What Is Wrong With Swimming??

This has been an interesting tangent, but how about the core of the article's thesis? We are arranging things the way they have always been. That caters to the convenience of the swim coach. It reproduces similar conditions over and over again (to the crashing boredom of most potential fans) to ensure strictly fair competition. It maximizers the swims and opportunities for the very best swimmers, and everyone else gets to live with the consequences and the leftovers. Let me ask you, why are 99% of all swim teams run like every kid wants to make the Olympics? As "What is Wrong with Swimming" suggests, the key objective on most clubs is to throw lots of conditioning at new swimmers to get their bodies to the point where they can handle 2 per day workouts, 6-7 days per week, with ever increasing yardage as they mature. WHY? That makes sense if every kid is another Michael Phelps, but they are not, nor should they even want to be. How are intelligent t-ball and little league teams organized? Don't they focus on teaching fundamental skills and giving the kids a chance to play with the game and have fun? Couldn't a swim team offer a beginners program with practices (not "work-outs") 3 times per week, time trials within the team, and culminating with one actual meet? Another radical suggestion, our meets are crashing bores. Does the Catholic Church start out people who are new to the faith with a 4 hour mass in latin? Don't think so. Moreover, you can read the heat sheets and predict the order of finish with pretty fair accuracy at most invitational meets. A coronation march has more drama and variety. Most other sports tolerate a much higher level of randomness and bad breaks influencing the outcome of their games. For example, why are we so hung up on "fairness" that we toss fast times from "Top Ten" consideration (which is itself a barstooling concept that has as much, or as little, meaning as you put into it) because the bendy bulkhead made the course one centimeter short? I'm not suggesting we randomly toss spectators into the pool just to mess people up (but some of the crowd control in the Tour de France, bicycling's premier event, has a similar effect on the race). I am suggesting some of our hang-ups have got us thinking in a microscopic box. How about races that get away from the clock only? Suppose you have a distance per stroke race that adds the time in seconds to complete the race to the number of strokes used to complete it. Ever wonder why the IMs are often the most interesting races? Because people have different levels of skill with each stroke, and you are never really sure who is ahead when the trailing swimmer has his best stroke coming up. Please, look up from the teeny-weeny issues we are comfortable discussing in microscopic detail, and really start to imagine the possible. Matt

This has been an interesting tangent, but how about the core of the article's thesis? We are arranging things the way they have always been. That caters to the convenience of the swim coach. It reproduces similar conditions over and over again (to the crashing boredom of most potential fans) to ensure strictly fair competition. It maximizers the swims and opportunities for the very best swimmers, and everyone else gets to live with the consequences and the leftovers. Let me ask you, why are 99% of all swim teams run like every kid wants to make the Olympics? As "What is Wrong with Swimming" suggests, the key objective on most clubs is to throw lots of conditioning at new swimmers to get their bodies to the point where they can handle 2 per day workouts, 6-7 days per week, with ever increasing yardage as they mature. WHY? That makes sense if every kid is another Michael Phelps, but they are not, nor should they even want to be. How are intelligent t-ball and little league teams organized? Don't they focus on teaching fundamental skills and giving the kids a chance to play with the game and have fun? Couldn't a swim team offer a beginners program with practices (not "work-outs") 3 times per week, time trials within the team, and culminating with one actual meet? Another radical suggestion, our meets are crashing bores. Does the Catholic Church start out people who are new to the faith with a 4 hour mass in latin? Don't think so. Moreover, you can read the heat sheets and predict the order of finish with pretty fair accuracy at most invitational meets. A coronation march has more drama and variety. Most other sports tolerate a much higher level of randomness and bad breaks influencing the outcome of their games. For example, why are we so hung up on "fairness" that we toss fast times from "Top Ten" consideration (which is itself a barstooling concept that has as much, or as little, meaning as you put into it) because the bendy bulkhead made the course one centimeter short? I'm not suggesting we randomly toss spectators into the pool just to mess people up (but some of the crowd control in the Tour de France, bicycling's premier event, has a similar effect on the race). I am suggesting some of our hang-ups have got us thinking in a microscopic box. How about races that get away from the clock only? Suppose you have a distance per stroke race that adds the time in seconds to complete the race to the number of strokes used to complete it. Ever wonder why the IMs are often the most interesting races? Because people have different levels of skill with each stroke, and you are never really sure who is ahead when the trailing swimmer has his best stroke coming up. Please, look up from the teeny-weeny issues we are comfortable discussing in microscopic detail, and really start to imagine the possible. Matt