Study design

This exploratory study utilised an online, self-administered survey, which was adapted from previous surveys in other domains (e.g., [22,25,27]) in conjunction with the NSCA ten pillars of successful long-term athletic development [7]. The survey used a combination of closed and open-ended questions, both quantitative and qualitative in nature, to assess practitioners’ knowledge, adherence, practices and challenges associated with long-term athletic development within their context. The survey was circulated internationally on a criterion-based sampling method of practitioners responsible for the long-term athletic development of youth aged 5–16 years in a role responsible for physical activity, physical education or sports performance and was available to complete for ten weeks.

Participants

Two hundred and thirty-six practitioners (n = 204 male [86%], n = 29 female [12%]; 3 undisclosed [2%]) participated in the online survey between June and September 2020. The sample included 44 PE teachers, 43 sport coaches, 66 strength and conditioning coaches, 31 sport leaders and/or administrators, 24 academics, and 38 identified as “other” (including medical practitioners, performance analysis and coach education within their primary roles). One hundred and seventy-eight (75%) participants also identified having a secondary role across the classifications above. The average age of participants was 37.8 ± 9.8 years (range = 22–65 years), with approximately 13.8 ± 8.4 years’ practical experience (ranging from 1–40 years). Participants’ academic qualifications included secondary education (n = 5), Advanced Level qualifications (A-Levels) / Business and Technology Educational Council (BTEC) qualifications (n = 6), BSc (n = 60), postgraduate qualification (n = 35), MSc (n = 96), and PhD or Professional Doctorate (n = 27). Participants’ coaching qualifications ranged from Level 1 to Level 4 in the United Kingdom Coaching Certificate framework (or equivalent) across multiple sports (including rugby, football, field hockey, ice hockey, handball, baseball, volleyball, weightlifting, netball, athletics, swimming, Gaelic games, ski and snowboard, gymnastics, cricket, judo, dance, multi-skills, dodgeball, racquetball, triathlon, trampolining, and golf). Seventy-six (32%) participants were accredited with a strength and conditioning association (i.e., NSCA, United Kingdom Strength and Conditioning Association, or Australian Strength and Conditioning Association). Participants identified working with individuals of both sexes (n = 164), males only (n = 62) or females only (n = 9), across multiple ages (childhood, adolescence, adults), standards (e.g., school, community, talent, performance) and sports. Institutional ethical approval was obtained from the lead author’s University, and all participants were informed of the risks and benefits of the study before providing electronic informed consent form.

Measures

Online software (Qualtrics, Provo, USA) was used to create a survey about practitioner’s knowledge, adherence, practices and challenges for optimising long-term athletic development. The survey (in English only) was created by a panel of four experts (KT, JE, RSL, GW) with a history of publications in the area of long-term athletic development and extensive experience working within youth settings and with youth practitioners. The survey consisted of four sections: 1) Demographics, 2) Knowledge, 3) Adherence, and 4) Practices and Challenges. Demographics included closed and open questions on their job role, years of coaching experience, qualifications, and their participants. The knowledge section asked practitioners to identify their responsibility for long-term athletic development using multiple choice answers (Yes, No, Maybe), define athleticism and long-term athletic development with open-ended answers and identify their familiarity with four key developmental models (i.e., LTAD model, [3]; DMSP, [4]; Youth Physical Development [YPD] model, [28]; and the NSCA ten pillars of successful long-term athletic development; [7]) using a 5-point Likert scale (1 = unfamiliar, 5 = very familiar). The adherence section asked practitioners to rate how well their current coaching or programme delivered against the NSCA ten pillars. Participants rated each of the ten pillars on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = definitely not, 2 = no, 3 = not sure, 4 = yes, 5 = definitely yes). Lastly, for the practices and challenges section, participants were asked to describe their current practices and the challenges towards the NSCA ten pillars of successful long-term athletic development using open ended answers with qualitative responses required. The survey was developed, reviewed, and pilot tested for content and face validity by experienced practitioners in both long-term athletic development and applied research (>5 years; [29]). Participants were recruited and provided access to the survey through professional networks via email and contact through social media platforms. Surveys that were at least 50% completed were included in the analysis.

