Helping Your Child Become a Strong Competitor

By Michael A. Taylor

Gymnastics Risk Management and Consultation

coacht@gym.net

Visit Michael’s Website at www.gym.net

You can help your child become a strong competitor by... 

1. Emphasizing and rewarding effort rather than outcome.
2. Understanding that your child may need a break from sports occasionally.
3. Encouraging and guiding your child, not forcing or pressuring them to compete.
4. Emphasizing the importance of learning and transferring life skills such as hard work, self-discipline, teamwork, and commitment.
5. Emphasizing the importance of having fun, learning new skills, and developing skills.
6. Showing interest in their participation in sports, asking questions.
7. Giving your child some space when needed. Allow children to figure things out for themselves.
8. Keeping a sense of humor. If you are having fun, so will your child.
9. Giving unconditional love and support to your child, regardless of the outcome of the day's competition.
10. Enjoying yourself at competitions. Make friends with other parents, socialize, and have fun.
11. Looking relaxed, calm, and positive when watching your child compete.
12. Realizing that your attitude and behaviors influences your child's performance.
13. Having a balanced life of your own outside sports.

Don’t . . 

1. Think of your child's sport participation as an investment for which you want a return.
2. Live out your dreams through your child.
3. Do anything that will cause your child to be embarrassed.
4. Feel that you need to motivate your child. This is the child's and coach's responsibility.
5. Ignore your child's behavior when it is inappropriate, deal with it constructively so that it does not happen again.
6. Compare your child's performance to that of other children.
7. Show negative emotions while you are watching your child at a competition.
8. Expect your child to talk with you when they are upset. Give them some time.
9. Base your self-esteem on the success of your child's sport participation.
10. Care too much about how your child performs.
11. Make enemies with other children's parents or the coach.
12. Interfere, in any way, with coaching during competition or practice.
13. Try to coach your child. Leave this to the coach.

SHOULD MY CHILD SWIM SUMMER LEAGUE?

By Priscilla Bettis

Lynchburg YMCA Swim Team

We’re in the midst of the summer league season as I write this, and we have quite a few athletes who compete for both their summer league team as well as our year-round USAS team.  Should they?  Sure!  Simply put, it’s fun!

However, older children, injury-prone athletes, and national caliber swimmers need to approach summer league carefully.  Pool time during summer league practice is limited, and older children would be better off evaluating their goals to decide whether competing with a summer league team supports the goals they hope to achieve.  They might consider practicing with their year-round team while still competing at night for their summer league team.  What’s more, summer league coaches appreciate less crowded lanes while teaching the novice swimmers.

Summer league races focus on sprint events, often not the focus of a year-round swimmer’s training. Additionally, summer league meets offer little warm up and warm down opportunities.  This set of circumstances creates a situation where athletes are more likely to get injured.  Responsible year-round swimmers would be wise to do a proper warm up at another pool and to stay after the summer league meet is over to do a thorough warm down when they can.  Swimmers with a history of shoulder injuries should be especially wary about swimming summer league and should probably avoid it altogether if they are serious about being long-term competitive swimmers.  It is imperative that those with shoulder problems continue with any exercises they have been prescribed to help keep their shoulders healthy throughout the summer.

National caliber swimmers need to keep their goals in mind when considering whether or not to join a summer league team.  The intense demands on time and energy, and the dedication required to meet long term objectives, mean the distractions of summer league swimming will impair progress toward those objectives.

Summer league meets that last late into the night cause swimmers of all ages and abilities to be tired, and their training the next day will suffer.  This means athletes should be scheduling naps, staying out of the midday heat, and taking care to hydrate and refuel.

Summer league swimming is often a youngster’s first introduction to our great sport.  Having the more accomplished year-round swimmers compete on the same team creates a friendly bridge between summer league and more dedicated year-round swimming.  Just make sure if your child decides to join in on the fun that he understands how summer league affects training, injury rates, and goal outcomes.

After considering all of the above, make sure you speak with your year around club coach before making a final decision.

“Teaching Hard Work to Parents As Well as Children”

By John Leonard

The above quote came from the former President of USA-Swimming, Coach Jim Wood of the Berkeley Aquatic Club of New Jersey, in response to a question “what can we do to improve American Swimming?” at a USA-Swimming Steering Committee meeting last January.

Jim, as many of you know, is a 40 year plus veteran of the coaching scene, and owns his own pool and program and has been a leader in USA-Swimming for many years. He currently is President of USA-Aquatic Sports, the umbrella organization for the Aquatic Sports in the USA, as they report to FINA.  He’s produced Olympians, National Champions, great age group teams and runs a highly successful swim business and swim school.

And his statement rang a bell with me.

I do talks for parents all over the world, as well as in the USA. And I “part time coach” my own team here in Fort Lauderdale, so I can stay current with all the things coaches face on deck in our sport. A considerable percentage of the parents that coaches deal with regularly have changed significantly from 10-20 and certainly 30 years ago.

