Archive for August, 2009

News For

SWIM PARENTS

Pub­lished by The Amer­i­can Swim­ming Coaches Association

5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200

Fort Laud­erdale FL 33309

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Break­fast On The Run

By Carol Bozarth, R.D., L.D., Nutritionist

“I don’t have time to eat before I leave for school.”

“I’m not hun­gry in the morning.”

“I’m diet­ing, I’ll skip a meal and save those calories.”

Do your chil­dren (or you) use these excuses to avoid eat­ing break­fast? Do they rou­tinely “grab” a dough­nut, dan­ish, or candy bar to carry them through till lunch? Change this behav­ior NOW!

Break­fast is an impor­tant meal! The human body needs fuel to run on. That’s what food pro­vides. Stud­ies con­tinue to sup­port the fact that indi­vid­u­als learn, think and per­form bet­ter when their body has been nour­ished in the morn­ing. A morn­ing meal doesn’t mean you need to eat as soon as you awake. For par­ents, it may be more con­ve­nient for you to eat once you are at your day’s des­ti­na­tion, pro­vided you make time for it.

What would a morn­ing meal contain?

Pro­tein: low fat milk, cheese or yogurt, lean ham, turkey, peanut but­ter (use nat­ural), egg white, (the cho­les­terol and fat is in the yolk — the white is pure protein).

Grains: break­fast cere­als (hot or cold — pro­vided it is not sugar coated), bread, rolls, crack­ers, bagel, eng­lish muffins, rice, pasta.

Fruit/Vegetable: fruit or veg­etable juice, fresh frozen or dried fruit.

The fol­low­ing are exam­ples of quick-to-prepare, easy-to-eat morn­ing meals:

n low fat cheese and tomato sand­wich (can be stuffed into a pocket pita)

n peanut but­ter and sliced apple or banana sandwich

n sliced egg (or egg white sandwich)

n lean ham or turkey sand­wich with sliced tomatoes

n yogurt with fruit and dry cereal as a topping

n reheated pizza

Addi­tional tips: Use dis­pos­able plates, cups, flat­ware. Plan for break­fast before going to bed.

Wake up 10 min­utes earlier…it may cre­ate less stress and make the morn­ing meal so much eas­ier to swallow.

The key to eat­ing break­fast is con­ve­nience. It must be easy to pre­pare, you must have the ingre­di­ents in stock, and the clean up must be min­i­mal. Most impor­tant, every­one must like what they are going to eat.

SWIM PARENTS

Pub­lished by The Amer­i­can Swim­ming Coaches Association

5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200

Fort Laud­erdale FL 33309

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The Nature of a Judg­ment Call

Guy Edson, ASCA Staff

For nearly every deci­sion regard­ing age group swim­ming devel­op­ment there is lit­tle or no sci­en­tific evi­dence for mak­ing a deci­sion one way or another. How then can a deci­sion be made and who is best suited to make that deci­sion? In most cases, the coach is best suited to make deci­sions about age group swim­ming devel­op­ment. That is why a club hires a coach — to coach and make deci­sions. Addi­tion­ally, most clubs, through the Board of Direc­tors, give the coach the author­ity to make deci­sions. This author­ity is usu­ally expressed in a con­tract or in a writ­ten job descrip­tion. Unfor­tu­nately, it is some­times given only ver­bally and as Boards of Direc­tors change unwrit­ten author­i­ties also change plac­ing the coach in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion. It also needs to be pointed out that a coach needs the free­dom to make an error in judg­ment on an occa­sion with­out fear that he will lose his job. Peo­ple learn from mak­ing errors. John Kennedy said, “An error doesn’t become a mis­take unless you fail to cor­rect it.” Judg­ment errors rarely result in a long term effect of pre­vent­ing an ath­lete from reach­ing their ulti­mate ath­letic goals.

Sit­u­a­tion: A par­ent of a 10 year old wants their child to swim with the 12 year olds (who are doing 2000 — 3000 meters a day more than the 10 year olds). The par­ent points out that their 10 year old is faster than some of the 12 year olds? The coach dis­agrees. Although there is no evi­dence he is aware of that says it is bad for a 10 year old to do 5000 meters a day he still does not want a 10 year old doing 5000 meters a day. Why? Based upon his expe­ri­ence of coach­ing of age group swim­mers, he feels that young swim­mers need new chal­lenges from sea­son to sea­son in order to stay moti­vated and need a steady pro­gres­sion of increased work load. He has seen young swim­mers who do too much too soon drop out of the sport before they have a chance to reach their full poten­tial. He has even seen it hap­pen to swim­mers in his pro­grams early in his career when he gave up try­ing to edu­cate a par­ent and allowed a swim­mer into a group they should not have been in. He says it doesn’t mat­ter that they are capa­ble of doing more work, what mat­ters is they are given tomor­row at the expense of los­ing today and they lose the chance to be the leader of 10 year olds and all the fun of being with chil­dren their own age.

Why would a par­ent dis­agree? Each of you may have your own rea­sons but the rea­sons I hear most often are “My child wants to be with the older swim­mers to do more work…my child wants to be a state champion…my child is bored in the 10 and under group.” Two com­ments: I am always sus­pect of whether or not the child truly wants it or if they are just reflect­ing what Mom and Dad really want. Young swimmer’s try so hard to please their par­ents. The sec­ond com­ment is, there is a dif­fer­ence between want and need.

How does a par­ent decide when a 9 year old should go to bed? Is there con­clu­sive sci­en­tific evi­dence that says a 9 year old should go to bed at a spe­cific time or sleep for a spe­cific num­ber of hours? There are prob­a­bly guide­lines writ­ten down some­where but no defin­i­tive answers. The child WANTS to stay up until 10:00 but you, as the adult, make your judg­ment based upon what you feel are the child’s NEEDS and your expe­ri­ence. Quite sim­ply, this is a judg­ment call and the par­ent is best suited to make this decision.

Dr. Ken Low, direc­tor of Action Stud­ies Insti­tute, a think tank focused on adap­tive intel­li­gence, says that one of the most dis­turb­ing trends of the 80’s was the strip­ping away of peo­ples free­dom within insti­tu­tions to make judg­ments. Peo­ple are given rules and not allowed to use their own pow­ers of rea­son­ing to make excep­tions when excep­tions are due. We need coaches in this coun­try to have the free­dom and the Board-given author­ity to make judg­ment calls on age group devel­op­ment issues. This is how new ideas are formed. This is how pro­grams progress into the future.