Early Specialization

Just read an article about Early Specialization. I also read the comments for the article, and this is quite the topic. As more sports are moving to being a year round sport, I can see how more people would defend early specialization, even though the anecdotal evidence says that it may not be the best thing for young athletes.

As a professional swim coach of young athletes, it would be in my best interest to defend early specialization, but really I am torn on the subject. I do believe that 12 and unders should participate in multiple activities, but at the same time, for those kids who really do enjoy a single sport, or if the family can only afford or have time to do a single activity, then I am ok with that as well.

Parents ask me when a child should start deciding what they want to participate in. My answer is this, for 10 and under athletes a wide range of activities is fine. They may not excel at any one sport or activity due to this, but if you keep that in perspective it'll be ok. At 11 a child should narrow down the sports or activities that they enjoy the most, and begin to concentrate more on those few activities. Here is where you should see some progress towards the higher levels of the sport for their respective age. Between 12 and 13 a child should come to decision on the few things that they wish pursue. This could be two activities, and you don't have to focus on a single activity.

I give this as a generalization in terms of swimming. Other sports are going to tell you different things because there are still those sports that believe that if you aren't at a high level by 9, then you won't make it in their sport. Swimming is not this way. Staying active throughout the year and getting skill development and maintaining adaptation to the water helps build skills. At the ages around 11 or 12 the swimmer will begin to take those skills and strengthen them. They will also begin to get a little more aerobic training which will increase the repetitions of the skills previously developed. At 13 or 14 is when the aerobic training is needed and a bigger time commitment is necessary. Looking at the development you can see how I came up with the narrowing of activities by age according to the time needed to progress in swimming. This is assuming that they have been doing skill development since they were 7 or 8 years old. Joining swimming later will delay the development, as they will need to develop the skills before high repetitions, or you could develop bad habits and continue to increase the myelin sheath for that particular incorrect movement.

Now back to my thoughts on early specialization in general. I think that programs need to design themselves with early specialization child in mind. This means recognizing the appropriate skill development and physical development good for various ages. Not enough training is incorporated with child development, rather sports just see training as training, regardless of age. This is not the case, and this is where sports get in trouble and create the mental or emotional "burn out."

Developing young athletes is to prepare them for when high performance matters. We over emphasize youth sports and create national competitions of youth sports spectacles and high moments of a child's life. I like the idea of localized development with the occasional travel to get some new competition. It is as the Senior or High School level where traveling to more national like events is best suited. High School age is when the swimmer will either be ending their swimming career or showcasing themselves to be able to compete at the next level. So in the development process of a young athlete you must spend years developing skills; years strengthening and refining those skills; years developing the body physiologically; years of competitions to prepare them for what it is like in a race; and mentally preparing the athletes for the roller coaster ride that a swim career is like and the work ethic and mind set to deal with those ups and downs.

Blog Preface and what I have learned

I should have begun my blog with a preface. I think it may make some of my posts make more sense. You'll have better understanding of where I came from, and what I have learned along the way to come up with my reasons for some of my posts.

I just read an article of a talk that Teri McKeever gave at a clinic. If you don't know who Teri McKeever is; she is the Head Women's Swim Coach at Cal Berkeley having coached the likes of Natalie Coughlin and Haley Cope. She mentioned about how she felt bad for her former swimmers because she felt like she could have done more if only she knew what she knows now. We don't here coaches say this very often, so I found myself feeling bad that I felt very similar. Reading that Teri McKeever had similar feelings made me feel a lot better. It makes sense though, we are always striving to be better at what we do, and we care a great deal about our athletes, so the response to those two things should lead to the feeling of regret of what you did with former swimmers. You know you did your best at that time, but you have now become a better coach, so you know more now.

This leads me to my preface, and me willing to admit where I was wrong and have since grown as a coach. I began with a novice development group. All I did was stroke work (not exactly the best stroke work, but stroke work none the less). I committed myself to studying and becoming better at developing strokes. At this level you can get swimmers to continue to become faster with stroke work alone, so since I was successful I believed that is all we needed to do even as I began to take more developed groups. I became very strict and precise about my swimmers strokes, and completely ignored the physiological aspect. My brother and I both had this really bad habit of talking too much at workouts about stroke work, and it consumed our workouts.

About 4 years into coaching I began to study the physiological side of training. I began to adopt some form of physiological development, but stayed tried and true to the belief that all the swimmers needed was stroke work. I developed very good 10 and unders before, and now I was starting to develop better 11 - 12 year olds. In my final year at Raisin Country Aquatics (now merged with Tule Nation Tritons), I began to study not just physiological development of the body in general, but the different phases of physiological development in regards to child development. This was the year that I truly began a different level of coaching. Now at Conejo Simi Swim Club, I do a much better job of incorporating the mix of Stroke work and physiological development that is geared towards my groups target ages. This has lead to me now developing the fastest swimmers I have ever developed myself (I get some credit for two faster swimmers while with RCA in my first year as Head Age-Group Coach, but I pretty much just coached them for about a season, and really didn't develop them myself).

My blog posts about being careful about over coaching, or when to allow the swimmer to develop through repetition rather through explanation may make more sense now. Deep down, all I want to do is stroke work, but I have learned that as a coach we must develop every aspect that is needed to be successful in this sport. I now coach a "gateway" group. Most teams have one, it is the group that they still need to develop strokes, but you are also introducing the work and training that will be asked of them at the higher levels.

I will continue to grow as a swim coach because I know there is a lot more to learn, and that there are new developments all the time. I sometimes do wonder what I could do now at RCA, Selma High School, and the Aqua Bears with my new knowledge of how to develop fast swimmers. Would I be successful? or would I scare away so many who wouldn't accept the change and therefore kill off the swim programs? Who knows. I do know this though, I am now developing swimmers better here at Conejo Simi, and will probably continue to get better through the years here as we grow stronger and faster.