News For
SWIM PARENTS
Published by The
American Swimming Coaches Association
5101 NW 21 Ave.,
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Developing Swimmers Progressively
We
develop our swimmers progressively with great patience. Winning is not an
issue with our younger age groups. We want swimmers to be their best in
their later teen and college age years. We spend the majority of time
with our youngest swimmers developing technique, some time developing
endurance, and very little time developing speed. As swimmers become
older and more skilled we increase the amount of endurance work, continue to
develop technique, and introduce �race preparation.� Racing preparation means
learning how to race more than it means high volumes of quality speed
work. At older ages and higher levels of skill the emphasis is on racing
speed and competition while continuing to build long term endurance and
continuing to refine technique and race strategy.
On the
mental side we want the swimmers to learn to take responsibility for their own
performance and to learn the importance and the thrill of meeting challenges
straight forward. We also teach swimmers to; learn to read a pace clock
and understand time relationships; learn about setting goals and the
relationship between work and achieving goals; learn that everyone on the team
contributes to each other's performance; and learn a sense of control in pacing
swims, sets, and practices. Control allows for the highest levels of work
without counterproductive out of control struggling. We feel this learned
sense of control is applicable to other areas of life as well.