9 Year Old Marvel What? But How?

thanks, another one is OUTLIERS Talent is Overrated What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else Read that one before the "Talent Code." A nice 1-2 combo. Now if it would only start sinking in...

I won't deny I am pathetic but why don't you go to a USMS meet and test the waters with us old farts? Put up or shut up. Yes, anyone that has less muscle than gumby is pretty pathetic. They make a new supplement called "charged" that might help you regain your youth, so that you can put down your walking cane.

good grades are the result of good habits good grades at a young age establish a trend it's much easier to continue the trend of getting good grades than go from being a poor student to an excellent one Ande, I have read Outliers too. It is great. 10,000 hours of practice, man, that is a lot! But I will dispute the findings as applied to swimming or really athletics in general. Ande, I would be surprised if you swam significantly more than I did during our youth. I think we are merely seperated by our talent. I swam year round with great coaches from age 8 to age 22. Several of my peers from age group went D1, scored at Nats, finaled at trials, whatever. I did the same workouts, worked with the same coaches but they were just more talented too. Oh well. This topic comes up once per year, and usually ends with me saying Michael Jordan’s image as a hard worker was manufactured by Nike, and Geek telling me I am full of it. Oh and good grades in 3rd grade is not a matter of good habits. Parents can force good grades upon their children up until middle school.

