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A Few Suggestions on How to be a Better Swimming Parent
By Michael Brooks, Head Coach, North Baltimore Aquatic Club at Crispus Attucks

NOTA BENE

WE all want what is best for the child. That is sometimes hard for coaches to
understand. That is also sometimes hard for parents to understand. Much of the
historical tension between coaches and parents can be avoided if we agree on two
golden rules: first, let’s cut each other some slack and not jump on and over-react to
the first unsubstantiated third-hand rumor that comes down the pike. And second,
let’s communicate, often, and not just when we may have a problem.

TEACHING VALUES

YOU are key to your child’s swimming. A parent’s attitude toward swimming, the
program, the coach, and his child’s participation, is key towards the child’s attitude
and success. The young swimmer takes cues from his parent. If the parent shows
by word, deed, facial expression, etc., that he does not value swimming, that he
doesn’t appreciate having to drive to practice or sit in the stands during meets, that
“it’s not going to matter” if the child skips practice, that morning practices are just
“optional” and that the child would be better off with the extra sleep, then the
chances are very good that the child will lack commitment, have little success, then
lose interest in swimming. Support your child’s interest in swimming by being
positively interested.

ALLOW your swimmer to be resilient. Failure, and facing that failure, doesn’t
cause kids to melt. Failure isn’t such an evil thing that parents should try to shield
their kids from it. Allow them to fail, then teach them to get up off the canvas and
try harder to succeed the next time. If parents are continually sheltering their
swimmers from the storm, cushioning every fall, making excuses for them, finding
someone else to blame, the children never learn anything. Even worse, they never
learn that they are responsible both for their failures and for their successes. Allow
them to stand on their own, and you will be helping them immeasurably down the
road.

MOLEHILLS really are molehills. At times I may appear unsympathetic or even
harsh because I won’t let kids stop for “emergencies”: for leaking goggles, for kids
passing them, for side-aches, for stretching, for repeated bathroom breaks, etc.
Many kids think that the slightest obstacle is an overwhelming reason to stop and
should be listened to and followed as the voice of God. I think not. I am trying to
teach focus. When a swimmer is in the middle of a set, the only thing in life that
matters or is worthy of attention is the set. Little “bothers” are to be overcome or
ignored. And once a swimmer gets in the habit of overcoming these “little bothers,”
he finds that they aren’t so overwhelmingly important after all. If we are continually
stopping for “emergencies,” we will never get anything done. If a study session is
continually interrupted for sharpening pencils, then getting a better notepad, then
getting a drink of water, then taking a little break when a favorite song comes on the
radio, then answering the telephone, almost miraculously the math assignment
doesn’t get completed.

DON’T worry, be happy??? I don’t want a swimmer doing cartwheels after an
awful performance. It’s okay for them to be upset about, disappointed with, even
angry about having done poorly. Feeling lousy for a few minutes won’t kill them, it
won’t forever damage their self-esteem, and if they are thinking correctly it will
motivate them to try harder and do better the next time. I want to teach them
standards of good and bad performance, so that when they really do well, they will
feel appropriately pleased. If they are simply showered with praise willy nilly, they
never know the difference.

TEACH them to dream big – a world of infinite possibilities. If you try to temper
your child’s dreams, if you teach her to settle for the ordinary, you may indeed save
her from many a heartache and many a failure. But you also rob her of the
opportunity of achieving great things, and the opportunity to plumb her depths and
realize her potential. Winning big means failing many times along the way. Each
failure hurts, but these temporary setbacks create the strength for the final push.
Instead of having children avoid failure by never taking risks, teach them how to
think correctly about failing: risk-taking and failure are necessary for improvement,
development, motivation, feedback, and long-term success.

WHAT success is. Only one swimmer can win the race. Often in the younger age
groups, the winner will be the one who has bloomed early, not necessarily the
swimmer with the most talent or the most potential to succeed in senior swimming.
It is expected that every parent wants his child to succeed, wants his child to have a
good and learning and valuable experience with swimming. Every child can succeed
– only make sure you define success correctly: being the very best you can be,
striving for improvement in every aspect of swimming. That leads to lasting success.
And lasting enjoyment.