Data analyses

As the survey contained multiple fixed-response and open-ended questions, multiple data analysis methods were used. The survey responses were initially collected and analysed using Microsoft Excel and SPSS 26.0 (SPSS Inc, Chicago, USA). Fixed response, quantitative data were reported as medians and interquartile ranges (IQR), deviations or frequencies and percentages of total responses where appropriate. Due to the non-parametric data, where differences were compared (i.e., between role, development models and adherence to the ten pillars) a Friedmans analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used with the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and Bonferroni post-hoc correction. For the open-ended questions for defining long-term athletic development and athleticism, participants’ answers were analysed according to qualitative content analysis [30]. For current practices and challenges towards long-term athletic development, the qualitative open-ended questions were analysed using thematic analysis [31]. This method was chosen as it allowed practices and challenges of the practitioners to be understood. First, the answers to these questions were read on numerous occasions to allow the researcher to become familiar with the data followed by codes being generated inductively from the practitioners’ answers to highlight and label the primary aspects of the transcripts. Next, codes were placed into themes, which identified the main concepts and were reviewed regularly to ensure all data and relevant information were collected. This resulted in the emergence of lower order themes which were categorised into sub-themes and higher order meta-themes [32]. The final two stages involved naming and defining the themes and providing descriptors of each theme. This was primarily carried out by the lead researcher who engaged with the research team in constant discussion and a critical friend (experienced in both long-term athletic development and applied research in practice).

Knowledge: Responsibility for long-term athletic development

Overall, practitioners stated they were primarily responsible for the development of health and fitness (Yes = 96.1%, Maybe = 3.0%, No = 0.9%), physical performance (Yes = 91.4%, Maybe = 7.3%, No = 1.3%), confidence and competence in a range of movements (Yes = 97.0%, Maybe = 1.3%, No = 1.7%), and reducing the relative risk of injury (Yes = 93.5%, Maybe = 6.0%, No = 0.5%).

Knowledge: Definition of athleticism

Practitioners’ definitions of athleticism were analysed according to four key concepts; 1) movement ability, 2) physical qualities, 3) psychological components, and 4) multiple environments (according to [7]). The count and percentage of practitioners (with example definition) who defined athleticism according to these four criteria are displayed in Table 2. The percentage of practitioners who identified movement, physical qualities, multiple environments, and psychological components within their athleticism definitions was 74.0%, 54.3%, 36.5% and 2.0% respectively.

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Table 2. Practitioners definition of athleticism according to four concepts; movement, physical quality, psychological, and multiple environments.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262995.t002

Knowledge: Definition of long-term athletic development

Table 3 presents the content analysis of practitioners’ definitions of long-term athletic development. Practitioners included the terms “development”, “long-term”, ‘‘participants (individual or athlete)”, “the how”, and “outcomes” within their definitions of long-term athletic development.

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Table 3. Themes associated with practitioners definition of long-term athletic development.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262995.t003

Knowledge: Familiarity of developmental models

Table 4 presents the median (IQR) for practitioners’ knowledge and familiarity of four key development models. Friedman’s ANOVA showed overall significant differences between the models for all practitioners (X²(2) = 100.4, p<0.001), academic (X²(2) = 16.9, p = 0.001), strength and conditioning coach (X²(2) = 87.7, p<0.001), sport coach (X²(2) = 33.5, p<0.001), sport leader (X²(2) = 23.8, p<0.001) and other (X²(2) = 14.3, p = 0.003). There was no significant difference identified between the models for PE teachers (X² (2) = 5.6, p = 0.13). Pairwise comparisons are shown in Table 4 but overall, the LTAD and YPD model were ranked with higher familiarity than the DMSP and NSCA ten pillars. When compared by role, significant differences (p<0.001) were found between groups for each model. Pairwise comparisons identified that sports leaders, academics, and strength and conditioning coaches had the greatest familiarity with the models, however strength and conditioning coaches had less familiarity with the DMSP.

