The principle of individuality is one of the most understood training principles, and in addition, very often overrated it its’ importance.
At the core of this principle stands the premise that you can't make a donkey into a racehorse.
In this training principles lecture 9 ‘The Training Principle Of Individuality & Age-Appropriateness’ you will learn
00:00:00 Intro
00:00:49 Why the principle of individuality is one of the most misunderstood training principle
00:01:25 The basic premise of the principle of individuality and age-appropriateness
00:02:44 The biological basis for the training principle of individuality and age-appropriateness
00:05:49 The practical application of the principle of individuality and age-appropriateness
00:10:05 Shameless plug
00:10:40 Rounding-up the training principle of individuality and age-appropriateness

Why the principle of individuality is one of the most misunderstood training principles

The individuality training principle is one of the least understood or most misunderstood training principles.
For the simple reason that it is often referred to as the most important training principle, however, if you have followed the structure of training principles ‘Training principles to elicit an adaptation’, ‘training principles to secure adaptations’, and ‘training principles to direct adaptations’, you realize that the individuality principle is part of the ‘training principles to direct adaptations’, hence, you need to elicit an adaptation, and you need to secure adaptations, before thinking about individualizing.

The basic premise of the principle of individuality and age-appropriateness

The performance of an athlete is the sum of an interplay of different factors.
What does that mean?
For an optimal development of an athlete, these different factors need to be considered and addressed.
What are these factors?
These factors can be divided into nature and nurture, where nature are internal factors and nurture are external factors.

What is the basic premise for the claim of age appropriateness?

The World Health Organization stated in their position paper in 2008, children are not mini adults and therefore, they should not be treated like adults. Hence children are unique in many ways and different to adults, and therefore require different treatments, in the broadest sense of the word.

The biological basis for the training principle of individuality and age-appropriateness
Let's look at individuality first. The underlying biological principle is that there is a so-called individual adaptability.
So, the underlying biological principle behind this training principle of individuality and age appropriateness, is the individual adaptability, the magnitude of individual adaptability and the maximal functional capacity.

What's the biological basis for age appropriateness?

First things first, during adolescence, the human goes through different stages of growth and development.
What's the difference between growth and development?
Growth refers to the measurable physical change of a human, and very simplified development, refers to the cognitive, functional, and emotional change during the different stages.

The practical application of the principle of individuality and age-appropriateness

Let's start with individuality. Individual adaptability is different. The magnitude is different, and the maximum functional capacity. What does all this mean?
You can't make a donkey into a racehorse but there's a big but. And this is what we have to do as coaches, you can make the donkey into the best donkey it could possibly be.
Let's look at age appropriateness.

I outlined that the basic premise is that children are not little adults, and therefore they shouldn't be treated like adults.
Children are not mini-adults, so why should the children and youth athletes train the same as the adult athletes?
The idea again is, children are not mini adults and they have to go through a different training regimen, which is appropriate to their age, their stage of growth, and their stage of development.

Rounding-up the training principle of individuality and age-appropriateness
The principle of individuality and age appropriateness is based on the premise that individuality is influenced by nature and nurture, and that growth and development of adolescents are simply different than from adults.
The biological basis, is that individual adaptability is different. The magnitude is different, and the maximum functional capacity is different.
And in order to maximize training results, you need to consider and address these different factors.

I'll see in the next training principle lecture ‘The Principle Of Increasing Specificity’ .
If you've missed the previous one, ‘The Principle Of Periodization And Cyclization’ check it out here .

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