More poolside chat

[Glittertwins]

Just realised we’re a bit close to the end!

DS is competing this weekend?

anyone else got a meet? If so I hope your DCs enjoy it and enjoy getting some times on the board for the season.

No, we have the weekend off this week before 2 weekends of arena league/ open meets.

Good luck to your DS 😃

This is just a warm up fun meet for his squad before winter regionals at the beginning of November.

They are swimming events they don’t usually do! Ds is swimming 50/100m fly as fly is a process goal for him this phase.

Then 200/800m free - he usually does 50/100/400 😂

and it’s SC which he isn’t so good at 🫣🤪

Just got club champs before winter regionals. Forgot to enter the meet which is next weekend. Well, I didn’t forget, he didn’t bother to tell me what he wanted to do so I wasn’t going to run around after him. Rather lost my patience with his attitude over the summer!

Well ds was asleep when I posted this morning. Woke up saying his shoulder was sore and neck stiff.

massage gun and wheat bag hasn’t helped so I’ve told him not to swim this afternoon and see how he is tomorrow.

its more important he’s fit for training than risks injury racing trying to force stiff muscles where they don’t want to go!

He’s also actually following my advice and sitting watching tv (better position) rather than playing on the computer or laying in bed watching his iPad.

He has an appointment with specialist neurological physiotherapists at the hospital on Monday so if it’s still bad then hopefully they can advise so exercises!

Im hoping it’s just he’s slept awkwardly!

Definitely rest up and hope it’s not serious.

DD had an open meet today. Didn’t have any PBs in all of the 5 races. We both feel quite dejected. I hope this is just a phase but I am also wondering how she can improve going forward.

I have one of these too. She can rarely replicate anything like her race speed in training. A mixture of adrenaline and extreme hyperfocus I think (she's AuDHD). Meanwhile, if DC2 could harness her work ethic in training and transfer it to race day, she'd do very well. She prefers to do 'well enough' and expend the extra energy in cheering and socialising. She's still very young though, so as long as she's happy, that's perfect for me. It needs to be fun first and foremost. And she's still progressing nicely, so her squad coach is happy with that. Her training focus will stand her in good stead should she choose to take meets more seriously as she gets a bit older.

Club Champs rounds 3&4 tonight and tomorrow night for us. A very mixed bag of results so far with all 3 of us swimming, with some things to celebrate and some others to take back to training and focus on. I'm shattered - far too much in a short couple of hours for my old bones!

It goes like that sometimes. Sometimes there is a clear reason eg illness or (as we had a few times over the Summer) a heatwave that overheats the space making everyone feel quite unable to function, and other times it just is and feels inexplicable. Focus on the good bits and what did go well (great start/turns/finish, managed to carry a corrected point of technique into the race, stuck to the race strategy etc), rather than the bottom line result. Progress comes in different forms and times do plateau sometimes for a variety of reasons. Equally, growth can cause a raft of PBs even when there is no technical improvement, so a PB isn't necessarily a sign of genuine progress either.
The coaches will pick up the areas to improve in training and if there are any causes to be concerned about, so no need to focus on that at home.

I don’t know how old she is? There is relevance in that.

Having been in it a few years my observations would be as follows (and dependent on age some may be helpful)

1. They don’t make steady progress, they take a step up then consolidate. The length of consolidation time varies hugely!
2. Some of our younger swimmers overtrain as they are too small to cope with the work, that leads to muscle burning. But ‘work’ is applauded.
3. Entering too many galas/ events is unhelpful, swimming the same thing over and over doesn’t make you faster.
4. People comparing long course and short course times and deciding that they’ve swum badly because they didn’t get a converted PB. They are separate times. A long course or short course on is a pb. Every positive has to be grasped with both hands or you go mad.
5. Some pools are faster than others and if they have fast times from a fast pool and swim at a slower one it’s hard to match. Some of this is psychological but some of it is real (eg very shallow end impacting on turns, slippery blocks, temperature)

All of the above !

Yep agree with above too.

withdrawn ds again today too. His neck still hurts and he can’t easily move his arm above his shoulder (less easily than usual) and not worth risking it.

Hoping it’s a knot rather than trapped nerve. When I use massage gun on the painful bit it sends his arm muscles into spasm and he said there isn’t pain shooting down his arm.

