Is Swimming Eating Its Young?

Some Guy, I have a few beliefs that I think are important here. In no particular order: 1) Children should progress with children of their same age. A fast 12 year old should not train with 17 and 18 year olds no matter how fast he/she is. Maturity level of the swimmers needs to be the same and the coach should not have to try to speak to multiple levels of age appropriate intellects. 2) Children up to about the age of 10 to 12 should do more than one sport even if one is done more than the other. you don't know what they will really like or what they will excel at later in life. 3) The amount of time spent on any give sport/hobby/interest (music included) should be age appropriate. No 8 year old should be doing any one thing (non-school) more than 2 or 3 hours a week including travel time. The time can increase with age as interest increases but it has to be appropriate for the maturity of the mind and body. Freshman in high school should not be doing doubles during the school year. Juniors might do it once or twice. Seniors twice a week. On the mental side, this is important because too many kids will begin to measure themselves by what they do with this time (in this case we are talking swimming) and they need to be more than single dimensional people. 4) Parents need to look at this before they join a swim team if they have more than one option. In any case, they need to let the team know that this is what they believe up front so that there are no surprises later. I believe that much of what I said above is consistent with the teaching of both USA Swimming and the American Swim Coaches Association. Many coaches choose to ignore this or forget it so they have to be reminded. My wife coached in St Louis for 21 years before we moved this summer. She coached the youngest kids in a series of groups whose goal was to take someone who could swim the length safely and have them swim a legal 100 IM. The team is large - 500 kids - and her groups probably totaled 100+. The kids ranged, generally, from 5 to 11 with the bulk being in the 6 to 9 range. She would come home on occasion with stories of parents who wanted to have their kid swim more than the twice a week that was available. (The practices were 30 minutes long for the youngest to 45 minutes for the oldest groups and they were segregated by age.) Kids could move out of the group when they made the 100 IM and they were old enough (7?) but the amount of practice time did not triple when they did (more was offered for convenience sake but you were not expected to come to all practices). I tell you this so that you know that there are programs out there that do it right. We lost kids to other teams because of this. For example, a couple of parents wanted all of their kids (age range of maybe 5 years) swimming together at the same time. The team was unwilling to do that. So they were gone. No great loss since we had hundreds more who saw that the program worked and it got to the point that we were running out of room at the top (skill/age) end of the team. Leo

99% of the people I grew up with in youth swimming burned out and quit at 18. A handful stayed through college and one still does masters and running. I'm back at it after leaving at 18, but it took 22 years. Hockey season in San Diego can run all year almost since we have the opportunity to play roller hockey. Each season I ask my son if he wants to keep going. After each practice AND game I ask if he had fun. And he's a serious travel hockey player. You can have fun and be competitive and successful. Aside from the other points people have brought up, it's also important to remember to have some element of FUN. Swimming 1000's of yardage a day 6 days/week plus meets does NOT equal Fun. A balance has to be struck to keep that mental edge and want to jump in that cold pool each day.

Is swimming "eating its young?" Are they being burned out with mindless yardage? Do they have to do volume training for long events? Are we missing masters swimmers who were burned out as youths? As to the kids, what can we do to stop the cannabalism? Oh my! Depends on the program and club/ coach mentality. I feel there are some clubs out there who "get it." I got burnt out bad by 18. Dropped it for 12 years and have now been back with it for 5 years - hopefully to stay. As an age grouper I was not even at the highest level offered. A lot of my friends that were at the highest level did sets like 5000 fly for time (I am not kidding) and doing doubles at 13 years old. They had success for a short time, and they now tell me about their (multiple) shoulder surgeries as adults. This was in the eighties. I think that had I swam college, I would not be swimming masters now - I'd be either mentally burned out or physically "roached." I believe Auburn trains their kids around 20K a day at times. Holy cow! One of their top swimmers graduated and moved to another program that does lots less yardage (5K a day) - and actually dropped time across the board in all his events. It's funny how you carry your training habits with you as an adult. I was so used to doing 8000 yds a day, 6 days a week, that any practice now that's under 5000 seems like a warm up. I'm trying to get used to less yardage so that I can ENJOY THIS SPORT MORE!:frustrated: I'm very impressed with SwimAtlanta's mentality with their age groupers - no doubles (at least during the school year.) This is regardless of age or level. And they still continue to turn out top swimmers.

Is swimming "eating its young?" As to the kids, what can we do to stop the cannabalism? And on this question - I support the clubs that do have it right. I know there are some out there that exist. My parents would always ask the question, "Is this reasonable?" For my family, 5 hours of training a day and 5000 yd fly sets were not reasonable. :blah:

This is an important topic. It could be a couple of things like: those parents and those coaches who have Type A personalities; you know, excel, excel, excel in both sports and academics. Many parents do live through their children when their children are inclined to be "great." And many coaches may put children through volumes of yardage so they don't have to spend as much time "coaching." Or, because they were put through the paces when they were swimmers and it is either: payback, or the thought that this is the way it is done. But I don't consider those types of people coaches. They are drill sargents. All of us here know that coaching is a delicate balance between bettering a person physically and emotionally and knowing and seeing the differences along the way. I think that most parents who are not Type A personalities will recognize when their children have had too much for them. Our kids' body language can say a whole lot. Also, I am not sure if a lot of age group swimmers did get burned out. I, at least, have never met any but I do hear about this through others. I also wonder if maybe they just became passionate about some other things especially as they entered adulthood and found that life IS a bowl of cherries but their interests have changed. But if more swimmers are getting burned out and giving up the sport, then it may be that the pool time was way too much, and they did not think it was going to be worthwhile because their personal journey to "greatness" (whatever that may mean) seemed unreachable. Just my thoughts, no facts here. Donna

