Hear from our team leads:
INSPIRING THE NEXT GENERATION
The primary goal of the Development Programme is identify, recruit and develop athletes across all future Olympic weight categories who demonstrate potential to succeed at Senior World & Olympic Games. The Programme is a Sport England funded camp based programme delivered at the National Taekwondo Centre, Manchester.
The key emphasis is to focus on individual athlete progression through building upon current strengths, enhancing weaknesses, developing individual player identity and holistic personal development.
In addition to domestic training opportunities, for some of the squad further overseas training camps designed to challenge an athletes’ ability to adapt and perform outside of their normal training environment will be available.
There will also be access to a series of workshops for both athletes and parents to support them to share the development journey of their sons/daughters. Finally, there will be opportunities for selected athletes on a performance trajectory to be included in teams for Junior Major Championships, European / World’s.
*Apply for this year's Talent Draft HERE. *
All athletes new and existing must first apply through this application form.
The deadline is SEPTEMBER 8 2024.
The entire initiative will take place at the National Taekwondo Centre in Manchester.
Once the deadline has passed, players who have been selected will be given one a date to attend a ‘Phase 1 – Assessment day’.
A) You must be a practicing martial arts athlete, born between 2006-2011.
B) British citizen
C) Have sparring experience
The exact squad size may vary year on year typically however the Development Programme will select a mixed gender training group of approximately 32 athletes.
This size is based on maximising athlete/coach ratio to provide an enhanced athlete development environment and reflects the full-time Academies stated ambition to develop 4 athletes in every Olympic weight category. [-49, -57, -67 and +67 kg for the females, and -58, -68, -80 or +80 kg for the males].
Through Sport England funding the ‘Development Programme’ will cover the majority of costs incurred to deliver a training camp, however, athletes will contribute £42.50 per night when a training camp requires overnight accommodation (this fee is reviewed annually).
Athletes will also need to cover their own travel costs to and from the National Taekwondo Centre.
For those athletes selected to attend a Major Championships typically an athlete will contribute toward their individual flight, accommodation costs, their entry fee and GBR attire.
Players are invited to engage in a test match which will be assessed by GB’s coaches. They will observe the athlete’s desire to fight, their resilience throughout the match (regardless of the score) and the presence of an ‘X-factor’. Athletes successfully shortlisted from the ‘Phase 1’ will be notified with an invitation to attend a ‘boot camp’ weekend.
There will be two separate ‘bootcamp’ weekends.
Their aim is to challenge athletes even further and review their passion and commitment to become a future Taekwondo Olympian.
Will involve a combination of test matches and training situations that will challenge players to demonstrate their ability to learn and apply this to their performances. Coaches will have a further opportunity to assess players against the criteria below:
1. The ability to cope in pressurised situations.
2. The Capability to engage in training, to be proactive and demonstrate a hunger to learn.
3. The skill to work out opponents and find a way to score.
Players will also undertake sessions with some of the GB Taekwondo Sport Science and Medicine staff, this will include:
A medical screening – conducted by our team of physiotherapists, to establish baseline medical/physical wellbeing of athletes.
Interviews – to explore players understanding of their journey, their aspirations and expectations if they were offered a place on the ‘Development Programme’.
Phase three is the final stage of the initiative and will evaluate fighters one last time before being accepted onto the programme.
It will allow athletes to experience what a typical weekend in the Development Squad looks like and will also be held at the National Taekwondo Centre in Manchester.
Fighters who have successfully gotten through all phases will be notified by invitation to take up a place on the Development Programme for the following 12-month period.
If players would like to receive written feedback, this must be requested in writing after each stage of selection.
Non selection can be based on a number of reasons.
The reason we recruit athletes for the Development Programme is to try to provide an optimal training environment to best challenge, develop and progress an individual within a training environment with like-minded elite athletes.
Each weight category will typically have different requirements and result in athletes with different qualities being selected in each weight category.
Athletes not selected at this stage should be encouraged to persist, and in-between selection moments to continue to evolve, develop and progress as an individual before re-application the following year.
The development team will meet to discuss and feedback on an athletes’ progression or otherwise within 2 weeks of each selection point, ‘Phase 1 – Assessment day’ and Phase 2 ‘Bootcamp’.
It is important athletes try to attend this date so that the coaching team can make a balanced judgement when selecting the squad, comparing the same weight categories together.
However, in highly exceptional cases there is scope to consider athletes outside of this date. If you have any queries with this, please contact the development team.
In addition, if an athlete is exceptionally talented, is of a priority weight category, and is of interest to the programme, the development team has scope to ‘see’ athletes throughout the year outside of the ‘Talent Draft’ process. The Talent Scout is the first point of contact for athletes who do not come into the Development programme via the Draft selection process.
The next dates are OCT 28-31 2024
Aside from the technical and tactical mastery, the programme is committed to athlete progression to include behaviours skillsets that will aid their ability/readiness to thrive within an elite training environment, as well as, aiding athletes if they are selected into the World Class Performance (WCP).
To this end the Development team has identified six key pillars outlined below, that emphasise behaviours that compliment elite performance.
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