I've been reading this topic and browsing the boards for some time now and feel I just needed to post my thoughts on this entire issue. I can totally understand RAC and others but would just like to leave you with a personal story to think about.. When I was a swimmer, the idea of quitting was rather horrible. It has been eighteen months since I last stashed my Fastskin suit in the back of a wardrobe and made my decision not to race again and it was a far easier choice than I’d imagined it would be. I quit swimming at midday on March 18, 2006. I hadn’t planned on it, but that was the way it panned out. In the morning, I swam in the preliminaries of the 200 yard breaststroke at the NCAA Championships in Athens, Georgia. I didn’t do all that well: I think my time was 2:16.1, but I don’t remember exactly. My best time was, and still is, 2:14.92. My first 100 yards was a 1:04 and things went downhill from there. I’d done all right on the first day of the championships, competing in the 200 IM and recording a time only slightly slower than my best. I wasn’t much of an IMer and had snuck into the 200 IM with a B-cut. I’m being totally honest here, which is strange for me because I’ve never liked being painfully honest about swimming. For most of my life, swimming validated my existence. An insult to my swimming was a strike right at the heart of who I was. It was as though I had nothing else. Quite honestly, I didn’t really care about swimming anymore when I finally quit. I think I stopped caring about swimming on November 20, 2005, when I qualified for NCAAs. My 2:14.92, swum at the University of Minnesota, wasn’t fast enough to guarantee my place in the NCAA Championships, but it was good enough that I was 99% sure I’d be going down to Georgia in March. In hindsight, that was enough for me. I was getting close to graduation and hadn’t swum a personal best time in the 200 breaststroke since February 2003. Recording a best time in Minnesota was like a gift from heaven. That swim, in my opinion, made up for a lot of the work and stress and agony I’d gone through. At that point, I started to wind down. Should I have maintained the motivation to swim a 2:13 or a 2:12 at NCAAs? Sure I should have. But now, I finally have the balls to admit that I lost a certain amount of interest once I knew I’d made it to NCAAs. A week before I went to college, I’d expressed the excitement I felt about competing at the NCAA Champs to a fellow swimmer in New Zealand. “Well,” she’d said. “That’s if you make it.” Finally, I had made it, damnit. However, mentally exhausted and reaching the pinnacle of my physical ability, I’d had about as much as I could handle. I swam that NCAA preliminary race and got dressed. I doubt I even swam in the warm down pool. A personal best time would have made it back for a night time swim. My time did not. I went out to lunch with my mother and got a bit drunk. We were drinking red wine. I just stated talking and I couldn’t stop. My mother was a runner - a very accomplished runner who represented Great Britain and New Zealand at numerous international competitions. She still holds the New Zealand record over 1000 metres. She understood what I was doing and where I was coming from: I had to talk to someone, but most importantly, I had to talk to myself about how I was done with a sport I’d taken part in since I was six years old. I had to convince myself that it was okay to quit and that I wasn’t a complete loser for calling “Time” on something that (I thought) made me who I was. Now, I can’t type “goggles” properly. My fingers always type Google, which is indicative of how my life and my career have changed. I now work in search engine optimisation and Internet marketing. There was life after swimming and I needn’t have feared “retirement”, a term I dislike as it’s used far too liberally by people who shy away from the word “quit.” I am not ashamed to use the Q word and I don’t want anyone else to be, either. Knowing when to quit is just as important as toughing it out. That the end of my swimming career coincided with the end of my college scholarship and undergraduate education was fortunate. However, not given the financial incentive, I probably would have stopped a little earlier. The “high note” to have gone out on would have been after Minnesota. I always told myself that I’d quit after I believed I’d become as good as I was ever going to get. A combination of factors meant that I was not going to get any better. The first factor was that, despite being born with an injury-free spoon in my mouth, I was beginning to suffer from more and more frequent strains in my legs. Not being able to complete a proper breaststroke kick is a big hindrance to swimming good breaststroke and the 200 *** was the only event in which I was ever really competitive. I’m not trying to encourage anyone to quit, but I wanted to write this for people who want an out but are scared. I know why you’re scared. You’re scared of ridicule from those you leave behind. There is a stigma around leaving the sport. Swimming is all-encompassing activity and when you’re immersed in it, you really believe that it is the only thing that makes your life worthwhile. You hear people talk badly about people who have quit. You are scared about what they’ll say about you. Don’t be. It doesn’t matter. Once you leave a sport, you must realise that what you left behind ceases to be of any importance. I am getting ahead of myself, but it’s an important point to remember when you’re wondering how people will react to your retirement. You may have lived with these people, breathing swimming like it was precious air during a breathing control set, for years. But once you’re done, their opinions on your swimming don’t mean anything to you. Another thing you may be worried about is finding something to take swimming’s place. What do you do with that time? More importantly, what do you do with that energy? For me, the energy question was taken care of with running. I found my dream job in order to take care of the extra time. However, the overriding problem is finding something to define yourself. This won’t be a problem for everyone, but it was for me. I had very little self-confidence when I was younger (despite my best efforts to pretend otherwise), but getting better at swimming helped me feel good about myself. That afternoon in Georgia, I was worried that giving up swimming would result in me giving up a big chunk of my confidence and identity. In actuality, I found that my choice relieved me of a huge burden. Instead of being lost and unsure like I thought I’d be, I could look back on everything I’d done and view it as a whole. It was over, and I could be confident and proud of what I’d done, without worrying about what I still had to do. All swimmers have at least a small fear of quitting. While there is no guarantee that everyone’s exit from the sport will go as well as mine, there is little to be afraid of. Your life isn’t rendered unimportant once you’re done swimming. You don’t cease to exist. What of those whom you left behind who may have you believe otherwise? Honestly, you’ll forget those snarky poolside discussions about teammates-past in the same way you’ll forget the pain of timed swims, test sets and bad meets. The greatest thing about quitting swimming is that the good memories stay as good and the bad memories fade. I still remember the elation and ecstasy of my swim in Minnesota, just like I remember all the good swims and hard-fought achievements. The horrible practices and dismal performances are distant recollections. No one can tell an athlete when to stop and many go on too long. Save for the most dense participants, most of us know when our time is up. Do not quit just because you’re about to graduate, turn 18, turn 21, change jobs or do any number of things that constitute a change in your life. Quit because it’s time. Swimming isn’t the safety net you think it is, and you’ll find that you’re more than capable of making something of yourself without a pool, a workout and championship to work towards. The “real world” is pretty awesome. Never be afraid to go out and take a look.

Perhaps that 9 year old marvel is goofing off doing other sports and activities with non-swimming friends, which are actually helping her to swim faster than others. In other words, she's probably got a well rounded life of her own and feels good about it.

Reductio ad absurdum: If it's all hard work, then the hardest working athlete should win. Half the time, that would be a woman, wouldn't it? So I looked up a more-or-less random event on the USMS database: 100 yards short course for the 2008-09 season. In the 45-49 age group, the fastest woman was Karlyn Pipes-Neilsen, 52.95. That would be good for No. 73 among men. Did all 72 men work harder than Ms. Pipes-Neilsen? I don't know any of the people involved, so you will have to tell me. What I'm doing here sounds silly. However, once one acknowledges that some physical characteristics make it harder for a woman to defeat a man, I think one also has to acknowledge that there are physical characteristics within gender - height and coordination are two that come to mind - that make a difference. I quickly add that there's a whole lot more involved here than just raw talent. And given the relative scarcity of free swimming pools worldwide, I'd suggest that the greatest natural swimming talent in the world has never even seen a pool. Elite athletes clearly work extraordinarily hard; that's part of what makes them elite. I'm just trying to point out that the best of the best have also been blessed physically. I've got no personal stake in this, by the way. I'm way too uncoordinated to be successful at any sport, yet I know I could swim faster faster if I worked harder at it. One thing that has always puzzled me, though. I'm pretty smart, and I have no problem saying my brain power was a gift. Why are some gifted athletes unwilling to acknowledge their gift?