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Table 4. Practitioners familiarity of youth development models by primary role (median (Interquartile Range; IQR)).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262995.t004

Adherence: Delivery against the NSCA 10 pillars of long-term athletic development

Table 5 shows the median (IQR) for practitioners’ adherence of their current coaching or programme delivery against the NSCA ten pillars of successful long-term athletic development. Friedman’s ANOVA showed an overall significant difference between each of the ten pillars for all practitioners (X²(2) = 174.4, p<0.001), sport coaches (X²(2) = 34.9, p <0.001), strength and conditioning coaches (X²(2) = 46.4, p <0.001), PE teachers (X² (2) = 41.3, p <0.001), sport leaders (X²(2) = 32.9, p<0.001), and others (X²(2) = 41.2, p<0.001). There was no overall significant difference in rank by academics (X²(2) = 15.7, p = 0.074). Overall, Pillar 5 (health and wellbeing) was the significantly highest scoring pillar. Conversely, Pillars 1 (highly individualized growth and development), 8 (monitoring and assessment) and 9 (systematically progress and individualize training programmes) were the significantly lowest scoring pillars. When compared by role, no significant differences were identified between practitioners.

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Table 5. Practitioners adherence to the ten pillars of successful long-term athletic development (median (Interquartile Range; IQR)).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262995.t005

Practices and challenges: Practitioners perspectives

Practitioners were asked to describe their long-term athletic development practices and the challenges associated with these. Two main higher order themes were identified, which were “The goals of long-term athletic development” and “The realities of delivering long-term athletic development”.

The goals of long-term athletic development

The goals of long-term athletic development were centred around two main themes “It’s for Life”, and “The Individual Centred Journey”.

The realities of delivering long-term athletic development

The realities of delivering long-term athletic development centred around three main themes, “The Programme—Variety is Key”, “Monitoring Development”, and the “Practical Challenges”.

Knowledge and adherence

The main aims of long-term athletic development (i.e., influencing health and fitness, physical performance, confidence and competence in a range of movements, and reducing the relative risk of injury [1,7,8]) were corroborated by practitioners as the primary elements under their responsibility. It is encouraging that multiple practitioners (e.g., sport coaches, PE teachers) acknowledged their responsibility of delivering across these elements and appear to adhere to the NSCA Pillar 5 (i.e., health and wellbeing) within their programmes. However, whilst over 90% of practitioners identified their responsibility towards long-term athletic development components, a small proportion of practitioners suggested they were not accountable towards these aims. Whilst the contextual environments will differ between practitioners (e.g., a strength and conditioning coach working in a school versus a sport coach as part of a multidisciplinary support team within an academy programme), effective implementation of long-term athletic development for all youth necessitates all stakeholders recognise their responsibility to the cause. To achieve a unified approach, a clear and shared understanding of athleticism and long-term athletic development are required. To this point, practitioners’ definitions of athleticism were mixed, and often unidimensional in nature predominantly focussed upon physical domains. For example, only 2.7% of practitioners were able to identify all four components (i.e., movement, physical, psychological, multiple environments) of athleticism [7], with just 2.0% including a psychological element (i.e., confidence and competence) suggesting a lack of appreciation for the multifactorial nature of the concept of athleticism and much attention on the physical qualities. Such findings are noteworthy, especially given the importance of developing confidence and perceived competence for the development of physical literacy (e.g., [33–36]) and other health-related behaviours [37], alongside the importance of psycho-social development for long-term sports participation and performance (e.g., [38,39]). Practitioners defined long-term athletic development as an extended process aimed at improving youth through appropriate planning and delivery of training, delivered within an appropriate environment resulting in multiple long-term outcomes. However, definitions were highly variable amongst practitioners with the content analysis demonstrating between 50–67% of responses supporting each content analysis theme. Furthermore, questions were raised as per a focus on the ‘athlete’ over the ‘individual’ suggesting some practitioners only focus upon athlete development rather than principles of long-term athletic development that apply to all youth as per international consensus [6] and position [7] statements. These findings suggest further work is required to develop and promote a common consensus on long-term athletic development terminology amongst practitioners responsible for its successful implementation. Important considerations of the dynamic, complex and non-linear development of youth is required within practitioner education [2].

