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.