Bluefish Swim Club - Maine

A Brief Overview of the Path to Success in Swimming

Success in swimming is the product of training, technical proficiency, mindset, and a healthy lifestyle.  

Good nutrition and adequate sleep are essential for all other elements to be effective.  We’re dealing with teenages.  Developing good habits is often a challenge, but coaches and parents need to work together to help the swimmers.

Swimmers who enjoy a long and successful career almost always have a growth mindset.  While they have outcome goals (for example, qualify for a certain meet), they are more focused on process goals (the things they can control day to day like focus and effort).  Progress is never linear.  Developing perseverance is essential.  Parents can help in two ways.  First, when things don’t go well as hoped, encourage them to talk with their coach.  We’ll talk with them, help them reflect, and come up with a plan together.  This is true even for the little ones.  Second, when they have success, always try to link that success back to their process.  (“Wow, it’s great that you qualified for the X championship.  You’ve been working hard and focusing on improving your turns!”)

The movements in swimming aren’t super complicated.  The foundation is eliminating the fear of being in the water and the habits that come from that fear.  Then as we teach the strokes, we want to tie the movement to the desired outcome.  (“If you roll your body, you can use your belly muscles more and move yourself forward faster”).  Great swimmers develop great awareness of how their bodies are interacting with the water and how to use their bodies to move themselves forward.  Developing the awareness, not just the movement, takes consistent repetition.  Parents are encouraged to not talk with their children about technique.  If your swimmer is confused or wants help on something, encourage them to talk to their coach and give the coach a heads up.

For many reasons, conditioning plays a bigger role in swimming than almost any other sport.  Our practices vary to develop both speed and endurance.  Consistency is essential for both.  Improvement can begin  to erode after only a few days off.  In addition, optimum training plans require that we are only looking to achieve peak or best performances two or three times a year.  Particularly for those 13 and older, swimmers need to meet at least the minimum attendance recommendations for their group.  The most common reason for swimmers to quit swimming is they are following behind their peers and the biggest cause of that is lack of consistency.  Parents can help by being aware of the schedule and working to minimize conflicts.  If you are going to be out of town for more than a couple days, consider talking with your coach about arranging to practice with a team where you are traveling.