Practitioners reported greater familiarity with the LTAD and YPD models compared to the DMSP and NSCA Ten Pillars, with sport leaders, academics and strength and conditioning coaches having greater familiarity than other roles (e.g., PE teachers). This suggests that knowledge of the most recent information (e.g., NSCA Ten Pillars; [7]) may be limited compared to traditional models (e.g., LTAD model; [3]), or that practitioners may prefer the simplicity offered in the older models rather than the more recent iterations, which may also explain the contradictory definitions provided. This may occur if experienced practitioners (as per the current sample) rely on older models based on previous education and experiences. Furthermore, some practitioner groups not as well versed in athletic development or strength and conditioning (e.g., sport coaches, PE teachers) may require further education associated with these models to help enhance their awareness and understanding. Therefore, the dissemination of up-to-date and evidence-based models is required across all domains to ensure practitioners work towards a shared philosophy and practice of long-term athletic development.

Whilst practitioner’s knowledge of long-term athletic development could be considered as contradictory, when practitioners were asked to rate their adherence to the NSCA Ten Pillars, scores were high. For example, adherence ratings across all pillars and practitioner roles had a median score of 4 or 5 (except for Pillar 9 for sport leaders and others, which may be due to their roles requiring limited contact time with participants). This suggests practitioners identified delivering on many of the recommended long-term athletic development practices suggested by Lloyd and colleagues [7]. However, considering increased obesity prevalence [21] and declining levels of motor skill competence [20], physical fitness [18] and physical activity [19] globally within youth populations suggests this is a key focus for explanation. For instance, the current participants may be delivering high quality practices (i.e., as reflected in their current practices reported in this study) but are not representative of the large scale and global population of practitioners responsible for long-term athletic development across all ages and stages. Alternately, practitioners may perceive their practices are better than they actually are, which may be related to social desirability bias, whereby individuals tend to present themselves in a favourable manner [40]. However, without further qualitative and observational research, adherence to the long-term athletic development principles is difficult to establish [41]. Therefore, whilst practitioners may rate their current practices quite highly, further research is required to understand if/how these practices align to long-term athletic development principles.

Adherence was generally high across all pillars, with Pillar 5 being the highest rated pillar. The focus upon this pillar is encouraging given the importance of promoting health and wellbeing and is supported by practitioners’ descriptions of their current practice. However, like the previous conclusion regarding long-term athletic development practices, further investigation is required to explore how well practice reflects this principle. The lowest scoring pillars were Pillar 1 (highly individualized growth and development), 8 (monitoring and assessment) and 9 (systematically progress and individualize training programmes), which is noteworthy considering the dynamic and non-linear development of youth. These are the NSCA Pillars most associated with scientific principles of paediatric exercise and training science and thus may present the greatest challenge to implementation. Furthermore, research aligned to these Pillars is well established including growth and maturity (e.g., [42–44]), training load (e.g., [45–47]), fitness assessment (e.g., [48–50]) and appropriate implementation strategies (e.g., biobanding, [51]; strength & conditioning, [13]; movement competence, [52]). This suggests that despite the quantity and robustness of existing research, further work is required for the appropriate translation, dissemination and education across multiple practitioners to promote research-informed practice within long-term athletic development pathways [53,54] and to support adherence, accuracy and consistency of planning, profiling and programme development for all youth.

