Race Club Article

Originally posted by craiglll@yahoo.com I really wondered why the article appeared. It, at first, seemed to me to have a very negative messafge hidden under a seemingly positive facade. Gary was arguing that it doesn't make sense to swim enormous distances in practice unless you're going to be a distance swimmer, and he gave three reasons why ignoring this principle with kids can be detrimental: 1) The key to swimming fast is to maintain a good, efficient stroke. When you make kids swim enormous distances, you effectively make it impossible for them to maintain a good, efficient stroke and end up engraining bad technique. 2) It takes a lot of time to rack up the enormous yardage some coaches require. This effectively makes it impossible for their swimmers to participate in any sport but swimming. Kids need to be able to experiment with other sports, even if they are ultimately going to devote themselves to swimming. 3) Because there are so many different swimming events, swimming bears some resemblance to track and field in terms of the kinds of skills needed to excel at the different events. Making enormous yardage a requirement for participation in swimming can effectively bar people from the sport who could actually excel at shorter distance events but who don't have the physiology required to endure enormous yardage. Gary admits that there are no easy answers to the problem, since coaches with large numbers of swimmers are going to have a hard time developing specialized workouts. But he also alludes to another factor that, I think, is even more of a problem: Developing swimmers usually don't know yet what their best event is going to be. What's needed is a program that will prepare every swimmer for every type of swimming event, so each swimmer can figure out which events work best for them. I gather that the article was not intended to provide a comprehensive solution to the problem. This first step in solving any problem is to clearly define what the problem is, and that, I gather, was the purpose of this article. Bob

Originally posted by craiglll@yahoo.com I really wondered why the article appeared. It, at first, seemed to me to have a very negative messafge hidden under a seemingly positive facade. Gary was arguing that it doesn't make sense to swim enormous distances in practice unless you're going to be a distance swimmer, and he gave three reasons why ignoring this principle with kids can be detrimental: 1) The key to swimming fast is to maintain a good, efficient stroke. When you make kids swim enormous distances, you effectively make it impossible for them to maintain a good, efficient stroke and end up engraining bad technique. 2) It takes a lot of time to rack up the enormous yardage some coaches require. This effectively makes it impossible for their swimmers to participate in any sport but swimming. Kids need to be able to experiment with other sports, even if they are ultimately going to devote themselves to swimming. 3) Because there are so many different swimming events, swimming bears some resemblance to track and field in terms of the kinds of skills needed to excel at the different events. Making enormous yardage a requirement for participation in swimming can effectively bar people from the sport who could actually excel at shorter distance events but who don't have the physiology required to endure enormous yardage. Gary admits that there are no easy answers to the problem, since coaches with large numbers of swimmers are going to have a hard time developing specialized workouts. But he also alludes to another factor that, I think, is even more of a problem: Developing swimmers usually don't know yet what their best event is going to be. What's needed is a program that will prepare every swimmer for every type of swimming event, so each swimmer can figure out which events work best for them. I gather that the article was not intended to provide a comprehensive solution to the problem. This first step in solving any problem is to clearly define what the problem is, and that, I gather, was the purpose of this article. Bob