Long Term Junior Development at Valencia Country Club

Generally speaking in the United States we are behind in developing athletes. Now don't go crazy, yeah i know we have the best athletes in the world but with the resources that we have access to we should dominate in every field not just the few that we see. We also are seeing the rest of the world surpass our athletes across the board. You ask why this is...Democracy! Other Countries' Governments have invested in LTAD(Long-Term Athlete Development). There is so much information out there and most of it has been compiled by countries such as Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden even the Eastern Block Countries were using this technology. Some countries were using this knowledge even before they knew it and thought it was just a hypothesis.

What we will be teaching your children at Valencia Country Club is "physical literacy." Sports are split into two developmental areas. There are early specialization and late specialization sports. Early specialization sports are artistic and aerobic. These sports are gymnastics, figure skating, diving and swimming. There are 4 stages:

1. Training to Train
2. Training to Compete
3. Training to Win
4. Retirement and retainment

In Late Specialization Sports (Track and Field, Team Sports, Golf, etc)there are 6 stages:

1. FUNdamental
2. Learning to Train
3. Training to Train
4. Training to Compete
5. Training to Win
6. Retirement and retainment

The two stages we will be spending the majority of our time working on at Valencia are FUNdamental and Learning to Train. The primary effort will be spent working on the FUNdamental stage. We will teach the children functional movement patterns that will make them better athletes for the rest of their lives. The way sports has been taught in America is like teaching Calculus without knowing how to count. The key points of FUNdamentals are:

• Participation in as many sports as possible
• Speed, power and endurance are developed using FUN games
• Appropriate and correct running, jumping and throwing techniques are taught using the ABC's of athletics
• Introduction to the simple rules and ethics of golf
• Strength training with exercises which use the child's own body weight; medicine ball and Swiss ball exercises
• Develop the child's:
• ABC's (Agility, Balance, Coordination, and Speed
• RJT (Running, Jumping, Throwing)
• CKs (Catching, Kicking, Striking with and implement)

Please trust me when i say that if i had children i and they weren't involved in an Early Specialization Sport, i would have them involved in this program. The long term benefits of physical literacy is amazing and this age window is necessary. People can learn this at a later age, but they will never be literate. We all have friends that we see do something athletic and it looks like they have been doing it forever. This program will help your child be that person!