Coaching Edge 33 2013 | Page 31

|TALENT ID| COACHING EDGE

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‘You always have something to aim towards and
when you get there it is time to re-evaluate and
assess how successful things have been.’

‘As a coach you are monitoring individuals all
the time,’ says Murray. ‘You always have
something to aim towards and when you get
there it is time to re-evaluate how successful
things have been. Have they achieved the
skills? There are short-term and long-term plans.
‘At eight to nine years old we look at which
discipline, is most suited for somebody to get
the most out of their potential. For somebody
who has strong, powerful legs but perhaps a
really weak upper body it is clear that they are
not going to take things to a high level at
artistic. But perhaps they might be the world
champion at tumbling or sports acrobatics.’
Mainstream gymnastics appears to be
increasingly embracing its quirky spin-offs with
clubs like Leeds running programmes with
specialist tumbling and acro coaches
alongside their traditional development.
The inclusiveness certainly does not affect their
desire to develop individuals to their maximum
potential. Murray, 27, is coach to Nile Wilson,
who won three golds and a silver in the
European Youth Olympics in Utrecht in July.
However, while 17-year-old Wilson has been
in the system since the age of five, gymnastics is
not averse to developing talent later on, as in
the case of another British competitor Reiss
Beckford, who was spotted in a recreational
class at the veteran age of eight to join the
renowned South Essex club.
‘There is the odd example but it is an exception
to the rule,’ Murray adds. ‘We’ve had a few at
Leeds who are still in the junior programme and
had relatively good success after moving on
from a recreational programme. One was
doing two hours a week at eight and was
nowhere near the elite pathway. Now he is 14
and in the junior elite performance Great
Britain squad.
Once talent is identified, time is the commodity
that allows it to grow. So, typically, a six year
old will be spending four hours a week, 52
weeks a year in the gym. By eight it doubles.

Reading, awarded that elevated status in the
summer of 2013, now have 140 schoolboys
and 28 scholars on their books. Their upgrade
has drastically altered the numbers they can
look to develop as the club’s director of
football Nicky Hammond explains: ‘This allows
us to compete at the very highest level in youth
football and gives us the best opportunity to
attract players.
‘The important thing is there will be much more
contact time with young players. It’s widely
recognised that more coaching time gives you
a chance of producing better players.’
And English cricket has looked to take a leaf
out of gymnastics’ book by working in four-year
cycles to produce the Test and one-day
international teams of the future. Three years
ago the England Development Programme
(EDP) was set up following a review by the
England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB)
managing director of cricket Hugh Morris.
Back in 2010, Morris asked Simon Timson,
then head of science and medicine, to unearth
best practice in identification, selection,
confirmation and development of talent.
Timson’s search took him to the United States

and a study of American football’s scouting
system. The information he returned home
with altered the way our game’s best are
initially selected to play at international junior
level. Traditionally young players were selected
solely on visual judgements from county
coaches. But gone are the days of ad hoc,
parochial picks, with statistical evidence now
carrying more significant weight.
The country’s best enter the EDP at
Loughborough at 16 with the hope being that
they are ready for the England Performance
Programme, the level below the full England
team, four years down the line. Within another
four years of centralised development, the
expectation is that some of each annual batch
will be playing at full international level. The
mission statement is to produce world-best
players by the age of 27. Just as in gymnastics,
it is an arduous preparation. C E

Recognition of talent is the first stage of the development process and is gauged in
many different ways.
Once identified, talent should be assessed as an ongoing concern for a coach or
coaching team. Are individuals meeting what you expect of them on a weekly,
monthly, seasonal and annual basis?
Natural review periods – at end of seasons or through annual competition – provide
the ideal opportunity to judge the progress of individual athletes.
Keep an open mind. Some individuals will not meet the expected level their initial
talent suggested. They may need to take a step back or to the side to progress
further. Gymnastics coaches tend to think of other ways for those individuals to thrive,
through other branches of the sport, rather than cast them aside.
Keep your eyes open. Late developers can come good if given the opportunity. In
some ways, those who are spotted late and thrown into elite groups have an
advantage because they are often so far behind their peers. Having to bridge such
huge gaps in knowledge and experience can provide motivation.

All photos © Alan Edwards

So dense is the talent development process in
gymnastics that coaches set out their
progression paths in four-year cycles mirroring
the Olympic Games. It means that there is
already an idea of where a boy or girl needs
to be at nine years of age when they enrol at
five years old.

Selecting early and investing time has always
been the way with gymnastics, but other sports
have undergone a shift too. Although the
country’s professional football clubs are not
allowed to register boys in their academies until
under-9s level, they monitor elite centres via the
community for under-7s and under-8s. And
those clubs whose academies are of a quality
to be awarded category 1 status have an
increased influence on a greater number of
budding players.

THE COACH’S EDGE

growth spurt, they are not as capable as
thought, or they need a different programme to
get the best out of their ability.’