Archive for January, 2010

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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Watch­ing Your Child at Swim Lessons or Swim Practice

By Guy Edson

For many years I watched my daugh­ter swim under the direc­tion of other coaches. I have also watched her at bas­ket­ball prac­tice and games, and dance, and fig­ure skat­ing. I know the joy of watch­ing her in these activ­i­ties. I also know and under­stand the over­whelm­ing desire to direct, cor­rect, encour­age, and some­times scold her at prac­tice. But these are not proper parental behav­iors once I have released her into the care of a coach or teacher. As a par­ent, I am not to inter­fere with the prac­tice or attempt to talk to my child dur­ing the prac­tice session.

At swim prac­tice coaches want the children’s atten­tion focused on the coach and the tasks at hand. Occa­sion­ally chil­dren miss an instruc­tion, or have a gog­gle prob­lem, or are involved in some other dis­trac­tion, or are sim­ply play­ing and hav­ing fun – which are all nor­mal behav­iors for young chil­dren. Coaches view these lit­tle dif­fi­cul­ties as oppor­tu­ni­ties for the chil­dren to develop good lis­ten­ing skills, abil­ity to rea­son, and self dis­ci­pline. Some­times we allow fail­ure on pur­pose — a missed instruc­tion leav­ing the child con­fused often results in the child learn­ing to pay bet­ter atten­tion the next time. We endeavor to pro­vide an envi­ron­ment for the chil­dren to develop these skills. A well-intentioned and over-enthusiastic mom or dad some­times has dif­fi­culty allow­ing their child to miss some­thing and wants to inter­fere. It’s understandable.

We know it is com­mon in many other youth sports for par­ents to stand at the side­lines and shout instruc­tions or encour­age­ments and some­times admon­ish­ments to their chil­dren. How­ever, at swim prac­tice coaches ask par­ents not to sig­nal them to swim faster, or to tell them to try a cer­tain tech­nique, or to offer to fix a gog­gle prob­lem, or to move away from some other “men­ac­ing” swim­mer, or even to remind them to lis­ten to the coach. In fact, just as you would never inter­rupt a school class­room to talk your child, you should not inter­rupt a swim prac­tice by attempt­ing to com­mu­ni­cate directly with your child.

What’s wrong with encour­ag­ing your child dur­ing prac­tice? There are two issues. First we want your child to focus on the coach and to learn the skill for their per­sonal sat­is­fac­tion rather than learn­ing it to please their par­ents. Sec­ondly, parental encour­age­ment often gets trans­lated into a com­mand to swim faster and swim­ming faster may be the exact oppo­site of what the coach is try­ing to accom­plish. In most stroke skill devel­op­ment prac­tices we first slow the swim­mers down so that they can think through the stroke motions. Save encour­age­ments and praise for after the prac­tice ses­sion! This is the time when you have your child’s full atten­tion to tell them how proud you are of them.

What’s wrong with shout­ing or sig­nal­ing instruc­tions to your chil­dren? When I watched my old daugh­ter play in a bas­ket­ball league I felt an over­whelm­ing desire to shout instruc­tions to my child and so I under­stand the feel­ings that most par­ents have. But those instruc­tions might be dif­fer­ent from the coach’s instruc­tions and then you end up with a con­fused child. Some­times you might think the child did not hear the coach’s instruc­tion and you want to help. Most of us do not want to see our own kids make a mis­take. The fact is that chil­dren miss instruc­tions all the time. Part of the learn­ing process is learn­ing how to lis­ten to instruc­tions. When chil­dren learn to rely on a backup they will have more dif­fi­culty learn­ing how to lis­ten bet­ter the first time.

As par­ents, many of us want our chil­dren pro­tected from dis­com­fort and adver­sity and we will attempt to cre­ate or place them in an envi­ron­ment free from dis­tress. So, what’s wrong with help­ing your child fix their gog­gles dur­ing prac­tice time? Quite sim­ply, we want to encour­age the chil­dren to become self-reliant and learn to take care of and be respon­si­ble for them­selves and their own equip­ment. Swim­ming prac­tice is a ter­rific place to learn these life skills. Yes, even begin­ning at age 6 or 7.

