How coaches choose which race to do at a meet

This is an email I sent to the parents of my young swimmers (13 and under at the regional level) to address a situation where parents would hesitate signing their children for a meet or would sign them up for only half the swim meet. I felt if I explained to the parents the importance and purpose of competing, and how events are selected for their swimmers, it would give them information that is crucial when making such decisions as a family.

Good morning development group parents and swimmers,

Coaches did the entries for the upcoming swim meet meet of Jan 13-14 yesterday and we were surprised to see how many swimmers, did not sign up and how many signed up for one day only.

After giving it some thought, we decided to write this email to explain why it is important for your swimmers to race at meets and also how coaches select which events the swimmers will race.

Let’s start with the importance of racing. Everything we make your children do in practice is geared toward swimming faster in races. When the kids race, the kids and coaches can see and evaluate the progress that has been made (often the progress doesn’t equal a best time). But there is more to it.

In a race, everything must come together at a precise moment in time. Once on the starting block, nothing can be done to get the body more ready for the race, it’s really now only a matter of how the swimmer will approach the race with his/her mind. The ultimate state of mind to perform is called: “the zone”. In psychology it is called the “flow”. Top swimmers in the world have learned to enter that state at will. Your child needs to develop that skill too if they want to go further in the sport.

Each race in which the swimmers compete, provides them with experience, a point of reference to start mapping out what being in the zone means for them. The more opportunities they get to race, the more opportunity to learn and progress.

Please consider attending all sessions in the future.

As you know, coaches decide the events to be raced for the swimmers. What you may not know is how we choose the events.

The first priority is always swimming the maximum number of races allowed by the meet. I think this goes without saying especially after what I wrote above. When you select only to come to one day/session, we will select the maximum number for swims allowed for that session (that’s only a way to make the best of a situation which isn’t the best).

The second priority is to select longer races. We stay away from 50’s as much as possible as no children who are in their teens can possibly be sprinters. Athletes the age of your children need to race in distance events as it is these events which are appropriate for their physical development. Furthermore, the time standards are always easier to achieve in the longer races. This is because less swimmers compete in them.

The third priority is to swim the IM events. The idea is that swimmers need to be proficient in all four strokes and can only specialize much later in their career once they are out of their teens. We are in the process of getting your swimmers ready to swim the 400 IM. This will happen at some point before the end of this year.

The fourth priority is to swim races that they haven’t swam yet. It is not always possible to swim all races, so a rotation is needed in order to insure the swimmers develop proficiency in all strokes.

Finally I would like to address a concern many parents have approached me with over the years.

Intuitively we naturally think that to perform at our best our swimmer needs to save their energy for the race that matters.

The first thing to be aware of is that at this point in their development, all their races matter! We’re racing to get experience and learn about “The zone”. We’re not racing for medals or standards and definitely not for best times either.

The other thing to be aware is that no one knows exactly just how much energy we have in our tanks. To put things in perspective, in 2008 at the Beijing Olympics, Michael Phelps swam 23 races! 23 races at the highest caliber of swimming in the world. I’m sure our swimmers can handle and have enough energy to swim 4 to 6 races in a day at the regional level!

There’s nothing better than swimming 4-5-6 races back to back to develop grit, resilience, determination and will power!

And we also need to be aware that when we prioritize an event over another, we are in fact teaching the athlete to prioritize the results and not the process. Focusing on the process, the how, will always bring better results in the long term.

I trust this information will be helpful for you and your swimmer.

Thank you and see you on deck!

Coach Philippe