to be honest, most age group coaches have no idea what is going on. They train their little kids for the now and forget about the future. This is probably right, unfortunately. But I do know good age group coaches too. I think the parents might need to step in a bit here. My daughter starting swimming relatively late at 8 with a summer swim league. I only let her practice with her USS 2x a week for 1 hour until she turned 11. Then I let her go 3x a week. She was also playing other sports, which I understand help create/build an all around better athlete. She did quite well. Swimming 2x a week she went to the Eastern Zone Championships in NJ. I say this not to brag -- although she is a totally rocking swimmer chick and so bursting with enthusiasm and passion that it would mitigate some of Terry's concerns about burnout and "hamburgers" -- but to show what can be done on low yardage. She swims more now, and I do worry that burnout is possible. But she swims a lot less yardage than her peers who are doing 400 IMs at age 12. My wife swam in college but did not enjoy it. She was burned out and hated her "conventional" coach. I did not swim. But I sure like it now.

And is that a real picture of you? Do you remember the movie "Deliverance"? I think it's from the 70's.

Why, you're quite handsome and you look very mindful. :applaud: Are you playing a guitar? Think dueling banjos Fortress. You may not live this one down.:laugh2:

This post has really made me sad. The emphasis today on organized sports is way off base. What I don't see today is kids just playing for the sake of having fun. When we were kids, we would come home after school and "go out and play". I loved playing softball as a kid. We would play for hours without adults, referees, umpires. We played a game of baseball/stickball sometimes with just two people, a pitcher and batter. We played it in the school playground between two three storey brick buildings of the school. A single was below the line on the wall, a double was above the first floor windows, a triple was above the second floor windows etc. It was not only fun, but we were practicing and honing our throwing and catching and batting skills. All this emphasis on games and practice and winning at all costs........makes me crazy. I just retired from over 30 years as a teacher of physical education or adapted physical education at the elementary school level. There are plenty of kids out there who don't know how to skip, or jump rope or climb trees. But they do know about the soccer game on Saturday and the uniform they must have. And they do know how important it all is when they see the adults arguing with each other or worse. Hey, guess what, kids can have arguments in a game and they can figure it out too. It's part of growing and learning. Now all this about age groupers with 6 practices a week and mega yardage I think is also off the mark. Let kids be kids. My father was a gymnast, NJ state champion in 1940. At age 6 or 7 he had me join a gymnastics club. This was around 1956 or so. We met once a week and did a lot of tumbling and mat work. I was OK at it but no super star. I probably stayed with it a year or so and never really was all that interested. My father wisely let it run its course. Interestingly enough I did forgo my senior year of swimming in college in order to join the gymnastics team. And had a wonderful time competing at the parallel bars and floor exercise. I did it because I enjoyed it and as a tribute to my father. He came to several of the meets (and most of my swim meets). My freshman year in HS I wanted to go out for the football team. I'm 5' 10" now and 175, I was probably 5'6" and 135 then. My parents said no. Thank goodness!! I was disapointed at the time, but swimming was a winter sport in NJ and that was the next season, and I knew how to swim, so I went out for the team. We practiced one hour per day from mid November to the first week in March, that was the season. If we did 1500 yards a day we did alot. We didn't even swim circles, we swam waves, i.e. the first group did a 50, then the next group did a 50, then the third group etc. Guess what, we were state champions for ten years in a row and won the Easterns 4 years in a row. My junior year we swam against and beat the Yale freshman and the Princeton freshman. We had numerous All -Americans and three swimmers made the Olympic trials in '68. What I am saying here is that although swimming was important in our town, there was a perspective. No one that I swam with burned out from too much practice. In 1965 our best freestyler went 21.8 in the 50 and 48.8 in the 100 and our breastroker set the national record at 1:01.+ Swimming is a lifetime sport. I have had the pleasure of swimming and competing in masters for 27 years. I do waaay more yardage than I ever did and enjoy getting in the water at 5:30AM. I look forward to swimming everyday. That's what the sport should be about - health, fitness and enjoyment. No one is going to do it if it is a drudgery. Let kids be kids. Whew, I feel better getting that off my chest.

Geek: Is this really true in NC? That's too old here. Unfortunately, people have to specialize earlier because of the insane practices schedules inflicted on elite atheltes. You know which sport I speak of in particular. Around here, every single sport has become a year round sport. There are no longer any seasonable sports except football. None left. ? Same here, everything is year round if your child has to "excel". One thing I am thankful about. In my town they started a recreational softball league that is different than the uber competitive league. My daughter loves to play, but does not have a competitive bone in her body. I coach her team, and it is so much fun. The girls all are there to have fun. There is not tears over bad plays(except from me, ha), there is total support for their team mates. Geek: And is that a real picture of you? Did you post it to rebut that Speedo-man picture that Gull keeps posting? Why, you're quite handsome and you look very mindful. Your picture seems at odds, though, with your reputation for the well-placed zing. Now, I don't know if the avatar is quite up to Richjb's former bum avatar, "but" he's ditched is and you're is really, really good. :applaud: Are you playing a guitar? Apparently you have not seen Delivery! I am not sure that swimming is any worse than it used to be. I think that kids have more year round opportunities at a younger age. In our town, the swimmers usually leave around Junior High age because that is when there are more school sports. School sports in High School are fun, get more attention from the press, the club teams do not. Usually the athletes who play the club sports(in any sport), are the ones who excel.