If you need to speak to your child regard­ing a fam­ily issue or a trans­porta­tion issue or to take your child from prac­tice early you are cer­tainly wel­come to do so but please approach the coach directly with your request and we will imme­di­ately get your child out of the water. If you need to speak to the coach for other rea­sons please wait until the end of practice.

Thanks for bring­ing your chil­dren to swim prac­tice. Every swim coach I know coaches each child with care for their safety and con­cern for their social, phys­i­cal, learn­ing skills, and life skills development.

Dear USA Swim­ming Member,

The US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in part­ner­ship with Dis­cov­ery Edu­ca­tion has requested our sport’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in a research project. Your thoughts and views are crit­i­cal to this study.

The aim of this USADA project is to enhance their edu­ca­tion pro­gram by con­duct­ing com­pre­hen­sive research that deter­mines society’s view on the impact of sport. A key objec­tive of this research will be to cap­ture sport’s impact in par­tic­u­lar on youth par­tic­i­pa­tion and activ­i­ties, and youth atti­tudes and values.

Please be assured that all answers pro­vided to us are to be used for research pur­poses only. The sur­vey also con­sists of ques­tions that you and your child (between the ages of 8 – 12) can answer together. If you are a par­ent of a child under 13, you will need to pro­vide con­sent for your child to par­tic­i­pate in the sur­vey by select­ing the appro­pri­ate response within the sur­vey. If your child is age 13 – 17 they can answer ques­tions either with you or inde­pen­dently. If your child is not avail­able at the time you take the sur­vey, you can log back in at a later time to com­plete those ques­tions and pick up where you left off. Please do not com­plete the sur­vey on your child’s behalf. All responses will be anony­mous (there will be no data that will iden­tify you or your child per­son­ally or link you to your responses) and will be used only in com­bi­na­tion with other responses we receive.

Your par­tic­i­pa­tion is com­pletely vol­un­tary so if you don’t want to par­tic­i­pate, you cer­tainly don’t have to. Should you choose to par­tic­i­pate, there is an oppor­tu­nity to reg­is­ter in a $5 Sports Author­ity gift card sweep­stakes as a thank you. If you would like to be included in that draw­ing, then you will be asked to pro­vide your e-mail address at the end of the sur­vey. Note that this does not affect the anony­mous nature of the sur­vey in any way. To begin the sur­vey, please click on the link below. If this does not work, please cut and paste the address into your web browser.

We think that this data will prove to be mean­ing­ful and insight­ful and we hope that you will want to par­tic­i­pate! We know that there will be great inter­est in respond­ing to this study, and we can accom­mo­date a good num­ber of sub­mis­sions; how­ever, keep in mind that there will be a point at which the sur­vey must con­clude due to the num­ber reached. It will be impor­tant to respond as quickly as pos­si­ble to ensure your oppor­tu­nity to par­tic­i­pate. A mes­sage will be pro­vided imme­di­ately upon open­ing the sur­vey if it has closed. If you have any ques­tions about the sur­vey, please con­tact comments@imoderate.com.

All research on human vol­un­teers is reviewed by a com­mit­tee that works to pro­tect your rights and wel­fare. If you have ques­tions or con­cerns about your rights as a research sub­ject, or if you would like to obtain infor­ma­tion or offer input, you may con­tact the Insti­tu­tional Review Board at 919−966−3113 or by email to IRB_subjects@unc.edu.

We encour­age you to take the time to com­plete this impor­tant sur­vey and show your sup­port for the integrity of your sport, and our col­lec­tive sup­port of USADA. Thank you for your time.

http://survey.confirmit.com/wix/p1076189338.aspx?SAM=3

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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Learn­ing To Pre­pare For The Best

John Leonard

As I write this in early Jan­u­ary in Fort Laud­erdale, the air tem­per­a­ture is a “balmy” 42 degrees….well, balmy if you’re from Green Bay, Wis­con­sin, maybe. Here in South Florida, that’s a cold wave. We swim out­side, and the water tem­per­a­ture is 75 degrees…..the heaters can’t keep up when the air is this cold. The wind chill fac­tor, accord­ing to Chan­nel 7, is…well, we don’t want to know the wind chill with a nice brisk 20 mile an hour wind com­ing off the Everglades.