Using ibuprofen and heat and massage gun frequently and hopefully that should solve it 🤞

Also getting lots of protein and electrolytes into him.

I think it may be related to how much more pressure his upper body is taking as his legs have wasted away a lot more.

His legs

Are you able to get hold of a physio ?

He has physio at the hospital tomorrow with the neurological specialists (good timing!) so hopefully they’ll have some good ideas.

Well if there was ever a “convenient” time, this was it! Hope you both get some answers tomorrow

I agree with all of the very good points from satisfiedbyanapple. Also sometimes growth spurts can throw them off for a while as they can have to adjust their strokes for longer limbs.

itsgettingweird hope he’s ok and the physio can help him tomorrow.

He’s certainly in less pain now than he was this morning. Still can’t move it fully within his already limited range of movement but he’s got off the sofa for the first time since yesterday to actually use his arm!!! Have told him not to go on computer (he’ll have no choice tomorrow as he’s a software developer!)

also having an unexpected day free and being at home we’ve just had a lovely large roast pork lunch 😋

Also remember you can’t PB every time. No one can. Times depend on what the focus is in training, where about you are in the training cycle, training in the run up to the meet and whether it’s a target meet.

Also girls can vary performance dependent on periods and their cycle - there’s been a lot of good recognition of this recently.

and times really can vary even in a 2 week period because of training.

My ds has been known to get good PBs , 6 weeks later be wayyyyyy out and 2 weeks after that PB again because it’s a target meet and training has been designed to allow that iyswim?

Oddly enough, 3 PBs from 3 today. Not his regular events, the smallest one was last swum end of June so he’s quite happy that after one speed training set he’s managed that. Just hope he bounces back on his main events now!

Well done miniglitter.

we’ve just got up for training and DS is miles better but a little stiff so I’ve sent him back to bed and said to wait and see what physio says later. Really don’t want to risk causing an injury not being 100% sure of what the problem is (although it seems like a knot).

very quiet here this morning and I suspect there isn’t the injury concern either

Thanks for the feedback and comments. DD is 12 but a late developer so no real growth spurt yet. All you said could apply. When she was smaller she did complain about muscle pain a bit so she nay be a bit small for all the training. Whenever she is tired we would skip training that day. Now as she grows, we keep swimming training 2-3 times a week. Could have done more but she is also doing other sports or activities at school so we are juggling. Maybe she doesn’t have enough swimming training or maybe she is tired because the rest of her week is filled with other activities too. We may have to narrow down her focus soon as it seems she is spreading too thin everywhere now.

I would just keep going as you are - 2/3 times a week at her age is plenty. Dd2 is 13 and post main growth spurt (sadly as she’s not exactly tall 😂) and tbh she trains 3x per week and doesn’t have any intention of increasing it (probably ever). DH is doing level 2 coaching at the moment though they have said that kids under 13 ish shouldn’t train too much and it is harmful to longer term development.

She’ll hit growth spurt and swim massive pb’s just like probably you are watching her peers doing at the moment. Then worry about the longer term. And in the longer term the most important thing is to stay positive and enjoy it. Most of the girls locally in dd1’s age group (including those much faster than her) have given up - to still be swimming at 16 is a major achievement and imo the most important one.

I should have said before in the list above never compare your kid to others. That’s something else I hear in the younger ones ‘ooh don’t let x catch you up’ 🤦🏻‍♀️ - they develop at different rates and in the end usually they will be faster at some things than the others and slower at others.

I’m another who doesn’t think at 12 2-3 times a week is a bad thing.
DS didn’t start club swimming until 12yo and was doing 2-3 times a week until he was 14. Then increased and has been doing 9 sessions a week now for a few years but not until he was 18. (He’s now 21!).

Yes, there are swimmers in our club who at 12yo are doing 6-7 sessions a week but they don’t do multi sports.

I don’t think there’s a right or wrong but if they want to swim seriously at some point they need to make the decision to switch to just swimming - especially if training ups to 5+ times a week

Coaches are usually really good at guiding swimmers in these decisions but ultimately they’ll want happy swimmers too.

DS saw the physios this morning - they are happy for him to return to swimming this evening and said it’s just a tight muscle and he’s doing the right things. Plus he feels a lot better something another 12 hours has made all the difference to give him time to recover. He goes back in a month. But they were impressed how much he’s figured out alternative ways of achieving movement independently!