On this Episode I sit down with Elisabeth Oehler to discuss long term athletic development. We cover a lot of territory in our hour discussion and we start with the idea of early specialization. Early on in the conversation Elisabeth discusses the importance of context and taking into account all the factors of a given situation. Elisabeth does a great job outlining the youth sports environment in Germany and talking about how they attempt to develop well rounded athletes, while specializing in a given focus. The countries population is small in comparison to that of the United States, so this naturally leads to a shrunken talent pool, thus necessitating specialization. Elisabeth does a great job explaining how within many different sports they help to build a well rounded holistic approach in early formative years. For instance, in weight lifting competitions up until mid adolescence, they give more credit for the technical aspects of the lift and do not go for 1 RM. They also include sprints, change of direction activities, jumps, and pull ups to help encourage sports prep coaches to build a more well rounded and sustainable model for LTAD. Elisabeth discusses how loading naturally shifts later in the training cycle and some of the differing measures that are utilized to ensure that stimuluses are being stacked appropriately. Elisabeth discusses some of the technical issues often found in teens when cleaning and how she attempts to simplify cues and means to facilitate proper form. Our last talking point is on talent Identification and she provides a really good analysis of how Germany does an outstanding job of the collection of data to facilitate and offer a profile that can be studied for future athletes. Make sure to check out Elisabeth's Social Media and Website linked underneath! 

@eo_performance https://twitter.com/eo_performance

EOperformance.com https://www.eo-performance.com/

Link to Weightlifting course https://www.eo-performance.com/courses

Youth Strength and Conditioning Concepts with Elisabeth Oehler

https://simplifaster.com/articles/youth-strength-and-conditioning-concepts-with-elisabeth-oehler/

Can Lifting Weights Actually Be Fun for Kids?

https://simplifaster.com/articles/kids-lifting-weights-fun-ltad/