Sports are a part of nations’ social contract. Arshad Nadeem’s recent gold in the Paris Olympics and Haider Ali’s bronze in Paralympics are great individual achievements that will be long remembered in the sports history of Pakistan. They have succeeded in an environment that lacks financial, technical and moral support to breed champion athletes.

Navigating athlete development is an uphill task which becomes complex when there are internal and external disruptors. These can stem from disagreements within the athlete development team like coaches and trainers or from external factors including financial. Alignment of everyone working with athletes is vital for optimal progress overtime.

In today’s sports landscape, numerous professionals are there to help athletes, unlike our approach to sports where everything is left to natural talent and chance. Sports science and analytics in the rest of the world need a foundation of evidence-based programmes.

The three Cs of credentials, competence, and commitment need to be intact to ensure each professional can contribute evidence-based practices in their line of expertise as well as their own perspective on each issue.

Developing a champion athlete is a complex subject which can’t be covered in detail in this article due to limitation of space. However, I will try to touch upon some vital aspects including the establishment of a well-structured athlete development team which is again left to the influence of sports politics within the national sports federations in Pakistan.

Remember that the adaptive ability of the human machine is the foundation for the development of each player. The genotype (genetic composition of an individual) provides the starting point for the expression of phenotype (the observable characteristics of an individual). Upon maturity some phenotypes are able to change, while others are not. Understanding of these factors is vital for optimal player development and affects many decisions right from the induction of players to the type of conditioning programme implemented.

The non-mutable characteristics which can’t be manipulated or changed after maturity include height, hand and foot size, arm wingspan, tendon and ligament lengths and number and type of skeletal muscle fibers. The mutable characteristics which can be improved and have direct impact on athletes’ performance include muscular strength, cardiovascular fitness, sleep pattern, screen time, immune and lymphatic system, respiratory system and even density of bones.

While it starts with the athlete, player development continues in various fields that can affect the optimal performance. The availability of professionals with experience and expertise in each field will affect the success of a programme. Creating a cohesive player development team presents an array of challenges, and in our case it becomes further complex, where unprofessional trainers and coaches try to make inroads just to enjoy free joyrides.

A model solution for early phase development of young athletes was developed by Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut to promote the concept of having a certified athletic trainer at school level. Every high school / college should engage a certified strength and conditioning and sports scientist professional, not a retired sportsman.

A player development team usually consists of an exercise and sports science advisor or director; strength and conditioning / sports performance manager; athletic training and physical therapy in charge; sport psychology / sociology head; sport nutrition expert; sport science and analytics head; and a sports medical professional.

Athletic development doesn’t happen on its own, but it stems from the nexus of physical education in school, physical activity outside the school, youth participation in organised sports in different community-based sports clubs, and strength and conditioning training. It is recommended that all youth have at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) per day, consisting of aerobic, strength, and skilled related exercise.

The National Strength & Conditioning Association (NSCA) of USA defines long term athletic development as the habitual development of athleticism over time to improve health and fitness, enhance physical performance, reduce the risk of injury, and develop the confidence and competence of youth.

Our sportspersons who remain focused on skill development and invest very little time in fitness and sharpening of motor skills should understand that existing development models recommend that training focuses on acquiring rudimentary and fundamental motor skills and muscular strength. Moreover, it must be understood that participation in a single sport does not provide a sufficient stimulus to maximise athleticism.

Two famous sport scientists Balyi and Hamilton proposed a long-term athletic development model that accounted for growth and development by using peak height velocity to demonstrate training readiness. In 2012, Lloyd and Oliver proposed the youth physical development model. It emphasises a development-based approach and provides more specificity than previous models. Strength, power, speed, and agility are the key components emphasised mostly during middle childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, whereas hypertrophy is targeted in adolescence and adulthood.

The purpose of spelling out these models is to guide the decision makers who are doling out billions of rupees for promotion of sports without any vision, comprehensive data, long-term strategy and qualified human resource capable of executing these complex programmes.

For a player development programme to work, all professionals must have a communication system, a decision making process, and respect for each area’s expertise. Additionally, implementation pathways have to be determined. Failure to achieve alignment on goals and objectives for each sport and athlete in the programme makes such a programme impossible.

The sport specialisation should only occur for those sports that require peak performances at early ages like gymnastics and diving. Similarly, the understanding of mutable and largely non-mutable characteristics is very important for placing youth in the most appropriate sport and the right position within each sport.

The youth should be exposed to quality physical or sports education programmes, coaching, and conditioning facilities that feature youth training and adhere to the long-term athletic development model.

Qualified coaching staff, athletic trainers, physical therapists, physicians, strength and conditioning staff, nutrition specialists, sport psychologists and sociologists and academic advisers play large roles in the development of champion athletes.

Breaking down the kinesiological, metabolic, psychological and biomechanical elements of the sport and relating them to practice, the strength and conditioning programme and profiling and benchmarking of the athlete bring great value to the programme before embarking upon skill development.

Nutrition and hydration and sleep and recovery are equally important for maximising athletic performance. Maximal strength, power, hypertrophy, muscular endurance, plyometric, speed, change of direction ability, agility and mobility and flexibility must be part of any athlete development programme.

Last but not the least, there is no shortcut to hard work. In a famous paper: “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance”, psychologist Dr K Anders Ericsson, who is author of best seller “Talent is overrated” and is regarded as an expert on experts, suggests that accumulated hours of practice were masquerading as innate talent in both music and sports.

This deliberate practice framework is also known as the 10,000 hour rule and Ericson and his followers are of the opinion that 10,000 hours is both necessary and sufficient to make anyone an expert in anything.

The point that I want to bring home is to shun the myth of “natural talent”. In modern day sport you can win one odd medal in a mega sport event like Olympics, but you cannot join the ranks of great sports nations with the kind of vision, approach, policies, strategies, and human and financial resources available with us.

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