Rowing and Long Term Athlete Development

Rowing Canada has a lengthy document I recently came across about Long Term Athelte Development. It seeks to examine all the factors that go into the development of an elite athlete, and is an interesting read, especially in light of the fact that Rowing Canada has not renewed the contract of thier current National Junior Coordinator and are rexamining the structure of the entire junior program.

While comments were disabled for a while on the blog, I have since re-enabled them. I'd love to know your thoughts on LTAD. How does your country handle it? I have heard several knowledgeable people suggest that the World Junior Championships are not a reasonable goal if an athlete wishes to train in accordance with a proper LTAD model. Some junior athletes are putting in more hours and miles than elite senior athletes - does this hurt their development? Is this setting them up for injury? What about all the other parts of their life that they miss out on?

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