Characteristics of top swimming programmes

Swimming programmes vary enormously in their culture and expectations. There are few programmes in each major swimming country that produce national or international level swimmers; these programmes are doing something better than the other programmes do. In these top programmes, the various levels are designed to develop the necessary talents, and swimmers are taught to expect to succeed at national levels. This is a culture of excellence and high performance.

All top swimming programmes have the following characteristics:

• They are systematic and developmental, working with a swimmer’s biology and exploiting the critical periods for developing physical capacities.
• They take psychology seriously. From a swimmer’s first day in the programme, they aim to build the mental or psychological talents. They teach their swimmers to think like champions, to set goals continually, and to expect a lot from themselves.
• In top programmes, the focus on mental training helps create focus, drive, and self-confidence. These qualities underlie the technical and physical gains achieved through training. Thinking right leads to training right.
• They see the 10 and under years as the optimal time to focus on technique. Though swimmers are becoming faster and more aerobically fit and are laying the foundation of a training base, the overriding aim of training is to make the swimmers easy, efficient, beautiful, and adaptable in the water in all four strokes.
• They view the ages of 11 to 14 as the aerobic years. Swimmers continue to improve technique, but the primary goal of these years is to construct the physiological foundation for later high intensity training and high performances. They build the largest engine they can.

Remember that a programme that gives its swimmers a variety of training gives a variety of talents an opportunity to show themselves and to be spotted by coaches. Practices that focus on only one kind of training allow kids with a talent for that kind of training to shine and hence be noticed. Training all four strokes is important for the same reason: a swimmer with a strong breaststroke who trains nothing but freestyle will be less enthusiastic about working hard and less confident in his swimming abilities. Give all your swimmers a chance to shine.

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