Practitioner perspectives: Practices and challenges

Practitioners described their current long-term athletic development practices and the challenges associated with them, which were thematically coded into two higher order themes of 1) goals; and 2) realities of delivering long-term athletic development. The first main theme within the goals was “it’s for life”, whereby practitioners identified their practices working towards a lifelong process with multiple outcomes (i.e., health, fitness, physical activity, sports performance) that were consistent with their adherence to Pillar 5. As such, it was evident practitioners felt responsible for the long-term development of individuals, to the extent that it was stated that it was their “duty”. Closely related was the second theme, the individual centred journey, which aligned with philosophies and recommendations of the individual (participant or athlete) being central to all coaching practices [1,55]. To achieve an individual centred journey, three subthemes emerged: 1) fun and enjoyment, 2) developmental, and 3) within a safe and caring environment. These subthemes support research suggesting youth sports participation and training needs to be enjoyable [56,57], encourage competence and improvement in holistic development aspects (i.e., physical, technical, tactical, psycho-social) [58,59], and be delivered by those with genuine care for their participants [55,60,61].

The realities of delivering long-term athletic development centred upon 1) a varied programme, 2) monitoring development and 3) the practical challenges. A varied programme was associated with Pillars 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 of the NSCA Ten Pillars [7] alongside other developmental models (e.g., DMSP, [4]). More specifically, practitioners reported their practices aligned with using multi-sport and -activity, movement development, and physical development alongside individualised practices and education as recently recommended [6–9]. To achieve this, multiple environments (e.g., PE session, after school clubs, through play, and sport specific sessions) were required with some sports clubs and schools having strength and conditioning provision [62] whereby others delivered through warm ups (e.g., RAMP warm up; [63,64]). Such practices demonstrate the need to have a curriculum underpinned by athleticism, offering multiple and varied opportunities for fun and engaging sessions within and outside the curriculum [1,8,14]. Furthermore, an education programme for enhancing knowledge within youth populations about the importance of fitness, health and other factors such as sleep, recovery and nutrition is required, and where possible these educational outcomes would be seamlessly integrated within the practical delivery [65].

Although the data suggested the Pillars associated with assessment and monitoring had lower adherence than others, monitoring was still identified as a theme, with practitioners emphasising its importance for growth and maturation [42,44], movement [66,67], fitness [68,69], and wellbeing and recovery [70,71]. Multiple methods of assessment were reported; however developing effective, valid and reliable methods across all domains of athletic and holistic development may be a challenge alongside the complications of collecting, analysing, interpreting, evaluating and presenting such information to inform decision making [72]. As such, practitioners questioned the use of traditional quantitative methods, instead suggesting the use of observational insights and the “coach’s eye”, a concept that is gaining traction in research settings [73,74]. However, recent research has also suggested coaches’ judgements lack agreement with quantitative data [75], emphasising the need to confirm the validity of this subjective information. This highlights the complexity of monitoring and assessment within youth populations, especially when constrained by facilities, equipment, and human resources. However, given the complexities of working with youth populations, it is imperative that practitioners apply available methods which are valid and reliable, to better understand the individual needs of each child. Utilising relationships with Universities, as seen in professional sport [76,77], is recommended as a positive way forward.

Whilst a range of positive practices were identified, multiple practical challenges towards delivering long-term athletic development was the third main theme, including eight lower order themes of governance and priorities, resources, education, early specialisation, high training volumes, staff communication, parents and youth motivation demonstrating the wide and complex challenges to overcome. Governance and priorities suggested challenges inconsistent with the goals of long-term athletic development, evident by the competitive nature of youth sports and competition between sports for participants and ‘talent’. These challenges align with those identified in the early 2000s and a drive towards using sport for positive youth development (e.g., [78]). However, current findings suggest these problems may still apply, further emphasised by practitioners with a focus on winning and personal gain. As such, sporting organisations and their practitioners are encouraged to question the appropriateness of their pathways [79] and establish strategies to maximise positive youth development [80] for all associated long-term athletic development principles. These findings also align with the sub theme of education, where some practitioners failed to recognise their responsibility for long-term athletic development. This suggests more needs to be done to develop knowledge, philosophy and changing mindsets towards the purpose of youth sport alongside developing education provision to support the holistic development of youth practitioners.