DON’T reward success by bribery. “Bribing” your swimmer to perform well by
promising presents, money, special meals, etc. for meeting various standards is
highly discouraged. While bribery may work in the short run – the swimmer may
indeed swim fast this afternoon – the long term consequences are never good. You
have to keep upping the ante, and you must ask yourself: why does my swimmer
want to swim fast? What is really motivating him? Is this good? What is a twelve
year old going to do with a new car?

FUN, fun, fun. If “fun” means mindless entertainment and sensory bombardment,
then wasting hours playing Nintendo is loads of fun, and swimming is by definition
“not fun.” If “fun” means working hard and challenging yourself, taking pride in
accomplishing difficult goals, and discovering talents you didn’t know you had, then
swimming is fun and Nintendo by definition is “not fun.” The meaning of fun is very
much an open question for children, and one where parents and coaches have much
influence over their charges. Are we building a nation of energized achievers or
lifeless couch potatoes?

WORK, work, work. Persistence and work ethic are the most important qualities
leading to success in swimming and everything else. And if a work ethic is not
created and cultivated when a swimmer is young, it very likely will never appear. It
is so rare as not to be an option that a kid who is a slacker from ages seven to
fourteen will suddenly change his spots and become a hard worker. Love for and
pride in hard work MUST be inculcated early on, and again parents and coaches have
much influence in creating this attitude.

NO little league parents. Kids sometimes make mistakes at meets. If your child is
disqualified at a meet, don’t complain, don’t whine, don’t make excuses. Your child’s
DQ is not a reflection of the quality of your parenting. The official is not blind, he
does not have a vendetta against your child or your family or your team, and he is
not incompetent. In fact, he has a much better vantage on your child’s race than you
do, and he is looking on dispassionately. You are sitting up in the stands where you
can’t see precisely, and you are paying attention to everything except the exact angle
of your child’s left foot as he kicks in breaststroke. If a DQ is questionable, as
sometimes is the case, the coach – and not the parent – will take the proper steps.
And even then, DQ’s are almost never over-turned, so don’t get your hopes up.
By the by, most DQ’s aren’t surprises to the coach. If a swimmer rehearses an illegal
turn forty thousand times in training despite a coach’s remonstrances, then that
illegal habit will likely show up under the stress of a race. As Joe Paterno said,
“Practice good to play good.”

BURNOUT is over-rated. So many times parents and kids will say, “I don’t want to
commit to swimming because I don’t want to get burned out.” But for every one
case of “burnout” caused by a swimmer’s spending too much time in the water and
working too hard, we will see a hundred cases of “pre-emptive burnout”: in order not
to be burned out, the swimmer only comes to practice when she feels like it, doesn’t
work out very hard, skips team meets with regularity, and generally makes no
commitment to the program or to the sport. Not surprisingly, the swimmer swims
slow, makes little to no improvement, and sees her formerly slower competitors whiz
right by her. Then we wonder why she “just can’t get jazzed about swimming.”
Sitting on the fence and remaining lukewarm on principle has nothing to
recommend it. Discipline and commitment are good things, not things we
should downplay, hide, apologize for, or (worst of all) stop demanding
because it may be unpopular. If you want to enjoy swimming even more,
commit more of yourself and swim fast! You do not become excited about
an activity you don’t do well at.

HOME and pool must dovetail. Traits of discipline, respect, high expectations, and
commitment at home directly relate to the child’s characteristics at practices and
meets. This is yet another area where family support is crucial to the success of the
swimmer. Parents should review, carefully, the Credo and other formative memos
about the values the team espouses. If the current at home is flowing in the
opposite direction from the current at the pool, there will be big problems.
If a family does not buy into the program, they will be very unhappy here.
A JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES

THE patience of Job. Your swimmer’s career in the program is a long haul, with
many peaks and valleys. Usually, the new parent and swimmer come to the sport
with little experience, so the first sign of a problem looks like the Grand Canyon,
impossible to get across, and the first sign of success looks like Mount Everest –
we’re on top of the world. It’s best not to get too worked up. You will see this again,
over and over.

TAKING the long view. The training that will make an eight year old the area’s
fastest 25 freestyler is not the training that will benefit that swimmer most in the
long run. Making decisions now that will benefit the swimmer over the long haul of a
swimming career calls for prudence, and it means sacrificing some speed now for
huge gains later. Now we make them beautiful in the water, now we make them fit,
now we teach them to expect great things, and later we make them superfast. Our
destination is not two weeks down the road, but several years.

