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One thing that I have learned since I started
coaching is that I am constantly trying to find better ways to
communicate with parents and swimmers about my coaching philosophy
and about our sport in general. The following article is by
the coach of one of the most successful age-group programs in the
country. I strongly encourage every parent on our team to
look at Coach Brooks’ article and use it as a guide as your
swimmers progress through our program. There is a lot of
material, but I found all of it to be relevant to questions and
situations that come up all most every day on the deck and at the
meets.
By the way, despite all appearances, I
really do spend far more time reading on how I can become a better
coach than I do on how you guys can become better
parents! 
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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