National coaching syllabus

scottishathletics has developed a syllabus which has been incorporated into the National Coach Development programme, to help coaches develop and deliver the required physical competencies throughout the athletic pathway.

Understanding the relationship between physical competence and skill development is crucial if the coach is to establish a progressive pathway for the athlete. The aim is to keep the physical competence developing just ahead of the skills being executed at each training stage. In this way the athlete will always have an available efficiency of movement to impart to the skills as they become more complex or as they are executed more intensively.

“Every sports-specific posture and action demands that the athlete produce, reduce and stabilise force’. In many sports this should be developed in a ‘multi-joint, multi-plane, multi-directional setting.”  Kelvin Giles, 2002

There are a number of resources alongside the workshops to support coaches operating at each stage of the pathway. Use the menu on the left to view the six resources: An introduction to athlete development; National coaching syllabus – foundations stage booklet; Endurance syllabus; Jumps syllabus; sprints and hurdles syllabus and Throws syllabus.

Athletics 365 is also available to coaches to support the technical content of these documents.