swimming clubs what age do children generally join?

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The title says it all really, my dd is currently having lessons with the local council swim school and is progressing well. Im just wondering how the join a swim club. Do they have to be a certain standard or is it on age?

Depends on whether the swimming club has a swim school attached to it or not. Often local pools don't allow clubs to have teaching groups as they will then lose children from their (lucrative) swim classes to the clubs.

So, if a club has a swim school then it's on age - typically 5 or 4 and they will take complete beginners. If not it's on ability and a child would normally need to be comfortable swimming lengths to join.

My dc's swimming club has a learn-to-swim section so they take non-swimmers, however to join the competitive section they need to be able to swim 50m of freestyle (front crawl), backstroke and breaststroke, 25m of butterfly, have an idea of diving/turns and be committed to swimming at least twice a week. Before they can join they have to go for a try-out, and about half of the children wanting to join will get rejected, so you and/or your dd would need a fairly thick skin.

In practice the youngest children are around 7, although there are plenty of much younger kids in the teaching groups.

Check out your local swimming clubs (if you have more than one locally) as they can have a very different ethos and emphasis. Some are highly competitive and expect a high degree of commitment from the swimmers (and parents), others are more relaxed and swimmers are there primarily for fun/to keep fit. Being in the wrong kind of club for your child can be very frustrating!

Bump sorry to hi-jack but had a similar question.
My dd has swimming lessons with the local pool and with the swim club. She has been asking to do more which so far I've put on hold. She has now got a chance for a free session in the junior squad. That would be swimming 3X a week and she only just turned 8 is it to much.
Plus if some of her strokes need more work would doing an hour of lengths do here any good.

Hello lexcat. I teach/coach at a swim club & would say that only you the parent can tell if 3 sessions a week is too much for your child. Some children absolutely love it & thrive on it while others get jaded if they do too much and also miss out on other things they might have done instead. For my children they wouldn't have wanted to do any more than 2 or 3 times per week at that age and even now as teenagers dd trains just 2x per week (but does 2 water polo sessions as well)though ds is more keen and does 6 sessions/week.

Your point about doing lengths with a poor stroke is a valid one too. It's never good to reinforce bad habits and a child should really only be swimming distances over which they can maintain good quality stroke. A good coach will ensure they are in an appropriate group so that this is the case.

Thanks snorkle, when I say she has poor strokes I'm been a bit mean as her breaststroke is brillant backstroke good for short spurs, butterfly getting their. Front crawl is the really weak stroke not helped by the fact she not keen on it as a stroke. She can't be that bad as she has just got her ASA level 9.
But what is the general age that children start swim club and is just 8 a little on the young side to be so into a sports.

Lots of children will start swimming clubs at around 8 lexcat. They don't start swimming galas until age 9 (10 for a lot of galas), except for informal ones within the club, so it tends not to get very serious before age 9/10 and a lot of emphasis will be on getting starts and turns right for the 4 strokes so that when they do compete they don't get disqualified. If your child enjoys it it's a great sport that will keep her really fit. A lot of the distance training is done on frontcrawl though (& most of the rest on backstroke) once you get to that stage, so it is worth persisting in getting that right. (Out of interest, does she tend to 'snake' from side to side doing frontcrawl - I assume that's the most likely problem as by Level 9 she should have the breathing sorted. If so, the cause is usually pulling the arms across the centre body line in the first part of the pull).