When discussing how we can create the best youth baseball workouts, we need to be making these decisions through the lens of the Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) model.

LTAD is meant to be a sport agnostic guide to youth development in the weight room, think of it as a youth sport specialization guide. Younger athletes' training should be focused on fun and developing athleticism. As they get older into high school, more intense training and discussions on specialization can occur. But we want to make sure we aren't putting the cart before the horse.

What is the Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) Model?

The Long Term Athletic Development Model (LTAD) was originally coined by Canadian sports scientist Istvan Balyi in the 1990s. The model seeks to develop high-level athletic skills by progressing youth athletes through a system that takes them through adolescence while molding physical literacy that will enable them to be active for life.

How can the Long Term Athlete Development Model Goals Help Create Better Youth Baseball Workouts?

We can simplify the LTAD model into two core goals.

Goal one is to provide proper training stimulus at the correct time in an athlete's development. An 8-year-old athlete, a 16-year-old athlete, and a 21-year-old athlete need different training stimuli to make the adaptations they need. It is foolish and ineffective to train a youth athlete as if they were a “little adult” because both physically and mentally they are not one. 

The second primary goal of LTAD is to establish a positive relationship between young athletes and physical exercise. We want to increase the chances for high-level performance down the line due to enjoyment while also creating people that are physically active for a lifetime.

We want to use the LTAD model to make more age-appropriate youth baseball workouts and better meet athletes where they are while leaving their options open for the future.

What are the Stages of LTAD Model?

There are six stages of athletic development based on the LTAD model. These stages are important to understand because they should help set expectations and guidelines for parents and coaches.

Balyi segmented the LTAD Model into 6 steps. The first half of the LTAD Model is rooted in building physical literacy at a young age. The aim is to set the building blocks for high performance, and the second focused on transitioning that physical literacy into specific adaptations that help the athlete become a high performer in their sport.

We want to provide age-appropriate training stimulus and we want to establish a positive relationship between the athletes and physical exercise.

Youth Baseball Workouts for Ages 9-13: FUNdamentals and Learning to Train

This period has been nicknamed the golden age of motor learning. Because puberty hasn't led to any hormonal changes, these adaptations are mainly neural in nature. In contrast to older athletes' who will be able to lift to put on muscle mass.

The goal of this stage is to expose young athletes to a wide variety of movements and training stimuli. To accomplish this, we find it best to structure games are specific pieces of athleticism that coaches want to develop. Enabling coaches to work on building neural adaptations to drive increased athleticism while keeping the athlete engaged.

Youth Baseball Workouts for Ages

Creating Fun Youth Baseball Workouts

Youth training should almost always be in the form of games or competitions where the foremost priority is fun. There is no Long Term Athletic Development if the child does not enjoy sport and training. We can group these games into three buckets.

• Obstacle course style sprinting and jumping with set constraints that the athlete has to adapt to
• External stimuli that require the athlete to make on the fly movement decisions, similar to sharks and minnows
• Competition-style games force the athletes into performing maximum effort exercises in order to win a competition.

Most training games will likely be some combination of the three.

A training session is recommended to be no longer than 30-45 minutes and should use both variety and competition as tools to keep the athletes engaged. Sessions should occur no more than three to four times a week. Here is an example itinerary for an average 12 and under training session- 

1. Jumping/landing/rolling/climbing game - (5-10 minutes)
2. External stimulus game (chasing/dodging/ducking/catching/blocking)- (5-10 minutes)
3. Medley/relay game - (5-10 minutes)

When playing these games with youth athletes it's important to remember to keep the training environment light, upbeat and fresh. Let the athletes play. If athletes really enjoy a game and want to keep playing it, let them. Cutting 5 minutes from the next game or exercise is well worth it if the athletes are engaged.

If you're looking for an example, check out this video on the game med ball volleyball

Youth Baseball Workouts for Ages 14-17: Learning to Train and Training to Train

This stage in Long term athlete development is especially important because athletes enter puberty and begin to transition from play to training. It is also a delicate time due to the different biological effects that puberty can have on athletes, due to athletes growing at different rates.

This is also the phase where athletes transition from a focus on gameplay to a focus on fundamental movements.

The movement patterns developed during this will lay the foundation for the rest of the athlete’s training life. It is important to progress athletes through these patterns at a carefully monitored rate.  Some of the key movement patterns athletes will need to progress through in the weight room are:

• Squat
• Hinge
• Upper-body Push
• Upper-body Pull
• Anti-rotation
• Jump
• Land

When applying these fundamental movement patterns, the goals are to get the athletes enough repetitions to gain skill at the movements and expose them to enough stress to make adaptations.

All athletes will be doing a variation of the same exercise, with the coach regressing and progressing the specific variations as necessary

A tried and true method for training youth athletes is programming sets and reps by time, allowing athletes to take more set time learning the skill and giving the coach more opportunity to work with the athletes. In this strategy, coaches will need to make sure that athletes do not rush to get through as many sets as possible.  Here is an example training layout using this method-

15 Minutes

A1- Squat Variation - sets of 5

A2- Pull Variation - sets of 5

15 minutes

B1- Hinge Variation - sets of 5

B2- Press Variation - sets of 5

B3- Rotation/ Anti Rotation variation - sets of 6

When teaching movements, applying programmed tempos can help to both increased time under tension and provide focus to aspects of a movement that are typically flawed. This can allow an athlete that cannot perform the concentric portion of the exercise to get a stimulus (ie. the eccentric portion of a pull up).

Youth Baseball Workouts for Ages 17+ Training to Compete & Training to Win

Once solid movement foundations and training habits have been developed, the athletes are prepared for more output-focused training. We can use the long term athlete development model to adjust to the more specialized needs of the older high school athlete. These training strategies will still vary, depending on factors including training history, biological age, etc. Besides keeping things simple and easy to learn, starting with more basic and fundamental lifts also has the advantage of giving more options for long-term progressions while still maximizing athlete benefit.