I always ask parents what factors have led to their current success in life. Invariably, the majority have stories of hardships faced, challenges met, hard times overcome, on the way to a solid life and family, fiscal security or any sort of success you want to mention.

After these stories, a majority of parents say some variation on “boy, I don’t want my kid to have to go through that!”

And I am always floored. “you mean, you don’t want your child to experience the same formative experiences that you are describing as the ‘thing that made you what you are today’?”.

Invariably, they look at me blankly and then slowly it dawns on them what they are saying and the eyes go to the floor and you can almost hear an audible “hmmm….”

The natural response of any parent is to “protect” their child.

But let us not confuse “protect” with “shelter”. Children only really grow up under some pressure, some need to overcome something, the need to stretch, try harder, grow….in short, to GO TO WORK on something they care about.

The harder the work, the more satisfying the growth, maturity and individual strength created.

When we do something for our children that they are capable of doing themselves, we make them weaker. (not stronger) We want strong, independent children, yes? ……..Yes?

When we let children do for themselves, they learn to work for what they want.

Just like you and I did. And most parents did.  Hard work is good for all of us.

Have confidence in your child and let them grow. They will prove themselves as strong or stronger than you. But they need you to “give them something” to get there…….

…the Freedom to do the hard work themselves.

Forged By Adversity

Guy Edson, ASCA Staff

I was following a school bus the other day when it stopped to pick up two middle school aged boys.  Because of the framed glass emergency door in the back of the bus I could watch the two boys playfully tussling with each other as they made their way to the very last seat of the bus.  Finally the bus began to move again – it seemed to take forever just to pick up two boys.  I then thought back to my childhood days and riding the school bus.  As soon as I crossed that white line on the floor at the front of the bus the doors closed and the bus sped off to the next stop, adding the dimensions of speed and bumps and movement to the normal tussling.  It took balance and strength to make your way to the seat.  Quite frankly, I sometimes didn’t make it to a seat without being deliberately shoved, or through my own clumsiness, stumbling and nearly falling.  It was a challenge – but I never considered it as such.  To me, it was “normal.”

Our school bus practices now are far more safe and part of a widespread effort to insure the safety and comfort of our children.

Who can be against that?

At the risk of getting some “what are you thinking” emails and maybe even a few cancelations, I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that our society’s collective efforts in protecting our children have, in subtle ways, removed “opportunities for falling down on the bus” and other failures.  Failure is simply not allowed.  Adversity is to be minimized.

Consequently, a healthy attitude toward failure and adversity is often undeveloped.  A few years ago I was hired as the dryland training coach for a local high school.  During a heavy weight lifting cycle I explained the concept of lifting to failure.  (Lifting to failure, by the way, is an accepted and common practice in weight training.  Widely written about and researched, it is the de facto method for improving strength.)  Failure, as a concept, was so foreign to these high schoolers that they didn’t get it.  Even when I demonstrated it, they still didn’t get it.  Have we painted failure so darkly that no one gets the importance of it anymore?

I am happy to report that some do still get it.  Recently we interviewed a young person for an open position and when asked what she was really good at she replied that she was very good at failure.  She explained that it was through failure that she learned how to succeed.  How refreshing it was to hear that!  (And yes, she was a former national level swimmer.)

Last week I attended a lecture by a former Navy SEAL who, after over 30 years of service, is now part of the SEAL training team.  He explained the SEAL Ethos and what stood out to me was the phrase, “Forged by Adversity.”

“Forged by Adversity” is at the heart of what we do with our upper-level, older age group swimmers and all advanced senior swimmers.  Adversity, however, is not something normal people deliberately seek.  Most avoid it.  All good coaches find that it is one of the greatest tools for shaping swimmers not only into great swimmers, but into future grownups with one of the best of all the life skills.

  Adversity provides the opportunity to build determination, build confidence, build mental strength, give perspective, and to build physical toughness.  Are these not qualities we want in all our children?

Arnold Schwarzenegger said, "Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength."

And in swimming practice, adversity comes from sets, or possibly whole workouts, deliberately designed by the coach to make the athlete fail.  The coach does that by creating a set where a combination of the distance, the intensity, and a low rest interval make it difficult if not impossible to make.  There are many strategies and methods for doing this that go beyond the scope of this newsletter AND these strategies include a progression for how much adversity is presented at what ages, but the bottom line is this:  Swimmers get better through a workout environment that offers the opportunity for failure.

And so, Parent, what is your role in all of this?  I hope you refrain from seeking to protect your child from the adversity and opportunity for failure at swimming practice.  To do so is to deny your child the opportunity for building the qualities described above.  Instead, consider your role as the encourager.  Encourage  your swimmer to persevere, to break through, to come back the next day determined to work harder against the adversity placed there by the coach.  Then enjoy and celebrate the moment when your child does break through.  (And they will!)