McDONALDS v. Michelin Three-Star. The fast food mentality, the attitude that “I
want it NOW!” (even if it tastes like cardboard) is anathema to what we are about.
Think of the swimming program, and your swimmer’s career in the program, as a fine
meal in the very best French restaurant: more courses than you can count (phases
and seasons), served in a very particular order (developmentally determined), each
patiently savored (the cumulative effects of years’ worth of daily training), completed
by dessert and coffee (Nationals). We are not in search of a quick Big Mac. We want
the best, and we are willing to wait.

HOW KIDS WORK

KIDS are inconsistent. There is nothing that any coach or parent can do to change
that. A ten-year old swimmer who knows better will in the pressure of a meet do a
flip-turn on breaststroke. Another young swimmer will take twenty seconds off her
best time in a race this week, and next week add it all back, with interest. One week
it will seem that the butterfly is mastered, and the next week that we’ve never even
been introduced to the stroke. A senior swimmer will take ten seconds off her best
time one race, then an hour later add ten seconds in her next race. It’s enough to
make your hair turn grey. Learn to expect it and even to enjoy it.

SO you thought she was a backstroker. Age groupers change favorite or “best”
strokes approximately every other day. A stroke will “click” suddenly, and then later
just as suddenly un-click. There is no explanation for this phenomenon. A stroke the
child hated becomes her favorite by virtue of her having done well at yesterday’s
meet. These are good arguments for having kids swim all four strokes in practice
and meets, and for not allowing early specialization.

NO cookie-cutter swimmers. Kids learn at different rates and in different ways.
One swimmer picks up the breaststroke kick in a day; it takes another swimmer a
year to master the same skill. If you pay close attention, you could probably write a
treatise on motor learning after watching just one practice of novice swimmers. Be
careful of comparing your swimmer to others, and especially be careful of comparing
your swimmer to others in her hearing. Never never never measure the
continuing success of your child by his performance against a particular
competitor, who is likely to be on a completely different biological timetable
from your child. Doing so makes you either despondent or arrogant.

WHY doesn’t he look like Ian Thorpe? Little kids are not strong enough or
coordinated enough for their strokes to look like the senior swimmers, no matter how
many drills they do or how many repeats. And parents shouldn’t stress about a little
thing that a swimmer struggles with for a time, such as a proper breaststroke kick.
Kids seem to get these things when they are ready, and not until. We are winning
the game if they steadily improve their motor control, steadily improve their aerobic
conditioning, and steadily improve their attitudes. They will look like the Thorpedo
soon enough.

HOW they do versus what they do. Especially at younger ages, how fast a child
swims and how well he places in a meet have little significance for how that swimmer
will do as a senior. Many national caliber athletes were not at all noteworthy as ten
year olds. Competition times and places often tell you not about the amount of
swimming talent a child has, but about how early a developer he is. What is truly
important in determining future swimming success is what happens
everyday in practice: Is he developing skills and technique? Is he
internalizing the attitudes of a champion? Is he gradually building an
aerobic base and building for the future? The work done is cumulative, with
every practice adding a grain of sand to what will eventually become a mountain.

TIMES are the least of our worries. Many young swimmers spaz out when they
swim, especially at meets when they race. But you learn technique and control best
at slow speeds. Don’t rush, take it slow, and get it perfect before you try to go fast.
Even in meets, for the little ones I am much more interested in how they get down
the pool than in how fast they do. Technique and tactics are more important than
the numbers on the watch; if the technique and tactics are improving steadily, the
time on the watch will improve steadily, too, and without our obsessing over it.

BUT he swam faster in practice!?!? Younger kids are routinely swimming as fast
in practice as they do in meets. From one perspective, this makes no sense. Why
should a swimmer do better on the last repeat of 10 x 400 on short rest, after having
swum 3600 meters at descending pace, than she does when all she has to do is get
up and race one rested 400? She swims faster when she’s tired? Sometimes, yes.
After all, in training she is well warmed up, her body has run through the spectrum
and swum faster and faster, so her aerobic systems are working at full steam and her
stroke rhythm is perfect and grooved, and she is energized from racing her
teammates and shooting after concrete goals without the pressure she often feels in
meets. Practice is much less threatening than meets.