When I was a swimmer, the idea of quitting was rather horrible. It has been eighteen months since I last stashed my Fastskin suit in the back of a wardrobe and made my decision not to race again and it was a far easier choice than I’d imagined it would be. Benna - I remember my last race in college. I told myself as a turned on the last 50 of the 200 fly that if I would push as hard as I could, I would never swim another 200 fly. After the meet, I thought that I had seen as much of that black line on the bottom of the pool as I ever wanted to. Flash forward 10 years - I lost much of the conditioning I had maintained most of my life. My weight was up, my energy was down. I tried swimming a little on my own, but I had a hard time making myself do much. Then I saw a masters program at the local YMCA. My wife and I started to swim and enjoyed the exercise. I still had no interest in racing but I found it hard to push myself without some type of goal. Triathlons were just becoming popular so I decided to try. I never could run well, but the goal was finishing, not winning, so it did not matter. One day while I was bike riding with a client, I fell in a freak accident and shattered my leg. I spent several weeks in the hospital, several months off work and had three surgeries. I did one more triathlon a year later just to show I could do it. I decided that it might be better to be out of shape than disabled, so I pretty much quit all exercise. Flash forward 20 years - I was out of shape and 25 pounds overweight. I didn't feel like I had much energy. My grandfather had passed away from congestive heart failure and my father was in the hospital for the third time with congestive heart failure. I had three kids high school and below. I decided that I needed to do something before it was too late. There was a masters program at the YMCA that I joined and have continued through today. Having a group and coach to swim with made it much easier to be consistent with workout. Later, I began to compete at meets so I would have a goal to work for. I have, however, kept my promise to myself - to never swim another 200 fly. When you read the posts here you may get the idea that there are a lot of people who need to get a life outside of swimming. What I have found in my return to swimming is that most people who participate, do it for the health benefits and the fun and camaraderie of the people they workout with. The meets are not high pressure events where success is paramount, but rather they are a gathering where everyone is truly happy for the success of others. All of us have very busy lives outside of swimming and competition – it is the swimming and competition that give us a respite from our lives. You are a very gifted athlete. Very few compete at the level you obtained (I never did). While I know that you have no interest in swimming or competing today, don’t close that door forever. You may find in a few years that the black line is not that boring after all and that spending an hour in the water gives you a needed rest from work, school, kids, wife, husband, worries… Whatever you do, be happy with your choices and have fun in life. Life is too short to waste away in endeavors that don't bring some joy.

That depends on what you mean by gift.

This thread is really cracking me up. I once posted some video of my son swimming to see if someone could give us tips on improving his stroke, and boy did I catch hell. The assumption is that any parent who tries to work on their kid's technique is a pushy parent who will burn their child out. I should mention that to my son's Suzuki piano teacher, who stresses the importance of daily practice AND parental involvement to foster proper technique. We sit in the lessons, take notes, and are given the responsibility of making sure that what was discussed and practiced in the lesson is carried over to practice time at home. This is not a novel concept. Are we being pushy parents if we make sure our child did his homework correctly, or should that be left solely to the teachers? I agree with RAC that most swim teams really don't delve a great deal into technique, so a child's bad habits are reinforced by the second. There are some children who are natural swimmer, and as Terry Laughlin likes to say, others who can learn to be good swimmers. One person's child may have a higher IQ than another's, but is it wrong for the second parent to nurture his child to achieve similar success, within reason? Don't assume that parents have a whip behind their child when working on swimming. In fact, if done with kindness and in a fun way it can be bonding.

Haven't checked to see if anyone has posted this yet. www.usaswimming.org/.../ViewMiscArticle.aspx Recommendation: Help early maturers keep success in perspective as late maturers will often catch up with them. Encourage both the early and late maturer to develop good technique and take on new challenges. Take active steps to keep late maturers involved as they often leave sport because of low perceptions of competence due to little early success. Encourage and recognize individual improvement and avoid comparing athletic performances That is EXACTLY what I try to do with my son. I am in no way pushing him, unless you think 8-10 laps the whole practice is excessive. We work on balance, coordinating kick and arm stroke, etc.