The Most Important Factor in Swimmer Improvement

By John Leonard

Dear Parents,

          On our pool fence, we have a 40 foot sign that reads “the Immutable Rules of Improvement”.

The First Rule is SHOW UP.

Statistics show absolutely, positively, without-a-doubt that we can predict speed of improvement by the number of times a child attends practice.

SHOW UP for Practice.

My educated guess is that for older (12 and over) athletes, every day you miss a practice, you need two practices to “get back to where you were”. Missing two days in a row, makes that much worse. Hence the critical importance of being at both Saturday practice and Monday practice.

We want to see our age group swimmers on Monday mornings for two reasons, first, they can go to bed as early as you chose on Sunday evening, and be ready Monday 5 PM. Secondarily, LONG COURSE training is critical for long course success, and the AM’s are the only times all year that we get to train long course. Doing that once a week all short course season is critical to our individual and team success.

Younger athletes need to cultivate the habit of REGULAR training. Not just “exercise” but planned training. We can only do that planning, as coaches, when you get your athletes to practice. So please, if you want to help your athlete progress in our sport, SHOW UP are the most important six letters in our language. (in all of life, not just swimming!)

All the Best,

John Leonard