Poolside-Chat-parents-of-competitive-swimmers

[Glittertwins]

Hopefully this will work as we’re at 999 on the other!

So DS has has a pretty me first weekend of counties. 2 events and 2 finals but not in contention for medals and unable to get within a couple of seconds of his previously set PBs. Technique in his best stroke seems to have gone out the window. I was feeling a bit sad for him as his peers continue to race away from him (literally)

BUT up popped on my Facebook memories today that this day 4 years ago he joined his club and got his club cap and in the picture he js absolutely beaming with pride and happiness despite having no idea how to do a race start or a tumble turn or about counties or regionals or expensive tech suits (he did his club trial in board shorts)

Time to give myself a knock on the head and remember it is about having fun!

I think the thing is that unless they actually wind up as Olympic champions (highly unlikeky
particularly in the case of my dds) there is always going to be someone faster than them. If he’s getting regional times that’s really fast those times are really challenging. My two get county times but not those. Neither of mine have ever made it to a final either, but we are a big county.

What is it that he struggles with some of his peers being faster? Are you at a massive club and he still doesn’t get picked for things or something? We don’t have that, they get picked for plenty of stuff as we’re a smaller club so there are less kids. That can be bad too - dd1 had to swim 2 Individual events and both relays at the arena league in every round 😱.

Their technique goes in and out as they grow and rediscover their spatial awareness!

If he finds the enjoy,ent again he'll also find those times because he'll relax and live the thrill of the race.

We certainly had the thrilling races this weekend. He was buzzing after those and he's had his best results ever after being practically nowhere 4 years ago.

DD has ticked off Counties (we kept things low key as we've just had mocks and have a ton of music stuff going on before Regionals). She made a couple of finals and I somehow managed to get away with just having to buy a pair of goggles for £16. NO hat, no T shirt, no hoodie!

Teen also pointed out that some clubs are tiny compared to what they were a few years ago.

How did he feel about his races? To make the finals in both his events is a great achievement in itself, of all the swimmers in the county he made the top 8. As is qualifying in the first place. As the others said, as they grow and develop it can mess things up for a while, and they go through plateaus. Things do change around a lot as they head into the mid teens

Hi, hope it's ok to join. I've lurked on this thread for a few months so thought it about time I popped on. My DS12 has been swimming with our local club for about 18 months. He's part way through his first counties and doing really well - lots of PBs and a few medals. Steep learning curve for me and this thread has certainly helped. Can anyone give me any idea how many hours kids his age and standard are doing? Up until a few months ago he was doing 5 hrs a week - that's how many hours his club train. He had a trial at the bigger city club and is now swimming with them too - a total of 10 hrs a week. Does this sound about right?

Hi @Lolascolas80, and well done to your son on his counties so far! My 11 year old (in the 12s at counties) does 4 hours a week and my 14 year old (county 15s) does 6.5. They are at a small club though and I know most other clubs do more - my youngest did the county development camp last year and said most of the others were doing twice the hours he was or more.

Different clubs do different training regimes.

My ds didn't start competitive swimming until 12 and did 4 hours a week in a small community club. This was absolutely the right environment for him at the time.

Their top squad only did 10 but covid cut that back and he moved to a bigger club. His choice to move as he wanted to train in a more competitive environment.

In his current club (also the city one) swimmers that age vary in training hours dependent on squad level. Some do 2-3 hours a week and others will move into performance stream around this age and swim 14 hours a week and 2 hours gym. The competitive stream swimmer swim about 10.

So 10 is perfectly ok if he wants to train that much. Sounds like he's doing brilliantly and well done on counties achievements.

Just be aware it can get much more! Especially is a big club. My ds now does 21 hours a week training (18 swim and 3 gym)

As others have said it varies. The main thing imo is that they shouldn’t invest more into it than they want to.

So 20 hours may be fine for one swimmer but 5 could be too much for another. We have some fairly fast senior swimmers (over short distances obvs) for example who do other sports and don’t do that much swim training at all. It’s a bit of an urban myth that all competitive swimmers do masses of training but equally the very successful ones do obviously do but also must love it and want to do it.

My oldest (13/14) does around 7 and my youngest (11/11) does 3.5.

Hello @Lolascolas80
Our club has quite a lot of pool time - at age 12 they would have 8 hours pool and one gym/stretching
Depending on performance as they get older; the next squad would either be around 14 hours in the pool + 2 gym or 14 + 1. They're encouraged to do as much as possible but they need to enjoy it.
It changes again for the next squads.

Good luck with the early mornings, especially in winter!!

DS17 is in the top squad and has 16 hours in the pool and 2 gym sessions. He generally does around 12-14 hours plus the gym sessions, depending on what is happening at school (tests, exams etc)

Yeah for both of mine the pool time available is higher than they actually do.

Thanks for all your replies. It's good to see that there's no right or wrong answer and to be led by the child. He's loving it at the moment, I think helped by coming into it late and making massive improvements but obviously that won't last forever as some of you guys have mentioned. It'll be keeping the committment up when it starts getting harder to pb I expect.

