Swim Parent: (Part 4) The Training

Swimming is a year round sport. It is a year round sport mainly due to the fact that the sport is done in a medium that is not normal for everyday life. It is done in water. A persons equilibrium is different; the resistance is different, to create forward motion (propulsion) is different. If you spend time without being in the water you can lose these key aspects to swimming fast.

I remember reading an article from a youth sports coaching journal. The argument was the result of year round training in a single sport. It basically said that short term success did occur, but long term it didn't pan out for the majority of athletes. Of the sports they looked at swimming was not one of them, but the sport with the most success was track. The author believed that it was due to track utilizing periodization as a training method to plan the season with mesocycles to break up the season.

The author probably didn't realize that swimming stole this from track 40 - 50 years ago. Periodization is the key to successful training for long term success. 

Why is this important for parents to know? To understand why practices may be different throughout the season depending of the phase (mesocycle) that they are in. There are times where the swimmers will be doing a lot stroke development. Other times they are doing a lot of just aerobic level yardage. These two are pretty much the two opposites when it comes to the coach interaction. Where stroke development the coach can really get involved shaping and molding strokes to be more effective. Where as the aerobic part the coach is observing more as they don't want to interfere and ruin the aerobic heart rate that they are trying to maintain.

There are other types of phases between the two mentioned that all have different levels of coach interaction. This is all part of us as coaches being prepared with our season plans utilizing periodization for the best long term success.

Swim Parent: (Part 3) Patience

Anyone who has worked with kids knows and understands that one of the main qualities you must have is patience. Age-Group Swimming requires more patience than working with Senior Swimmers, but that still requires patience. The ultimate goal is for the swimmer to reach their potential at the ages of 16 - 18 years old to be able to possibly consider swimming in college. College swimming is not for everyone, but it is a possibility if you are willing to look beyond just NCAA Division 1.

The career of a young swimmer is about development and growth in the sport. Most parents who have their swimmers begin swim team around ages 6 - 10 have this concept down. The years go by and the swimmer becomes better and better at swimming, and the concept of long term becomes much harder. You go to swim meets, and you now have others to compare through the years. This becomes the decline of patience. Parents and Swimmers begin to compare themselves to others, and frustration develops. The best thing to do, do not compare while in developing stages. Kids develop at different rates. One study I read said that a child of the same age can differ in physical maturity by up to 5 years. This physical maturity develops strength and coordination that makes swimmers faster. This is why comparing to another child their own age makes no sense if they are even 1 year more physically mature than your child. If you happen to have an early maturing child, it is best not to compare because the maturity and growth that your child has done, the others around them will go through sometime in the next 5 years, and they will catch your child even if the training is not as good, equal or better than your child's.

As an age-group coach, we must reign in this idea of being on the top when younger than 16 is of up most importance. This doesn't mean that is a bad thing to be on the top. You may be an early maturing child, so you should be on the top. The field will pretty much be equal by 16 (for guys, in some cases it can actually be later).

I had a parent come up to me one time and asked me if their child is fast enough to continue to participate in Club Swimming. The child had just turned 10 years old. The child had only done club swimming for a short amount of time (less than 6 months), and I was taken back by the question. I answered it by explaining that the child is too young to determine such a thing, and that she hadn't been in club swimming long enough to really be able to execute properly consistently. This is the extremity of being impatient. It does illustrate that society in general wants a quick return all the time. We all get caught up in wanting everything now mentality. It is so easy to just fall in line with the masses and being one of the norm. Throughout this series, I have mentioned that it takes work, even for the parent. Let's face it, if it were easy, then we'd athletes coming out of everywhere. Athletes though are developed not by doing the ordinary, but by willing to do the extraordinary. The difference being the added part of ordinary, which is the word "extra". A child, coach, and parent must be willing to do the extra just so the child can become an athlete, and not a participant. Then to be an elite athlete it takes just a little more than that "extra."

Remember that as a parent of a young swimmer, be patient. Ask the child to pay attention, work hard, and do their best. It is not easy to be patient during the roller coaster ride of a swim career, but it is the best way to go about it. Remember that if your child is fast when they are young; others are going to catch up. If your child is slower while young, they will catch up to some their peers if they continue to stay attentive, work hard, and always give their honest best effort.

Swim Parent: Part 2 (Coaching your Child)

Every swim parent has heard it. Almost every swim parent has done it. It doesn't make you a bad swim parent because you tried to coach your child. The thing that we ask is for you to recognize what coaching your child means, and for you to put the effort forth to not coach them. As I wrote in the previous post, this takes work and effort.

The obvious: On deck at practice going up to your child and giving technique advice. This you should always avoid. If you can't help yourself; stay off the pool deck during practice. Young kids have a short attention span. As coaches it is hard to get in a group of their peers. The last thing we need is for them to lose their attention because their parent has something to say. For many kids, the attention towards the coach may be gone until almost the end of practice now.

Also pretty obvious: talking to your child before the race about stroke technique or race strategy. Oh, this can get interesting. I had an 8 year old boy one time made it to Junior Olympics in the 100 IM. He is going in seeded 2nd. His parent told him that he should do a flip turn from back to breast because flip turns are faster. Oh, the anger, I held it in, and told the swimmer to ask the parent why he got DQ'd. Now I know many parents are more aware of the rules than this parent, but it does show that even if I have been coaching a kid for over a year, they will still go to the word of the parent over the word of a coach (up until about 12 or 13 years old).

