The Biopsychosocial Framework

The Biopsychosocial Framework is a framework that looks at the interconnection between sociological, biological and psychological elements in human development.  These integrating factors will impact on athletes moving up and down the performance pathway.  This is coupled with transitions (age groups and/or performance groups) and key life events meaning that athletes will experience ups and downs in their progress, often recognised as non-linearity in development.

Looking beyond technical, tactical, physical and mental development in the athletes and referencing these domains and transitions, will assist in planning the programmes to support athletes with different levels and types of support – recognising when natural dips occur and reducing their depth and duration.

Examples of how this is reflected within the weapons framework include:

• Growth spurts can cause timing and distance issue as the athlete recalibrates their body.  Moving from junior to senior levels, athletes should be fully grown and nerval limitations of growth spurts should be insignificant
• Recognising when physical optimisation starts to become more central to training, increasing a specific athletes leg power to understand certain fencing actions
• GCSEs and A-levels can be obstacles to large training loads at specific times
• Athletes start to move away from home and have to take care of nutrition, and other lifestyle issues such as cleaning, laundry etc.

Return to the Weapons Framework Page to find out more about the Weapons Framework.

Return to the Pathway Zone to find out more about the Athlete Development Pathway.

Return to ‘The ADP Zone‘ to find out more information about the work that we do.