Archive for September, 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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Car­bo­hy­drate Loading

By Keith B. Wheeler, Ph.D.

And Ange­line M. Cameron

Ques­tion: What exactly is car­bo­hy­drate load­ing? Is it appro­pri­ate for age group swimmers?

Answer: Car­bo­hy­drate load­ing refers to the process by which the car­bo­hy­drate (glyco­gen) stores in an athlete’s active mus­cles are increased sig­nif­i­cantly above nor­mal lev­els. This load­ing of car­bo­hy­drate in the mus­cles is accom­plished through a com­bi­na­tion of train­ing and diet manipulation.

Spe­cific tech­niques for car­bo­hy­drate load­ing have changed since the method was devel­oped in Swe­den. The orig­i­nal pro­gram con­sisted of 7 days of dietary man­age­ment, begin­ning with exhaus­tive exer­cise bouts on the 1^st day, fol­lowed by 3 days of extremely low car­bo­hy­drate con­sump­tion. The next 3 days con­sisted of an extremely high car­bo­hy­drate intake that caused the mus­cles to super increase their car­bo­hy­drate stores. In some peo­ple, this reg­i­men pro­duced nau­sea, fatigue, and diar­rhea. There­fore, less dras­tic car­bo­hy­drate load­ing reg­i­mens were devel­oped and are cur­rently recommended.

Although, when done prop­erly, it does increase muscle-glycogen stores above nor­mal lev­els, car­bo­hy­drate load­ing is most use­ful for ath­letes who are prepar­ing for endurance events such as triathons, marathons, cycling races, or open water long dis­tance swim­ming. It should be done only a few times in a year. A nutri­tional con­cern that is more impor­tant to an age-group swim­mer than car­bo­hy­drate load­ing is con­sum­ing enough car­bo­hy­drate on a daily basis. Age-group swim­mers should get at least 60% of their daily calo­ries from car­bo­hy­drate, which will main­tain their mus­cle glyco­gen at lev­els that will sup­port their training.

Writ­ten by Forbes Carlile, Head Coach of the Carlile School of Swim­ming and Head Coach of numer­ous Aus­tralian Olympic Teams. His book, “Forbes Carlile on Swim­ming” was the first mod­ern book on com­pet­i­tive swimming.

Just as it is of utmost impor­tance that coaches must be con­tin­u­ally pos­i­tive and opti­mistic, so too must par­ents. It has been said that 95% of us are pre­dom­i­nantly neg­a­tive in our approach to life — so most of us have a problem!

These notes are equally applic­a­ble to par­ents, and if not under­stood and acted upon by the whole swim­ming fam­ily, swim­mers will be greatly hand­i­capped, and not reach full poten­tial. Being crit­i­cal, no mat­ter how much it may seem jus­ti­fied to the par­ents (“who have spent so much money and time”) is clearly a neg­a­tive approach with a strongly under­min­ing effect. When con­struc­tive crit­i­cism is needed to form the foun­da­tions of a revised plan for improve­ment, par­ents should express their ideas to the coaches. The secure coach will be able to han­dle such help. Most coach­ing orga­ni­za­tions wel­come con­struc­tive crit­i­cism, pre­sented in the right way at the appro­pri­ate time.

Par­ents should con­tin­u­ally pro­tect the swim­mers from the dam­ag­ing input of neg­a­tive thoughts. If they can make a habit of always being pos­i­tive and only fore­see­ing suc­cess, swim­mers will be given the great­est oppor­tu­nity to tran­scend exist­ing per­for­mance lev­els. Clearly, the train­ing must be as good as well, but where, in addi­tion, an atmos­phere is of pos­i­tive self-expectancy con­tin­u­ally pro­moted by coaches and fam­ily, even when progress seems to be slow and the going dif­fi­cult, swim­mers will have the right men­tal approach. While doing their best to carry out all aspects of prepa­ra­tion well, swim­mers will learn to regard them­selves as win­ners, and even­tu­ally suc­ceed in reach­ing real­is­tic goals. The chances of this dimin­ish greatly when par­ents, often because per­sonal short­com­ings (in hav­ing a pes­simistic, neg­a­tive nature) con­tin­u­ally remind a child of the lack of improve­ment or fail­ure to come up to expec­ta­tions. Swim­mers should con­tin­u­ally be pro­gram­ming their sub­con­scious by pos­i­tive self-talk and visual imagery of suc­cess. This task should be made easy by rein­forc­ing pos­i­tive vibra­tions around them.