DD is doing her first county champs starting this weekend - she's really excited. She is recently 10 but swimming in 11 age group. She has qualified for 8 events and is hopeful to make a couple of finals from the 50 and 100 events. It's the 200s that she loves the most though so crossing my fingers for some good times for those.

We are a total non swimming family so it's been a learning curve for all of us, but we are so proud of her commitment.

The coach has started muttering about aiming for regionals next year but I'm a bit worried this will mean more training as it's quite a juggle already to get her to 5 sessions.

If she’s qualified for 8 counties events at her age then I’d have thought if she continues as she is then she should make regionals next year. She won’t necessarily need to increase her training. I don’t know if all regions are the same but we have 11/12 age group for that so she has another year (or two dependent on her birthday) in that youngest group. They grow, get stronger and therefore faster alongside the training and the change in that year can be enormous.

We've completed 1 of our 3 counties weekends and so far so good. No finals but he never has for spring counties (he fares much better at winter counties when its age on day - Dec born swimmer!)

At age 12 his squad had 10 hours pooltime and 2 hours land training although DS doesnt do 2 of those sessions. This squad will probably see him through to 18 so he's unlikely to change hours.

@Yuja good luck to her for this weekend, I hope she enjoys it. As teateaandmoretea says, the bottom age at regionals is 11/12, so she would still be in the youngest group for that next year. My younger son qualified for 3 events at counties last year in the 11s, 7 this year in the 12s and has already got 3 regional times for this year with potential for more, and as I said above only trains 4 hours a week, so as it sounds like she is already doing really well it doesn’t necessarily have to involve lots more training.

@WidowTwonky I haven’t heard of having winter counties before, having something at a different time of year with age on day sounds a good idea to avoid always having the same ones disadvantaged by their birthdays

We have our second weekend of counties this weekend. Different pool to the first weekend, and youngest has a thing about not liking this pool, mainly I think as he got disqualified last time he swam there. And his first event this weekend is the one he had the disqualification on😭So I am really hoping he gets it right or he will be blaming the pool! 😂

Oh wow okay thank you, yes she was only 10 in November so swims as an 11 year old this year and will be in the 12s in 2024. She absolutely loves it, I'm just not sure how we would get any more training if necessary around the other child! Super proud of her though she is so excited for tomorrow

Double age group for the youngest in regionals here too. Is it constant and just different between British and English summer nationals?
We're all done for counties. Didn't actually need them for regional times however there were some good PBs so one happy child.

@yuja massive good luck to her. Completely understand the pride thing, it blows my mind how good my two are (even though they aren’t in comparison to many).

I just think set your boundaries and stick to them. She’s loving it and what she is doing now is clearly working!

Dd2 is a January birthday (11) and has so far refused to swim more than 100 metres 😆, swimming 200s at her age really is amazing let alone at counties.

Ah thank you. I'm not a good swimmer so I am very impressed. She has the 1st seed time for the 200 breast and the 3rd for 200 free so she's hoping to be in contention for a medal, but I think if she gets a pb she will be delighted anyway. She's in the 200 IM too but struggled with butterfly a bit apparently (looks good to me but I'm still working on my 25 metre badge ) 😂

Welcome to all the newbies and it is lovely to hear that they are doing well. SW has a double-age for the youngest swimmers too (there aren't that many 10/11 year olds who have been swimming competitively long enough to get QTs).

As an 11-13 year old DD used to swim 7.5 - 9 hours/week with an old school (volunteer) coach. Occasionally somebody would go to Nationals, but they would normally move to a club of clubs before then. DD would typically enter about 10 races in Counties and 5 or 6 for Junior Regionals (our times are quite forgiving). Most clubs would have been moving kids up to a couple of gym sessions and 10+ hours of swimming after that. One of her Pathway camp swimmers was already doing 12+.

Post lockdown pool hire costs have more than doubled for our club and we pay for a coach. The club decision-makers decided they were more likely to succeed if they kept fees at about the same level and swam less.

So all the kids swim 4.5 hours/week and do a lot of 'race pace' sessions. This gets about a third into Counties for shorter distances. Their strategy seems to be working; there seems to be a steady stream of kids wanting to swim AND do another sport.

DD is a very efficient freestyler, well suited to longer distances but she just doesn't have the stamina to swim fast 400m and 800m any more. 200m is a bit of a slog too unless she's been doing some running to keep her fitness up. She's happy enough to just do a couple of sprints at Regionals to justify a new hoodie (which works for me).

The clubs near us are all very different, but it ought to be possible to find a good fit for a young swimmer and their aspirations (or desire to just swim for fun/friendships).

Good luck to everybody competing this weekend.

I think as parents the biggest thing we can do for them is be proud of them for what the do and the training and share their pride at successes.

I've seen swimmers drop out at 15/16/17 because their parents are only proud of their achievements and expect a win or final each time.

It doesn't work like that for any swimmer. Not even Olympians!

Quite frankly any swimmer training in a competitive club is learning skills for life whichever end of the scale they are at.

For the first time ever when my alarm went off at 4am this morning I couldn't get up and told ds there was no way I could take him. He'd have gone!!!

But it's ok for swimmers AND their parents to have a limit and admit they've reached it!

4:30am was just about ok for me this week. I failed last week totally! Lovely drive home in the sunrise though!!