Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) Model, Stage 2 'FUNdamentals'

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky (‘The Great One’)

Similarly, we miss 100% of extraordinary, fearless and amazing moments of our lives, ‘If’ we stop having fun in what-so-ever task or work or a job we do or intend to do. So, the question again would be, how can we have fun in anything and everything we do or intend to do?

In our previous discussion regarding ‘Belief’, we discussed ‘what makes legends different from the ordinary’. Ronnie Lott, known to be the most mentally tough player said: 

“If you can believe it, the mind can achieve it.”

In early stages of our lives, we always cherished to enjoy no matter what we do, we lived in the moment not thinking about what anyone else is thinking about or are they even looking at us. All we did, was to make the best out of that moment. Parents/guardians play a crucial role in developing such awareness at a very young age. As a kid, we are very much moody in doing or not doing things at a particular instance but that is what being a kid means,

If we do it, we do it in 100 different possible ways and make the best out of it.

Else, it is just another task which she\he is not interested in. Enjoying the moment is ‘the most’ important aspect of the overall development of children at a very young age. With experts and education program development professional debate on the structure of the program, subject to be introduced, amount of efforts and number of hours a child needs to be devoted to be a professional in next 10-15 years, eventually and ironically what really matters in this phase is,

Are the kids creative enough to develop certain qualities and skill-sets?

Are we exposing them to an ample amount of activities to make them comfortable and most importantly are they enjoying what they are doing?

Is the task completion result-oriented or process-oriented and are the young champs being groomed to focus on process rather than the outcome?

The second phase of the Long Term Athlete Development program is ‘FUNdamentals’ [Istvan Balyi, Canada (2005)]. The stage is about to live through the moments in our day-to-day activities with the periodical introduction of basic rules, ethics, the fair play of various forms of physical activity, sports and recreational activities. More importantly in the current era of easily available information, it is critical for parents, guardians, physical education teachers and coaches to address the ABC’S of Athleticism,

Agility | Balance | Coordination | Speed

With such basics to be taken care at a very early age by multiple stakeholders responsible for developing, monitoring and feedback process automatically introduced towards child’s interest to choose a Sports, it is very important to create a value system around a child which make her\him a better person in the near future. Values such as having fun in tasks\work we do for our living in day-to-day life, to be fair towards themselves and with others, give others the respect they demand. Encourage young champs to be outside the digital era and experience the unstructured format of fitness, sport and recreational activities in early days which will further help them to develop interest and respect for the sport as well as for others who are directly or indirectly involved in helping him/her become a Champion someday.

Our Professor at SSSS and Advisor, Sports Industry Connect for MBA Sports Management program, Mr. Siddharth (Sid) Deshmukh wrote a quote to me saying,

Be the change you want to see

, which makes a huge difference in an athlete’s life from the start till the end as every moment things change including train schedules, difficulty level, and tournament pressure, family pressure, and many more, which an athlete Learns to Train in further stages of LTAD model.

Please Note:

This article was published on my LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fundamentals-hitesh-harry-mangtani/