UNLEASHING YOUR POTENTIAL / BEING THE BEST

UNLEASHING YOUR POTENTIAL / BEING THE BEST

Young Champions is about being the best version of you, you can possibly be. This does not happen overnight; the world’s top athletes work tirelessly for years to be the best. The unfortunate truth is that not everyone will be the next Ronaldo, Lebron or Venus Williams, but, with time, practice and hard work, everyone can unleash their own potential, to be as brilliant as they can be.

THE JOURNEY

This journey is what is referred to as Long Term Athlete Development. LTAD is a journey to a destination. As with every journey, there will be bumps along the way, sometimes training will be great and performance will be high, sometimes progress will appear slow or non-existent, but this is all part of the process. A process that every athlete has been through.

Our team of coaches, sports scientists and movement specialists are all here to support you every step of the way.

BE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN TRAINING

Although our values are driven by supporting you, the true champion will take ownership of their own training and own development, we want to encourage you to want to train, to be your own coach, which is why Young Champions will allow you to;

  • Monitor your own athletic ability and create your own profile
  • Reflect on your own performance
  • Set your own goals
  • Consider priorities and sacrifice
Creating your profile

The best athletes show real confidence with their strengths, but they are also very aware of their development requirements. They know what needs to be improved. When you log into your Young Champions Portal, you will be able to test yourself as often you like (although we recommend every 6-8 weeks)…. Your challenge is then to start your journey and to try and show continued improvement.

BUMPS IN THE ROAD

Remember, there will be ups and downs in training and performance, progress does not mean that you just start getting better at something straight away, and often mistakes are the building blocks of learning. There will be times when your scores go up, there may be times when they come down, but remember, this is LONG TERM ATHLETE DEVELOPMENT, we care about you and want you to show sustained growth and development…. This is not an overnight fix.

Reflection

We pose key questions at the end of each session that we encourage them to take into their sports teams and indeed their day to day lives. This is a very simple process but by taking the time to honestly reflect, it can inform training patterns and goals for the future and have a huge, positive impact on performance, simply ask;

  • How did I train?
  • How did I play?
  • What did I do well?
  • What could I do better?
  • What help might I need?
Goal Setting

Goal setting is far more powerful, when the goals are personal and mean something to our champions. Taking advice from a coach and a parent is absolutely fine, and should be encouraged, but when it comes to setting goals for future improvements this should be personal.

A well-known method for goal setting is SMART.

SMART Goals are; Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timebound

For more information on how to create your own goals, and some great tips for how to keep to them, check out our blog.

Sacrifice - Really?

This isn’t as scary as it sounds, our Young Champions programme is about making good choices. As the Young Champion is in charge of their own training, we try to establish some accountability and encourage healthy habits.

We will provide tips and support along the way, but really what we are asking is; if you have set the goal of “I would like to improve my 20m sprint time in 8 weeks time,” are you going to achieve this by playing computer games all evening?

By sacrificing 30 minutes from your games console, it would give you 30 minutes back to train, making you 30 minutes closer to your goal – we are not saying don’t play computer games (they are really fun), we are just reinforcing healthy choices.

HAPPY TRAINING

Most importantly of all, our programme is fun, engaging and lead by the Young Champion. By creating a profile that they can see, and develop, by setting their own goals and gaining their own achievements we believe that children will be happy whilst they are training, and this is the most important thing of all.

We spend a lot of time talking about development, and rightly so, but what we really want to achieve is a life-long love of sport.

This will help sustain health and wellbeing well into adulthood whilst progressing our fitness and sports skills.

Next section... Psychology of Champions

Read more about Young Champions

Our Fun and Engaging LTAD programme integrates 10 key attributes that will help your Young Champion progress.

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