NOT even Ted Williams batted a thousand. No one improves every time out.
Don’t expect best times every swim; if you do, you will frustrate yourself to death in
less than a season, and you will put so much pressure on your swimmer that she will
quit the sport early. You would think that if a swimmer goes to practice, works hard,
and has good coaching and a good program, then constant improvement would be
inevitable. Wrong. So much more goes into swimming than just swimming.

THE Rubber band effect. It would be easier for the swimmer, his parents, and his
coach if improvements were made slowly and gradually, if all involved could count on
hard work in practice producing corresponding improvements in competition every
month. This “ideal”, however, is so rare as to be nonexistent. Often improvements
are made in leaps, not baby steps. Improvement happens by fits and starts, mostly
because improvement results as much from psychology as from physiology. It is
harder this way, because less predictable. Further, swimmers and their parents tend
to become a bit discouraged during the short “plateaus” when the improvements that
the child is making are not obvious; then, when the rubber band has snapped and the
swimmer makes a long-awaited breakthrough, they expect the nearly vertical
improvement curve to continue, which it will not do. Fortunately, because our
program emphasizes aerobic training, the long plateaus common in sprint programs
are rare here.

THERE is a lot more to swimming than just swimming. This will become
especially apparent as the swimmer gets older, say around puberty. But even for the
young kids, inconsistency is the rule. What’s going on in a swimmer’s head can
either dovetail with the training or completely counteract the hours and hours in the
pool. Again, if a swimmer has been staying up late, not allowing her body to recover
from training, or if she’s been forsaking her mother’s nutritious meals for BigMacs,
fries, and shakes, that swimmer’s “hidden training” will counteract what she’s been
doing in the water. Again, if a swimmer is in the dumps and can’t see straight after
breaking up with his girlfriend, the best coach and the best program in the world will
not save today’s race.

TERMINAL strokes and “coachability”. Often young swimmers, especially
“successful” younger swimmers who are very strong for their age, have terminal
strokes – i.e., strokes that are inefficient dead-ends, strokes that will not allow for
much if any improvement, strokes that consist of bulling through the water and not
getting much for the huge outpouring of effort and energy. For kids with terminal
strokes, it is time to throw away the stopwatch, slow down, and learn to swim all
over again. Often this adjustment period is characterized by slower times, which is
difficult for the swimmer and for the parents. Difficult, but necessary, because this
one step backwards will allow for ten steps forward soon enough.

Note that for the stroke improvement to be made, the swimmer (and parent,
supporting the coach’s decision) must be coachable: they must trust that the coach
is knowledgeable and thinking of the swimmer’s best interests, and they must be
willing to trust that the changes that feel awful at first (because the swimmer’s body
is used to doing things a certain way, that way feels comfortable, and any other way
is going to be resisted) will help him be a better swimmer. This coachability, this
trust, is unfortunately rare. Most kids choose not to change horses in the middle of
the stream, and both the horse and rider drown. Terminal strokers are soon caught
by swimmers who are smaller but more efficient.

BIGGER is better?? The subject of early and late bloomers is a sensitive one, but
nonetheless very important for parents to understand. Early and late bloomers each
have “virtues” and “challenges.”

To begin with early developers. They get bigger and stronger earlier than the other
kids, which means they are more likely to win their races. That early success is the
virtue. However, because they can often win without having to work on their
technique or train very hard, often they do not develop a solid work ethic, and often
their technique is poor as they bull through the water. Note that from the child’s
immediate perspective, NOT working hard and NOT working on technique is a rational
choice. After all, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”: what he has done has obviously been
working, since he has been highly successful, so why should he listen to the coach
tell him that he needs to work harder or change his stroke? He beats all the other
kids who listen to the coach, work harder, and change their strokes!

So our pragmatist reaches the ages of thirteen to fifteen and suddenly the other kids
whom he used to destroy in meets are catching up to him and even passing him. The
size and strength advantage that he had relied on has deserted him, and he has no
technique or work ethic to fall back on. He is not long for the sport: many early
bloomers quit when their easy successes dry up. We avoid this future problem by not
allowing the early bloomers to bask in the temporary limelight, but training them for
their long run benefit, and educating them about how they should judge their own
performances both in meets and in practices.

