Individualization has been shown to be a critical concept in planning optimal athlete training programmes. Athletes are unique individuals with different physiological characteristics, tolerances to environmental and training loads, rates of recovery from training stimuli, lifestyles and social pressures, psychological traits and training and competition goals. This applies across all sports and across all ages. Consequently, tailoring the coaching process to the needs of individual athletes and taking into consideration age and maturity, degree of previous training and experience and current level of skill, should assist in the achievement of challenging but realistic individual performance goals. Despite coaches recognising the need for an individualized approach, and the coaching theory literature identifying various principles to support it, several constraints can and often do militate against an optimal effect. However, the importance of adopting an event specific approach for individual sports such as swimming, and a player-position specific approach for team sports such as rugby football have been highlighted as possibly helpful. Finally, it was suggested that the chances of an athlete becoming overtrained may be reduced by using an individualized approach.