In Development of the Youth Athlete, Professor Neil Armstrong offers a unique, single-authored, evidence-based and integrated analysis of the physical and physiological development of young athletes. Drawing on specific sporting examples, the book critically analyses youth development in the context of long-term health and wellbeing, tackling the principle controversies in youth sport such as overtraining and specialisation (including some of the dominant talent development models), the ethics of physiological testing, the use of performance-enhancing substances, and future issues like selective breeding and gene-doping.

Providing the only up-to-date, coherent and integrated crititcal discourse on youth athlete development currently available, Development of the Youth Athlete is essential reading for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduate students and researchers with an interest in paediatric exercise science and physiology, or the ethics of talent identification and development.

Neil Armstrong is Professor of Paediatric Physiology, the Founding Director of the Children's Health and Exercise Research Centre, and was the Inaugural Provost of the University of Exeter, UK. He won the only Queen's Anniversary Prize (QAP) to be awarded for research in sport medicine. The QAP was presented by HM the Queen at Buckingham Palace for 'world class work which is of outstanding quality and importance to the nation.' His research and its impact have been disseminated through over 600 scientific publications and invited presentations in 45 countries. In addition to his earned PhD and DSc, Neil has received honorary doctorates from Universities in both Europe and North America. Uniquely, he has twice chaired the Sport Science Panel in the UK Research Assessment Exercise and chaired both the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences and the Physical Education Association of the UK (PEAUK). He currently chairs the Board of the European Group of Pediatric Work Physiology and serves as a member of the IOC's expert group on sport, health, and exercise in youth. He was the first scientist to be awarded Fellowship of the American (FACSM), European (FECSS), and British (FBASES) Colleges/Societies of Sport Medicine/Science and other Fellowships received have included the Royal Society of Arts, the Royal Society of Biology, the Royal Society of Health, the Higher Education Academy, the PEAUK, and the National Academy of Kinesiology (USA).

1. Growth, Maturation, and Youth Sport

2. Exercise Metabolism and Youth Sport

3. Hormones, Energy, Nutrition, and Youth Sport

4. Growth, Maturation, And Youth Athletes

5. Youth Sport-Related Motor Performance

6. Muscle Strength

7. High-Intensity Exercise

8. Maximal and Peak Oxygen Uptake

9. Submaximal Indicators of Aerobic Fitness and Sport Performance

10. Pulmonary Oxygen Uptake Kinetics

11. Chronological Age-group Sport