On to the late bloomers. They are smaller and weaker than the others, so they get
crushed in swimming meets. If the coach, swimmer, and parent emphasize places
and winning, then there is little chance that this late bloomer will stay in the sport.
This, too, is rational: “Why should I keep swimming? I’m obviously lousy, even
though I’m working my guts out and doing everything the coach asks. I’m still
getting killed! Coach is a bozo and I’m just not meant to be a swimmer.”
That is the obvious downside. However, if the coach and parents can help the
swimmer find enough rewards from swimming, for instance improvement, meeting
personal challenges, friendships, etc., to stick it out through the lean years, and if
she relies on technique and hard work to overcome the temporary physical deficit,
then she is in the driver’s seat in a few years. It is usually the case that the late
bloomers end up bigger and stronger than the others – it just takes them longer to
get there. And the qualities in the water and in their heads serve them well in senior
swimming.

Note well: it is almost impossible to tell how talented your swimmer is, or how much
potential your swimmer has for swimming, by looking at 10 & Under meet results.
Races will often just tell you who is bigger and stronger, and that probably won’t last.

PUBERTY complicates everything. You would think that because they are getting
bigger and presumably stronger, your swimmers would be getting faster. Yes, and
no. Whether fair or not, in the end puberty is highly beneficial to almost all boys, but
with girls can be more ambiguous. Boys lose fat and gain muscle, getting bigger and
stronger; girls, too, gain in height and strength, but they also add fat deposits. With
proper nutrition (that does not mean starvation diets or eating disorders) and proper
training (lots and lots of aerobic work, consistently), these questionable changes can
be kept to a minimum, with no long-term harmful effects.

In the short run, during puberty kids are growing, but they are growing unevenly.
Arms and legs and torsos don’t have the same proportions as they did last week,
either of strength or length, so coordination can go haywire. Strokes may fall apart,
or come and go. Also, various psychological changes are affecting swimming and
everything else. Interests change and priorities are re-ordered. All these changes
can cause the child’s athletic performances to stagnate. It can be a highly
frustrating time for all involved. Fortunately, it doesn’t last long, and the swimmer
emerges from a chrysalis a beautiful (and fast and strong) butterfly.

THE perils of getting older. Aging up is sometimes traumatic. Formerly very good
ten year olds become mediocre 11 & 12’s overnight. And often, the better they were
in the younger age group, and the higher their expectations of success, the more
traumatic the change is for them, because the more their “perceived competence”
has suddenly nose-dived as they now race against bigger and stronger and faster
competition. They are bonsais racing sequoia trees, and the standards of judgement
have ratcheted up dramatically. The fastest kids are much faster than they are, to
the point that they think they cannot compete, so they figure, “Why try? Working
hard isn’t going to get me far, anyway. I may as well wait until my ‘good year.’”
Often we see a tremendous jump upwards in practice intensity as swimmers
approach their last meet in an age group (they want to go out with a bang), then a
tremendous plummeting in that intensity as they become just one of the pack. This
is in despite of the coach’s discussing the matter with the swimmer.

A Special Note about Swimmers New to the NBAC Program. When they first
join our program, no kids are hard workers. This sounds harsh, but it is true
nonetheless. Compared with all other local swimming programs, we swim longer and
harder and have much higher expectations. Swimmers have never really had to work
very hard before, relatively, so they don’t know what it’s like. What used to be
strenuous is now defined as easy swimming. Swimmers have never really had high
goals before, relatively, so they don’t know how to make them or how to bring them
about. What used to be fast isn’t any longer, and their new teammates are talking
about strange things called “NRT’s” and “Quad A’s”. It takes several months for a
swimmer’s body and mind to adapt to the new demands and new expectations.
Often the initial shock to the system is difficult, but it is made superable by extra
support and encouragement from parent and coach. And then they bloom. Many
parents have remarked to me on the changes that the program has wrought in their
children: we have a new child who is ready to take on the world, who is confident in
his abilities, and who has new and much higher expectations of himself.

SUPPORT, NOT PRESSURE

THE Rock of Gibraltar. As they succeed then fail then succeed again, kids will ride
emotional roller-coasters. One of your most important functions as a swimming
parent is to provide emotional support during the tough times, of which there will be
many. Let them know that they are still loved, no matter how poorly they think they
swam. And don’t let them get cocky when they win.

DON’T coach your kids. If the swimmer is hearing one story from his coach and
another from his parent, we have one confused swimmer. A swimmer must have
trust in his coach and in the program, and he will not if his parents are implicitly
telling him that they know best. If you have concerns about the coaching or the
coaching advice, talk to the coach directly. If in the end you feel that you
cannot support the coach or the program, your best course is to find a team
whose coach you trust. Your swimmer has a coach; she needs you to be a
parent.

