Southwold Swimming Club

I am concerned with the unhealthy over emphasis by some on personal bests and medals. Swimmers need to realise that they will develop at vastly different rates. Winning medals at a young age must be considered a bonus. In general you have no real influence on whether you can win a medal or not even if you swim your best. It will largely depend on the performance of others which is outside your control.

It is far more important to focus on how well you prepared beforehand, approached and tackled the race. Things like, was I able to focus properly before the race? did I swim the race how I planned? were my turns good? did I breathe on the breakouts? and did I feel like I gave everything I could? These things are far more important than pure Personal Best times because if you prepare well and execute your race well the times will come.

Swimmers should expect to improve over time but not necessarily every time they race. Older swimmers can find it much harder, especially if they have reduced their training to concentrate on exams or for other reasons. These swimmers need to focus much more on season’s bests rather than lifetime bests and not expect too much if they are not training fully.

 There are a huge number of factors that can influence your performance on any day. Some of which you cannot control such as changes to movement patterns through growth, tiredness from necessary training overload, bodily adaptations taking place and illness. There are a host of others which you can control on the day but may have not done so well such as, nutrition, hydration and rest & recovery. Of course you can always control your frequency and quality of practice and training in the weeks leading up to races.

Normal development patterns will usually mean that swimmers will have a “growth spurt” at some point. This growth is extremely significant and can see some extremely significant increases in performance. Not just from the physical size change but also the corresponding internal bodily changes that can occur. Some swimmers just need to wait until the growth occurs and unfortunately this can be quite late in some boys. Some have to wait until 15+ to see that significant change. Girls tend to experience that grow spurt earlier, although there are still few girls that will develop 14+.

So I urge parents to explain these factors to their children to ensure they do not have unrealistic expectations for their performance especially for children that are likely to develop a bit later than others.

Keith