Resources was a third practical challenge especially considering time availability with large groups of participants, which aligned to the lower adherence to the NSCA Pillar 9, related to individualisation of training. Whilst individualisation of training has been identified as important [6], considered alongside the non-linear, dynamic and complex development of youth [2,44], this is an understandable challenge when working with large groups. Instead of individualisation, it may be more appropriate to consider the concept of differentiation, as used within teaching (e.g., [81,82]), as a key principle to apply within long-term athletic development. Whilst this does not necessitate the development of session, weekly and annual plans for every individual the utilisation of varying practices to suit the needs of individuals through training prescription and session design should help overcome the resources challenge [83,84].

Whilst the findings demonstrated practitioners adhered to multi-sport and -activity practices, early sports specialisation was identified as a challenge, which is consistent with a plethora of research in the area (e.g., [2,8,85]). These challenges may be associated with multiple potential negative outcomes associated with early sports specialisation including increased risk of overuse injury [86], burnout [87], and blunting of motor skill development [88]. Whilst some sports and athletes may favour early specialisation, it is recommended that these individuals still participate in multi-sports and activities to develop a breadth of skills that may be needed at later timepoints with recent communication suggesting further evidence is required before we condemn it [89]. Aligned to early specialisation, a further challenge that was highlighted by responders was high training volumes. Paradoxically, while most youth fail to meet the recommended physical activity guidelines, some individuals, especially in youth sport, may undertake excessive workloads resulting in inadequate rest and recovery. Whilst this could be experienced by individuals who specialise in a single sport, other individuals may participate in multiple sports, within multiple environments delivered by multiple coaches resulting in what has been termed ‘organised chaos’ [45,90]. Arguably, this results from limited alignment and communication among sport stakeholders (including parents) in developing appropriate programmes for the individual, with coach and programme-driven decisions usually the focus (as per coach priorities). This questions the individual centred journey identified as a key goal of long-term athletic development. Scantlebury and colleagues [46] have provided recommendations for managing such situations including enhanced communication, monitoring and collaboration; however, findings indicate an ongoing concern. Lastly, educating parents seems an important challenge to overcome [91,92] to provide appropriate programmes and support young people to be motivated to participate in long-term athletic development programmes.

Strengths and limitations

To our knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the knowledge, adherence, practices, and challenges of practitioners’ responsible for delivering long-term athletic development across youth populations. Using a mixed methods study design with a large sample of experienced practitioners across multiple roles who were responsible for long-term athletic development across multiple populations (i.e., sex, age, standard and sports). Such a strategy allowed a detailed, generalised and ‘big picture’ evaluation of the current landscape of optimising long-term athletic development. However, these strengths could also be acknowledged as limitations of the study, whereby a mixed method study utilising a wide and varied cohort of participants fails to acknowledge the intricacies of context within long-term athletic development practices within specific settings (e.g., secondary schools, football academies) across different nations and systems (unfortunately this information was not available). Furthermore, as practitioners were asked to self-rate their adherence (using a 5-point Likert scale) and describe their own practices, it is likely social desirability bias and score saturation may have occurred. Acknowledging these limitations, we believe this exploratory study provides a platform for future (and more context and role specific) work whilst demonstrating that long-term athletic development often occurs in multiple environments aligned to the philosophy of developing practices and recommendations for all youth. Furthermore, with the rapidly developing landscape of girl’s sport and given the paucity of participants who worked specifically with females, a more targeted insight into LTAD practices and challenges for this demographic may support policy makers and practitioners to be dynamic in their design of LTAD in this developing sector of youth sport and physical activity.