THE next Ian Thorpe?? No matter how good your swimmer seems to be as a ten
year old, don’t get your hopes too high. Don’t expect an Olympian (you are allowed
to hope for an Olympian), and don’t judge his every move (or swim) by Olympian
standards. In order to make it to the Olympics so many things over such a
comparatively long time have to go right, so many decisions have to be
made “correctly” (and can only be seen to be correct with hindsight), and so
much plain good luck is required, that the odds are heavy against it.
Further, many kids are physically talented, but few have the mental talent:
the poise, drive, and persistence to develop the gifts they are given. How do
you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. As psychologist Howard
Gruber, who has made a life-work out of studying great achievers, has argued, the
difference between the very good and the truly great isn’t talent but much harder and
consistent work.

IN praise of famous kids? Don’t puff up a 10-year old, or we will end up with a
monster on our hands. Don’t get too impressed, don’t praise too highly – leave room
for when they get a lot better. No matter how fast a child swims, it is still a child
swimming, and the level of accomplishment is very low compared to how high she
will reach five or ten years from now. Don’t treat him like a superstar, because
the more you treat him like a superstar, the less likely he will become one.
Pampered kids aren’t tough.

Similarly, be careful not to brag about your swimmer to other parents. No one likes
to hear continuous talk about someone else’s kid, and if your swimmer is really good,
it will be apparent to everyone without your having to tell them. Dale Carnegie said,
“Talk about them, not about me.” Translate this into: “Talk about their swimmer,
not about mine.”

EVERY Soviet victory a victory for Soviet socialist ideology? How your child
swam in the 50 fly ten minutes ago is no reflection of your value as a person or as a
parent. A first place ribbon does not validate your parenting techniques, or the
quality of your genes. Alternately, a slow swim should not bring into question a
family’s commitment, financial and otherwise, to a child’s swimming. Swimming is
hard enough for a child without having to carry around her parents’ self-esteem on
her shoulders when she races. Also remember that what goes around comes
around. The better you allow yourself to feel about a victory now, the worse a loss
will feel next meet, or the next event.

JEKYLL and Hyde. Coaches often undergo miraculous transformations. It is always
interesting to watch parents’ changing attitudes and behavior towards the coach
when their children are “succeeding” or “failing.” When the child swims well, the
coach is a good chap and everyone’s happy. When the child bombs, the coach is an
Untouchable who should not be looked in the eye. Sometimes this change occurs in
the space of half an hour. Precious few parents treat me the same no matter how
their children perform.

PROBLEMS, POTENTIAL AND KINETIC

UNEQUAL Justice for all? Sometimes parents ask, “Why don’t you treat the kids
equally, with one standard for all?” For the same reason that most parents don’t
treat their own children exactly the same: because kids have different capabilities,
personalities, and motivations, and what works for one child doesn’t work for all.
Second, because with talent comes responsibility. When a very fast swimmer, whom
the others look up to and follow, messes around in practice, he drags the whole
group down with him. This will not be tolerated. Higher expectations accompanying
talent should be taken as a compliment.

THE wisdom of Solomon. Coaches make many decisions. You won’t agree with
them all. For instance, relays. As a general rule, every parent thinks his child should
be on the “A” relay. But only four swimmers can be on the relay team. The coaches
will choose the four kids whom they think will do the best job today. That is not
always the four with the top four “best times.” Sometimes it includes a swimmer who
has been very impressive in practices, or someone who is on fire at this meet, or
someone who hasn’t swum the event in a meet in a while and so hasn’t officially
made a fast time but who has let the coaches know by practice performance and
otherwise that he deserves to be in the relay. Trust the coaches to act in what
they consider the best interests of the team as a whole, and understand that
this sometimes conflicts with what you see as the best interests of your child
at this moment.

MEDDLING isn’t coaching. A lot of coaches, especially younger ones, will
“overcoach” as a rule, especially at meets. “Overcoaches” are in the kids’ faces all
the time, giving them twenty thousand instructions before they race, timing them
incessantly during the warm-ups of a championship meet, controlling every little
thing. Many parents are impressed by this show of active coaching. However,
overcoaching is destructive, at practice and at meets. At practice, swimmers need
instruction -- that is agreed. But they also need to be allowed to try things, to find
out what works and what doesn’t, to watch other swimmers, with perhaps a few
leading questions from the coach. You don’t teach an infant how to walk; he watches
you, he tries it, he falls, he falls again and again, and in no time he is charging
around the house making mischief.