It is impor­tant for the swim­mers to know that they are loved no mat­ter what their swim­ming per­for­mance. The neg­a­tive fear of fail­ure is mush less likely to develop when par­ents empha­size their love and compassion.

When set­backs occur, the atti­tude of par­ents and coaches must express the idea…”Well, you did not do as well as you are capa­ble of this time, but next time it will be better”…positive self-expectancy and opti­mism. This helps the pro­gram­ming of the sub­con­scious mind that we should be striv­ing for. The coach and swim­mer should ana­lyze and deter­mine what can be improved and pos­i­tive action taken. Par­ents, about all, should be the least crit­i­cal and never sug­gest that what has hap­pened is more than a tem­po­rary set­back. If such prin­ci­ples are applied to all our think­ing we might well improve our lives too. It is not only the swim­ming devel­op­ment of the child that par­ents can help by the right psy­cho­log­i­cal approach. We can all ben­e­fit greatly.

The par­ents even­tual reward for their sac­ri­fices of time and money will be when the grown-up, mature swim­mers real­ize that their par­ents have played an impor­tant part in their suc­cess as a swim­mer, and as an indi­vid­ual, by giv­ing them the oppor­tu­nity to train with­out attempt­ing to intrude, or bask­ing in reflected glory.

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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Burnout Or Choice

Coach Garry Nel­son, for­merly of the Plan­ta­tion Swim Team, in Plan­ta­tion FL advo­cates a broader per­spec­tive on one of the most com­mon self-criticisms of age group swimming.

The term “burnout” is widely used in the sport of swim­ming. Many swim­mers quit swim­ming every year. Many coaches and par­ents believe it is caused by burnout. The Physi­cian and Sportsmed­i­cine in a recent arti­cle, described burnout as “loss of energy and enthu­si­asm for the sport but that it is not caused by anx­i­ety and stress. Sure, all of us have known that cer­tain par­ent or coach who puts exces­sive pres­sure on a child to win or set records. Most of those swim­mers quit because they no longer can han­dle the pres­sure and they need to quit because they need to get away from its cause. That is burnout.

At the Plan­ta­tion Swim Team (Florida), we have approx­i­mately 30% to 35% turnover in our mem­ber­ship each year. I would think that our club is very close to the national aver­age (Editor’s note: U.S. Swim­ming Domes­tic Tech­ni­cal Direc­tor Bob Steele cites an aver­age annual turnover of 33% of reg­is­tered swim­mers). Peo­ple asso­ci­ated with swim­ming, group all of these swim­mers as burnout. In fact, very few of these swim­mers are really burnout cases.

There are hun­dreds of rea­sons why young peo­ple quit swim­ming. I believe that most swim­mers who are no longer swim­ming quit because they are no longer improv­ing as fast as they used to, and the results are no longer worth the time and com­mit­ment. Through­out my coach­ing expe­ri­ence, I know that I have had my fair share of swim­mers leave the sport. Look­ing back, I can remem­ber very few that I would con­sider in the burnout cat­e­gory. For exam­ple, if a swim­mer is very suc­cess­ful as a young swim­mer and has achieved suc­cess with lim­ited com­mit­ment and a mod­est work­load, when the swim­mer begins to get older he or she must increase his or her com­mit­ment to remain suc­cess­ful. The ath­lete may not want to put the required time into the sport. At that point they face a choice of work­ing harder, scal­ing back their goals, or doing some­thing else with their time. But that’s not burnout, it is rather a choice.

Not every young per­son who has left swim­ming is a burn-out case. Most young peo­ple who have left our sport, have sim­ply exer­cised their free­dom of choice.