Not as Obvious: Listening to the coach as they talk to them before the race, then as you walk them to the block you just continue to repeat what the coach said. Yes, it is the same message. The problem is instead of letting it set in and allow them to think about it; you have just pounded a square block into a round hole and it is stuck, and it may not have set in. When a coach says something pre-race and then the kid executes, the coach can praise them on that (despite the result of the race). This will make the swimmer feel like the way to improve skills is by listening and being dependent on their parents to remind them. If they do it wrong, then the coach can say, "What was the one thing I asked you to do?" The swimmer can then see that they must listen to the coach as no one is going to be in the pool to remind you of what the coach said. It's all a learning lesson, age group meets are learning lessons for what will better prepare the swimmer at the higher levels.

Not as Obvious: Analyzing the nights workout in the car ride home or at the dinner table. I'm not saying you can't talk about swim practice, but don't ask questions like, "How many yards did you do tonight?' or, "What did the coach tell you to work on tonight?" These are searching questions to lead into analysis of the workout. Swimmers may talk about practice at times. Some more than others, but just allow them to talk about what they want to about practice. At the end of practice on some nights I tell them a fact about practice. Things like: You did 4900 yards tonight if you didn't miss a single lap; We did a lot of underwater work, and everyone seemed to be a few yards farther by the end of practice; or that main set tonight was one of those challenging sets, and a lot of you surprised me by making it. I don't do it every night because I want to save them for those nights we do something little more than normal. Parents have told me that their kids tell them about practices, and it seems as though the end of practice facts seem to be very much reiterated to the parent.

If you find that you have done these things, that's ok. You haven't ruined your swimmer. You just want to control them in the future. You may catch yourself in the future, and that is ok also. Sometimes recognizing the problem and then fixing it as actually the best way to learn.

Some parents seriously just can't help themselves. I have heard of coaches giving advise to these parents by telling them that the pool deck at practice is bad place for them. Easy fix, make that your relax time with a book or a cup of coffee. They say that it is good for creativity and the brain to have some time in the day that you don't think of anything (Not work, not kids, not family, not chores, nothing; this is also why many people have great ideas in places like the shower where there mind is not on anything). Here is that time. In regards to swim meets, I have heard some coaches advise parents to become an official because you have to analyze every race, so it makes it harder to key in on your own swimmer. As an official, you also give back to the sport that your child enjoys. That is always a good thing.

Swim Parent: Part 1 (Introduction)

I am going to start blogging again with the swim parent in mind. I have studied the swim parent from the very beginning of my coaching. It was made aware to me at the age of 14 that they will be the biggest headache to any swim coach. I was curious how this could be, so I have since paid a huge attention to many swim parents. After years of observing, I began researching and then creating my own opinion, which I then began to preach about being a swim parent through my observations as a swimmer and a coach.

I have noted on many other blog posts about being a swim parent. Sometimes I feel guilty about preaching to parents. When you become a parent there is no manual on how to do it. You learn as you go, and you take lessons learned from your own parents good and bad experiences. Through this method there becomes a problem with every generation, as every generation is different from the next. In the end though many people become good parents, and its many times through the experience of others that helps them do so; maybe not by doing it exactly the same way, but using an experience to help mold their own.

When it comes to swimming it is the coaches who have the experiences, and they have many, and they are both for the good and for the bad. Even if a parent grew up in swimming, they do not understand how things change over time, and sometimes forget about their time as a young age-grouper and all they can recall is their time as a high school or college swimmer. They forget about how different age-group swimming was compared to the higher levels.

In USA Swimming, we have become so much better at developing swimmers. The huge masses that qualify at these high standards now is amazing. One of their goals at USA Swimming was to build the base; when you look at the base in USA Swimming it is quite amazing. The training of young athletes has changed as we do not see young swimmers as little adults, but as developing children and have changed the training regimen of most of the age-group programs. This is a hard thing for many parents to understand, as they want to see their children be the most successful, when in reality we are just developing skills and allowing pure talent dictate who is fast at the early ages of 12 and under. It is the work ethic and the skills learned that pushes them beyond that point of an age-grouper and the best swimmers will be decided at the ages beyond 16 years old.

Parents have become such a large source of swimmers dropping out of the sport and the removal of so many coaches over the years, that there is a slight dislike of swim parents, in general, amongst some coaches. Although I have been burned many times in the past by parents, I still have a true belief that there more good than there are bad parents out there. I believe most conflicts arise from a parents desire to want the best for their child, and have a hard time seeing the long term growth and the role the swimmer gets to play in the success of their swim club rather than the success of the individual. I believe that human nature breeds these feelings and that you must actively be fighting off these feelings to really be able to execute them. A good swim parent isn't just natural, it is something that takes work and effort. You must work to not get mad at your swimmer when they goof off and doesn't listen at practice when they are 8 years old. You must work to not provide feedback on your child's race, and allow the coach to do the developing. You must work to not look at the other child and wonder why they are getting faster and not yours. It takes effort to understand that children develop at different times, and it is not equal based on age alone.

The idea that it isn't about what a swimmer can do to help them get better as an individual, but what they can do to help make their club a better team. This helps kids be able to handle the ups and downs of the swimmer career, and doesn't allow their own performances be magnified and built up. Our club, Conejo Simi Swim Club, utilizes a family volunteer hours system. This system helps the club be able to do special activities that help the club, but it also forces parents to be part of the swim club beyond their own child. It is not popular, but it does get more parents involved who might not be involved if it were not there. Parents get to know other parents on the team that they may never had met before, which in turn creates a closer relationship. When the parents are willing to do what's best for the team, then it is many times easier to get the kids to buy in as well. This is not easy for some parents, where others it is very natural, but like I said in the previous paragraph; being a sports parent is going to be some work.

As I continue with these blog posts, I hope you allow yourself to consider the things I bring up. These things are not to say that you are a bad parent because you do these things, but for you to have an idea of things to consider working towards to improve yourself as a swim parent, despite the fact that you are already a great parent (in my book, you are already a great parent by just putting your kid in the great sport of swimming).