And when you get to a meet, the general rule should be, the less said the better. In
a stressful environment, the more information you try to force into a kid’s head at the
last minute, the more likely you are to jam his circuits entirely (similar to “cramming”
for an exam in school). He will head to the blocks not knowing which way is up. If a
coach has been doing the job in practice, the swimmer will know how to swim his
race before he gets to the meet. A couple of cues or reminders, and only a couple,
and the swimmer can hop on the blocks without his mind cluttered by overcoaching.

TALK to the coach. Communicate your concerns about the program or your child’s
progress within it with the coach, not with your child. Never complain about a coach
to a child. The last thing a ten year-old needs is to be caught in the middle between
two adult authority figures. Further, when you have a problem or concern, please do
not head to other parents to complain, head to the coach to discuss. There is nothing
guaranteed to destroy a program faster, and to send good (even great) coaches
running for the door quicker, than a group of parents sitting together every day in the
stands comparing notes about the things they don’t like.

SEMPER fidelis. Don’t criticize the team to outsiders, don’t criticize the coach to
outsiders, don’t criticize other parents to outsiders, don’t criticize your own swimmers
to outsiders, don’t criticize others’ swimmers to outsiders. If you can’t find anything
good to say, don’t say anything at all.

LEAVE this campsite cleaner than you found it. Before you complain about any
component of the program, ask yourself: what am I doing, positively and actively, to
help the team function better?

DON’T try to be a swimming expert. With the internet rage, the amount of really
bad information available at the click of a mouse is overwhelming. And not being a
coach, not being immersed in the sport twenty-four hours a day, not having much
historical perspective on technique and training, and generally not knowing where the
website you just stumbled onto fits in the jigsaw puzzle of the sport, you are in no
position to judge what you find critically.

THERE are no “age group parents” and “senior parents.” There are only
swimming parents. Once a portion of the team’s parents begins to think of itself as
having a different interest from that of the group as a whole, the team has begun to
rip itself apart. The rose bud is not distinct from the rose in full flowering; they are
the same things at different stages of development, with identical interests.

KEEP me in the loop. It happens quite frequently that I cannot understand why a
swimmer is responding to the training as he is. It seems to make no sense, if we
assume that the only variables are the ones that I am in control of in training. Why
is he so tired? Why is he so inconsistent? It is easy to forget that everything
happening in the swimmer’s life during the twenty-one hours a day when he is away
from the pool affects his swimming as much or more than the three hours of training
when I am ostensibly in charge. Let me know if there are problems at home or at
school that will affect your swimmer’s training and racing performance. You don’t
need to give me all the details, but in order to coach your swimmer individually, I
have to know what is happening individually.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

SWIMMING is a mystery. Most of the time only God really knows why a swimmer
did so well or so poorly. Coaches can point to the easy answers, superficial indices
(stroke count, stroke rate, splits, etc.), which are probably more often effects than
they are causes. Who can explain why a swimmer whose workouts have been horrid
and who hasn’t gotten much sleep, will come alive at a meet and set the water on
fire? Why a swimmer whose workouts have been wonderful and who has been doing
everything right, will come to a meet and look like death warmed over? Or why a
swimmer who has been a rock for years will come mentally unglued at the big meet?
Sometimes hard work isn’t rewarded with good performances. Sometimes lazing
around and skipping practices is. This is hard for coaches, swimmers, and parents to
accept. Not everything in life makes sense, and not everything in life is fair. It
doesn’t take a reflective coach very long to figure out that he isn’t in total control
here. Ponder the Greek tragedies.

A work in progress. These recommendations/suggestions may sound set in stone.
But my thinking on most of these subjects is evolving, since these subjects are
complicated and since kids are, too. These are topics that we should all consider as
open to discussion. Being a good coach is just as difficult as being a good parent,
and it involves thinking through and judging correctly about the same issues. Most
parents are confused at least part of the time about whether or not they are doing
the right things with their kids. And most coaches are equally uncertain about
whether the methods that worked for one swimmer will work with another.

Michael Brooks
York, PA
3rd edition, revised
July 2002

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