In con­clu­sion, let’s limit our use of the term burnout, which is giv­ing swim­ming a bad name. Coaches should strive to make their pro­grams more cre­ative and appeal­ing to min­i­mize loss of inter­est. Par­ents and coaches should know when to make kids work and when to let them play and not be afraid to have some fun. The next time you use the term burnout to describe a swim­mer who has quit the sport, think again. Maybe they didn’t burn out, maybe they just chose to stop swimming.

News For

SWIM PARENTS

Pub­lished by The Amer­i­can Swim­ming Coaches Association

5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200

Fort Laud­erdale FL 33309

___________________________________________________________________

The Par­ent And The Coach

Reprinted from Hannula’s Hints, Writ­ten by Dick Hannula.

A very com­mon topic in any swim coaches’ chat ses­sion is par­ent involve­ment. Most coaches agree that the par­ents do present a def­i­nite fac­tor in the suc­cess or fail­ure of their swim­mers. More than one coach has changed jobs because of par­ent involve­ment and usu­ally it has been a neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence for the coach who has made this change. I have heard coaches com­pli­ment a great swim­mer with the remark that the swim­mer has “great par­ents”. I am quite cer­tain that you have also heard coaches describe a swim­mer as hav­ing “lousy par­ents?” Is there some­thing that coaches can do to encour­age par­ents to become “good swim­ming parents”?

Some par­ents give coaches ulcers, a lack of job secu­rity, a lack of con­fi­dence, and a gen­eral case of jit­ters. This is true, and many coaches have tuned in a deaf ear to par­ents over the years. Are there gen­eral char­ac­ter­is­tics that describe “good par­ents”? The Amer­i­can Swim­ming Coaches Asso­ci­a­tion asked some of the most suc­cess­ful coaches about the “ideal swim­ming parents”.

“The ideal swim­ming par­ent is one who sup­ports and encour­ages his child with­out pressure.” — Richard Quick, for­mer United States Olympic Head Coach.

“The ideal par­ents are the par­ents who fol­low and don’t lead”. – Peter Daland, For­mer USC Head Coach and two-time United States Olympic Coach.

“The ideal swim­ming par­ent sup­ports, backs, and lis­tens. This par­ent under­stands long range goals. This par­ents sees beyond today.” – Dick Jochums, Head Coach, Santa Clara Swim Club. Dick has coached sev­eral Olympic swim­mers.

“The ideal par­ent is usu­ally some­one who has dealt with chil­dren other than his own, such as a school teacher or a coach. The par­ents are not as emo­tion­ally involved as intel­li­gently involved. The par­ents also real­ize that there is much more to learn than just swim­ming fast.” — Jack Nel­son, for­mer US Olympic Coach.

“The ideal swim­ming par­ent is one who sup­ports their child as a per­son, not as a swimmer.” — Jonty Skin­ner, for­mer World Record Holder.

The kids who per­form the best are the ones with sup­port­ive par­ents who let the coach have con­trol of the child’s swim­ming career.” — John Collins, Bad­ger Swim Club Head Coach. 1983 ASCA Coach of the year.

“It is impor­tant for the par­ents to be phys­i­cally, men­tally, and finan­cially sup­port­ive of their young­ster. The par­ents should sup­port the inter­est and well being of their children.” — Don Gam­bril, Past Uni­ver­sity of Alabama Head Coach and 1984 Head Olympic Coach.

“The ideal swim par­ent needs to have a sense of humor and is pri­mar­ily inter­ested in the devel­op­ment of his child as a per­son, not a swimmer.” — John Leonard, ASCA Direc­tor and for­mer Lake For­est Swim Team Head Coach

“Some kids may per­form bet­ter for a while with harass­ment and pres­sure from par­ents, but in the long run. It is best if the swim­mer devel­ops his/her own goals and discipline”. — Rob Orr, Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Head Coach.

“An ideal swim­ming par­ent is some­one who real­izes his child’s lim­i­ta­tions as well as his achieve­ments. The par­ent is sup­port­ive but not demand­ing and loves the child whether he wins, loses or draws.” — Penny Tay­lor, Past Park­way Swim Club Head Coach and For­mer ASCA Board Member.