Talented Athlete Programme

East Ayrshire Sports Council offers a support programme for talented athletes, who come from a variety of sports and a number of Kilmarnock Harriers athletes have benefitted from this programme over the recent years.

At this year’s presentation night the Sports Council showed a short video featuring three athletes from Kilmarnock Harriers Pole Vault Group. The featured athletes were Sarah Barbour, Finlay Walker and Evie Bartl, who had all been successful winning gold medals at national competitions. This was not recognition for their hard work over the last year which not only produced some fantastic new PBs but also saw these athletes getting involved in another sport – weightlifting. What initially was only intended as a strength conditioning programme soon developed into a competitive sport and helped with further skills acquisitions. Although weightlifting is in the end about developing strength, the main focus at this stage of development is more on learning the proper technique for the various Olympic lifts (clean & Jerk, snatch). Once the technical aspects have been learned properly the focus could then switch to start loading that is increasing the weight gradually.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although the Talented Athletes Programme rewards people, who have evidenced a level
of success on national level but does success automatically explain talent? Does being successful simply equate to being talented? There is a danger that particularly during the early phase of Youth development success and talent are often used simultaneously, young kids who always appear to win have talent. However, considering that the development stages of youngsters can differ considerably, success at the early stages of development can give a distorted view about someone’s real potential. Often it is the early developers, who win because they are more physically developed, hence stronger and bigger etc.

How else can we then define talent? Another interesting view relates to the debate “nature versus nurture”. In simple terms, talent is dependent of the genetics from your parents as opposed to the aspect that skills have to be learned (nurtured and acquired)[1]

There is a whole field of sport scientists who write clever articles about this subject but for me personally I tend to narrow it down to a number of simple attributes that I have observed during my coaching time.

Firstly, talented athletes show the ability to learn new skills or more preciously they display a strong desire of wanting to master new skills. This leads to the second attribute; the mental attitude to persevere despite initial failure is an important aspect. Learning new skills takes time and maybe the talented people have the desire not to give up so early despite encountering failure in their first steps in acquiring new skills. The third attribute could be described as showing dedication to their chosen field which they aspire to excel in. Hence, a commitment to work hard is a vital part of this process, which then can lead to success. Showing dedication means that athletes have to be disciplined in their approach to training, as training is an ongoing process of continuous learning. An attitude of wanting to redefine what has been learnt to become even better is another aspect. Don’t rest on your laurels, it nice to celebrate achievements but be prepared to work hard to improve further.

There is even a message for the very young athletes in the club here how they can achieve their very own potential: Be brave and try new events, it’s all about learning new skills. Don’t give up too early and turn up regularly for training than without practice it’s difficult to improve in the event you are doing. So quite simple indeed, every athlete can develop their very own potential, it’s just about how much are you prepared to make best use of your training and listening to your coach.

This year’s achievements of our Harriers are as follows:

Finlay Walker (pole vault), Scottish Indoor champion, Scottish Schools Champion and silver medallist at U15 Age Group championships

Sarah Barbour (pole vault and javelin), Scottish Schools Champion and javelin bronze medallist at U15 Age Group.

Evie Bartl (pole vault, javelin and weightlifting), Pole Vault Indoor silver medallist Scottish Schools and U17 Age group, Gold medallist javelin at U17 Age Group and Scottish U18 and U20 Weightlifting Champion.

 

 

 

What about the ability to ability to learn a completely different skills which has nothing to do with the event you are training for? It’s all about the desire to try and learn something new even without any prior training. Here a video of Evie performing a gymnastics exercise without having ever trained for gymnastics .just watch the video here Evie doing round off with back flip

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quote found on the Internet, which has some interesting comments about skills development in it.

“Talent is a set of personal characteristics that enhance one’s ability to achieve expertise in an accelerated manner. These traits allow one to improve at quicker rates than others in their field that are at the same level of  expertise / fitness/skill, etc. This is because talent is one’s ability to adapt to training and develop skills in their specialized field. Talent exists when strong genetics and a desire to practice come together to create superior ability for a specific activity. It can only exist along with a deliberate interest. Because of this, talent will often only become apparent after a moderate amount of practice as this is when one’s ability to adapt and improve is more clearly visible. Talent is not merely one’s “base” ability at a task – this comes about often as a result of exposure to skills and experiences in one’s early days.” [2]

http://sportsscientists.com/2016/01/talent-id-video-series-1-fundamental-concept-and-definition/

[1] http://believeperform.com/performance/what-is-talent-a-growth-mindset-approach-12/

[2] http://sportsscientists.com/2013/11/what-is-talent-your-definitions-and-thoughts-from-david-Epstein/