So many swimmers classify themselves as a "sprinter", "breaststroker", "middle distance", "IMer", etc.
Since training can affect the outcome, how can you tell if your talent matches what you're training?
To clarify with an example: How can you tell if you're really meant to be a distance swimmer vs. you like distance and you've trained yourself into it?
There's definitely something to be said for just doing what you like and going with it. Or to just take an all around approach similar to what is recommended for age groupers.
But what if you want to pick something to really throw your focus into?
Is there an objective way to decide what distance a person should focus on or what stroke a person should focus on?
If you have a specialty, how did you decide?
If your desire is to rank as high as you can in an event - use the event ranking part of the USMS site to compare how your times rank vs. others in different events. What events do you find the most fun?
Don't worry about how others reacted in your childhood - you sound like you had a less than ideal swimming situation growing up. My USAS coach was really good - he really did make us do all of our off events at least once (and usually multiple times) over the course of a season. It was very obvious I was always going to be best (by far) at breaststroke but he wanted us to be well-rounded. Good thing, too, because I had a fairly lengthy plateau in my best events at one point - it was nice still being able to drop time in other things while that happened...
If your desire is to rank as high as you can in an event - use the event ranking part of the USMS site to compare how your times rank vs. others in different events. What events do you find the most fun?
Don't worry about how others reacted in your childhood - you sound like you had a less than ideal swimming situation growing up. My USAS coach was really good - he really did make us do all of our off events at least once (and usually multiple times) over the course of a season. It was very obvious I was always going to be best (by far) at breaststroke but he wanted us to be well-rounded. Good thing, too, because I had a fairly lengthy plateau in my best events at one point - it was nice still being able to drop time in other things while that happened...
