+ students. This is how things had always been done, but we as a school wanted to think bigger and turn our ship around. Our main goals were:
1. Increase the quality of S&C being provided, through a modern evidence-based approach.
2. Increase the quantity of students doing S&C in rugby and other sports.
Essentially, I needed to create an LTAD pathway for a school which had never had one in its 70-year history. There is so much that goes into youth strength and conditioning from a programming perspective including maturation considerations, competency-based progression systems for resistance training and application of models such as the YPD and LTAD. However, that discussion is for another time.
Instead of outlining the nitty-gritty details of our programmes, I’m going to discuss some of the vital lessons I have learned in the last 3 years trying to build an LTAD pathway from scratch.
Get the key stakeholders involved
As S&C coaches we often think of ourselves as a one-man army, but it is integral to get the key stakeholders in your organisation on board with the vision you have for athletic development. Not only will this improve the quality of your programme, but it will also make your job 10 times easier! These can include:
- Coaches: Talk to them about what they want from you. What do they see as their team’s KPI? If it’s speed, you must consider how everything you do in gym and on pitch will help that.
- Principal/Board of Management: Do they understand why S&C is important for the students? Look beyond sports performance and educate on the endless benefits exercise will have on the students’ quality of life, especially as they age.
- Parents: What is their role in all of this? We ran a “Wellness in Sport and Exercise” evening recently where we discussed the importance of recovery, nutrition and sleep and how they could help their son with this at home. Trust me, they want to be involved!
- Students: Get them excited about S&C! Constantly remind them of the rationale behind your training methods, introduce a variety of exercises and show them how S&C can improve their strength, fitness and sports performance.
Join a growing network of professionals in strength and conditioning and sports science!
“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”– Socrates
This ties into the previous point but education is absolutely massive!
Explain the why behind everything to your students! Why do we do squats in the gym, and why start with bodyweight squats versus loading up 100kg on back squats on day 1? On pitch, what is the point of doing 10 tempo runs vs a 10k? Why do we need to warm up first? Why, why, why? It’s important that the students understand the rationale behind your programmes to get that buy-in and convince them there’s a method to the madness.
This relates to skills coaches as well. Educate and discuss management of running loads, deload weeks or the use of small-sided games to get a conditioning hit without taking away from skill development. Engage in conversations about training as regularly as you can to ensure that what you do on and off-pitch complement each other. If you’re rowing in different directions, that boat will never move!
An emphasis on education will also help to hold yourself accountable as a coach. I regularly encourage the students to ask me questions on my programmes. If I can’t give a proper answer then I need to rethink my strategy!
Patience is a virtue
If you have worked with teenage males then you will know that the one thing they’re not gifted with is patience…especially when it comes to lifting weights! On the very first day of our 1st Year S&C programme this year I had three (yes three!) students approach me and ask “can we deadlift today?”. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the ambition, but you must educate your athletes on why they need to be patient. I always tell them “Results might take some time, but they WILL happen!”
You as a coach also have to show patience. Just because an exercise isn’t working, it doesn’t mean it will never work! When coaching a 1st or 2nd Year remember that they will have another 4-5 years in the school with you. If a coaching approach doesn’t work immediately, don’t just throw it away! Take a deep breath, a step back and enjoy the opportunity to problem-solve and develop your coaching skills.
General to Specific
A traditional periodisation model would recommend progressing from general to specific preparatory phases. Our 6-year pathway is no different! We start with the fundamentals because…THEY WORK! Our 1st Year sessions would comprise of overhead squats with a dowel, tempo pushups and isometric holds (planks, wall sits etc) among others. Only when they demonstrate competency in these movements can the students progress onto more advanced, resistance-based exercises. As their training age, competency and experience advances we can introduce our Olympic lift derivatives, advanced plyometrics and injury prevention strategies specific to the sport (e.g. rugby, football or basketball). The end goal would be our older groups (e.g. Senior Cup Team) would use advanced training methods like velocity-based training, resisted sprinting and intense plyometrics.
Also remember that making your programmes too specific too soon is not just unwise from a long-term athletic development standpoint but will also leave you with nowhere to go pretty quickly as you’ve shown all your cards! Keep in mind that we are building all-round athletes for life, and not just the few years we might have them on our roster!
Know your athletes!
This is something which I think can genuinely make or break your programme and a skill you can only learn with time and experience. “Know your athletes” can be broken into two parts:
1. Different groups require different approaches
Let’s take our youngest and oldest groups as an example, 1st Years and Senior Cup Team (SCT) respectively. They will differ HUGELY in terms of physical and social barriers to athletic development.
Physical: 1st Years don’t have the competency and general strength capacities to perform heavy resistance training. The SCT do.
Social: 1st Years very much need to be supervised at all times. Working in a school, you’re seen as a teacher, and essentially have to act like one. The coaching will be very hands-on, constantly talking and moving from one student to the next. Establishing control of the group and being very strict on the rules will help you massively.
