Talent development

Talent development refers to the provision of an environment that enables a young athlete to achieve their potential. This means that even the most naturally gifted young athletes will benefit from strength and conditioning support that helps them to further develop their natural talents. This chapter chronologically reviews and critiques some of the most popular models of talent development, while also referring to recent International Consensus and Position Statements on Long-Term Athletic Development. This shows the evolution of ideas and concepts pertaining to talent development and how they relate to the strength and conditioning practitioner working with youth athletes. Models of long-term athletic development begin to provide a flexible framework within which the strength and conditioning coach can work, and this chapter provides some practical guidelines to show how some of the “bigger picture” ideas of talent development can be applied in a strength and conditioning context.