In a training session, young swimmers often race everything and everyone. This can be detrimental to their long-term development.
Competitiveness is important for learning how to race, but technical competence is ultimately more important to long-term success.
Many swimmers, boys in particular, have a hypersensitivity to winning. They have to be first: first in the water, first to finish warm-up, then leading the lane and not letting anyone past. They simply won’t accept second place in anything, no matter how seemingly unimportant.
When I was a young swimmer, that constant state of competitiveness was me. I even raced to get changed the fastest! I remember arguing over whether putting my shoes on in the foyer counted as being “fully dressed”.
As a swimming coach who specialises in helping swimmers get faster, not just learn to swim, I often stress the importance of distance per stroke (DPS). I teach young swimmers that speed is a combination of stroke rate (tempo) and the distance travelled with each stroke. My coach at a high performance centre, when I was much older, suggested that I don’t need to win the warm up. It changed my life!
Improving stroke length (DPS) is one of the key ways to swim faster and will often be a limiting factor in the long run. Other factors, such as reducing resistance, improving underwater work, increasing tempo, and correcting balance, are also very important.
However, DPS is an aspect of swimming that initially needs to be practised slowly. This grates against a young swimmer’s ego when another swimmer speeds past while they are focusing on improving their stroke length.
Gradually, as power improves, distance per stroke increases and tempo can then be added. True speed comes from the combination of DPS and tempo. At any point, however, a swimmer can simply increase tempo to go faster, often at the expense of stroke length.
If a young swimmer is always sprinting, they are unlikely to improve their stroke length. The result may be short-term gains, but not long-term improvement.
So, winning everything is not the way to win. Patience is the key, patience to work on the fundamentals, such as DPS.
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