The SCT on the other hand can be trusted a lot more to go about their business, given the right training age and level of competency. This doesn’t mean that we put the feet up, but moreso take a “stand back and observe approach”, where you must ask “who do I need to coach the MOST?”. These athletes can then be given more detailed and individualised coaching.
2. Different people require different approaches
The beauty of working with 250+ athletes on a weekly basis is that you see how unique their personalities and learning styles are. Some will require a stern, authoritarian coach while others need a friendlier touch.
From a technical coaching perspective, you will find that their ways of learning vary hugely. Some are visual learnersand need to watch you or another athlete demonstrate a movement to understand it. Others are kinesthetic/tactile learners and will learn a great deal more from practicing the movement itself and getting a feel for what does and doesn’t work.
Your use of cues can be individualised also. External cues (e.g. push the bar to the ceiling, push the floor away) work best for some students, whereas others react better to internal cues (e.g. chest up, squeeze your shoulder blades) and some enjoy a mixture of both.
Video can also be a great tool if you find that demonstration, practice and varying your cues hasn’t worked. You’d be surprised how easy it is for an athlete to NOT feel a hip shift in a squat or lack of range of motion in an overhead press.
The greatest individualisation however will come when searching ways to motivate your athletes. A few examples of common personalities I have come across are:
“The Hulk”: Lacks motivation unless directly challenged. These students need to be given targets or put in competition with their team-mates to elicit maximum effort. Make him/her angry and see what happens… (within reason!!!)
“The Constant Critic”: He/she will get down over minor setbacks and lacks belief when not seeing the instant results that they want. Regular praise and encouragement is advised here and celebrate any wins, big or small. Remind them of how far they have come and reinstill that confidence.
“The ‘S&C ain’t my thing’ guy”: Every coach’s nightmare is thinking that an athlete doesn’t care as much about S&C as we do. But don’t take it personally! These players much prefer to play the sport than be in the gym. Their motivation needs to be stoked by illustrating the link between what we do in the gym and what happens on the pitch.
“The Doubter”: Similar to “The Constant Critic”, this athlete doesn’t believe in themselves anywhere near as much as they should! This could be a social thing and maybe they’re a naturally shy, quiet person who doesn’t like any spotlight being shone their way. Personally and directly congratulate them on any gains or improvements they make and try to instil the self-belief that they deserve.
Join a growing network of professionals in strength and conditioning and sports science. Get involved in discussions with world-leading practitioners and use our forum to make invaluable connections.
Competition is King
The BIG question when working with teenagers…how do you avoid monotony? They have lived their whole lives in a world where the internet is at their fingertips, a world of instant gratification, where they are constantly chasing a dopamine hit on social media. This has led to a real risk of disengagement when they don’t see instant results. So how do we combat this?
The best way I have found is through competition. With our SCT (16-18 years of age) we would regularly use Output Sports sensors for things like CMJ, 10-5 RSI and max power tracking on bench press and back squat. This gives us a live leaderboard for the team in every session. There’s nowhere to hide when their mate beats them by 1cm or a few watts. (See video link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avR5RuyNwv4 )
But you don’t need fancy technology to make things competitive. With our 1st Years for example, we use wall drills and banded march exercises to teach acceleration mechanics, but their heads start to spin when we discuss “negative shin angles”, “projection angle” and “low foot recovery”. Put them in races against each other or even chase each other within drills and watch the energy levels go through the roof! Instead of 3 sets of tempo pushups (which are brilliant don’t get me wrong!) put them 1 v 1 and see who can do the most pushups, or longest plank or single leg wall sits for example.
Not only will a competitive edge keep students engaged, it’s fun and at the end of the day that’s all that matters when working in a school setting.
MOST IMPORTANTLY…BE YOURSELF
The endearing beauty of S&C as a profession for me is that we all learn roughly the same subject matter, but how we deliver it varies HUGELY, not just in our choices of programming but in how we deliver that programme as a person. You could give 100 S&C coaches the exact same athlete or team with the same goals, injury history, sport etc and I truly believe you would get 100 unique programmes.
The reason I love coaching is because it has given me confidence that I never knew I had and every day I get to express myself and become a better person for it. Don’t be the same as everyone else, all those personalities are taken already. Put your stamp on your role and make sure that every day when the alarm clock goes off at 6 in the morning it’s not met with a scowl but a grin, because you’re going to make a real impact on people’s lives.
It's not an easy job but if you’re passionate about being an S&C coach, then it really is the best job in the world. Back yourself and your skillset and get after it!
Stephen O’Hanrahan
- Head of Strength & Conditioning, CBC Monkstown
For more content from Stephen, follow him on LinkedIn (@Stephen O’Hanrahan),