My phone rings at 5 AM and a small voice on the other end asks plain­tively, “Do we really have swim prac­tice, Coach John?” Yes, we really do.

WHY? Is the next ques­tion, which I wres­tle with myself on the 15 minute drive to the pool….why put teenagers in the water on this cold and nasty morn­ing when both they and I would pre­fer to stay snug­gled in at home for another hour or hour and a half.

Now, I KNOW why, but can I express it to my swim­mers? Yes, I’ll try. Every­one, on the day after the high school state meet, vows that “next year” they will A) make a final, B) Make the meet C) win an event or D) write in your own goal here.

It’s easy to vow to do some­thing the day after, when you are excited, full of the promise of life and get up and go. It’s a lot harder to REMEMBER what you wanted to do in early Jan­u­ary when it’s 5 AM and cold out­side. Then it’s a lot harder and a lot eas­ier to ratio­nal­ize, “it’s just one workout”.

The prob­lem is, when teenagers begin to learn to ratio­nal­ize, they get really good at it really fast, and pretty soon, the ACTION required to ful­fill the com­mit­ments to those goals/dreams, falls prey to the ratio­nal­iza­tion. And after you ratio­nal­ize the deci­sion you want to make the first time, it’s so much eas­ier to do it the next time, and the time after that, and pretty soon, the goal is just a dream, because you’re ratio­nal­iz­ing your­self into think­ing, “I’d like to do that if every­thing could be per­fect for me, and it would never be cold in the morn­ing, or no social events would ever con­flict with prac­tice, and time with my friends always went the way I want it to.“

But things never go per­fectly. The ONLY thing you can suc­cess­fully pre­dict is that obsta­cles to your goal WILL come up, and lit­tle or noth­ing will go smoothly. And that con­sis­tency in prepa­ra­tion is the only way to raise the per­cent­ages of the chance you will reach your goal.

Read that again….”raise the per­cent­ages of the chance…” Not a guar­an­tee. If it’s a good goal, there are no guar­an­tees, EXCEPT that if you don’t pre­pare cor­rectly, accord­ing to the plan, you won’t raise your chance of suc­cess, you’ll lower it.

So why go to prac­tice at 5 AM in the cold? Because it’s part of the plan, and it raises your chance of suc­cess. But most of all, because you have told your­self that you will com­mit to doing it. And if you let your­self down, who won’t you let down? Pre­pare for a chance for suc­cess. And feel really good about doing that.

Because not very many peo­ple do.

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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Gain Weight To Gain Strength

By Keith B. Wheeler, Ph.D.

And Ange­line M. Cameron

Should young (9 to 11 years old) male swim­mers try to gain weight to gain strength? If so, what is the best way?

No, young male swim­mers in this age range should not be too con­cerned with increas­ing their mus­cle mass to increase strength. Until they reach puberty, usu­ally between 12 and 15 years of age, young men can­not increase their mus­cle mass rapidly because of the lack of the male hor­mone testos­terone. How­ever, stud­ies have shown that with the appro­pri­ate weight-training pro­gram pre­pu­bes­cent boys can sig­nif­i­cantly increase their strength, despite the lack of mus­cle growth. The pri­mary rea­son for this is that strength is reg­u­lated by fac­tors other than mus­cle size — namely, var­i­ous neu­ro­log­i­cal con­trols that are influ­enced by weight training.

For more detailed infor­ma­tion on this sub­ject, write to the National Strength and Con­di­tion­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (NSCA), Box 81418, Lin­coln, NE, 68501, and ask for the posi­tion paper titled “Pre­pu­bes­cent Strength Train­ing.” This paper dis­cusses ben­e­fits and risks of strength train­ing and gives guide­lines for a good program.

Addi­tion­ally, ASCA sells a book writ­ten by two very well respected sports phys­i­ol­o­gists and pub­lished by Human Kinet­ics enti­tled “Strength Train­ing For Young Ath­letes.” This book directly address the con­cerns of par­ents and coaches regard­ing strength train­ing for young ath­letes, dis­pels the myths, and offers cor­rect advice for prop­erly admin­is­ter­ing a dry­land train­ing pro­gram. The book is avail­able here: https://www.swimmingcoach.org/ecom/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=20