Speed Swimming Exit Point

My recent posts about water polo and it's LTAD have drawn some interesting observations about speed swimming. And, for those speed swimming coaches that are following this and expecting another biting blog like last June, relax, it isn't happening.

In discussing Training to Train, or what I like to term "Competitive Foundations" we see a realization that this is where athletes tend to make choices about sport. For an activity that has early specialization, like speed swimming, this means individuals are seen as "dropping out" if they choose another sport. For sports with a later specialization the teen years of Competitive Foundations tend to be where athletes "opt in" and it is really the same thing with different labels; one is positive and one is negative.

With a healthy background of multi-sport activity there would be less negative association with choosing a sport direction at 14 and more of a positive transition to something that fits well with an individual as a person, an athlete and a team member. This is where the LTAD would go in Canada if we had a central leadership that shared vision through the National Sport Organizations rather than through a neutral funding arm of the government. As long as sports fight each other for funds and a share of government resources there will not be a joint development of elite athletes or a mass mobilization of the couch potato culture we have created.

That may sound extreme to some so let me give you perspective on this point. Hockey, in Canada, is the model sport in terms of success and performance. The organization nationally has a staff that could run a small country, and a budget that could also finance one. But here is a comment you would not expect to hear from them. In September I attended a Leadership Summit for water polo and listened to a presentation on "Relative Age" given by a facilitator from Hockey. The facilitator gave an example of a sport that was late specialization ie relative age not that important, and used the term "pirate" to describe them. He was talking about Rowing and how they recruit athletes who have dropped out of other sports in their teens or university years.

I have never thought of Rowing as a collection of thieves, more a group of astute coaches who know how to assess talent and make a grueling activity attractive to those who have learned to tolerate effort and pain en route to personal goals. This may be why Rowing is now attracting a significant number of ex speed swimmers in Winnipeg, the culture eases families into a healthy amount of training and competition as athletes head toward competition peaks in their 20's.

Speed Swimming, as I have mentioned before, ties sport development to an economic model rather than a sport science one. This has made them a very powerful sport organization but they fall well behind a boutique sport like Rowing who have much more Olympic success through a "science first" approach to athlete development. I am curiously watching these two sports right now trying to understand how much of what they do is planned, how much is science, how much is social and how much is just pure coincidence. I won't use the term luck here as both sports have very knowledgable coaches and it is the systems they work in that I am observing.

Small Uproar

Last week I wrote a blog about swimmers and how some clubs in Canada refuse to follow their national LTAD and instruct kids at 12 or 13 to quit water polo (or second sports) to participate solely in Speed Swimming. Wow, that got some odd reaction as the blog was circulated widely by a swimming organization trying to discredit me and what I wrote.

What is interesting is that some of their coaches wrote to me thanking me for what I wrote or saying that they agreed with me. That shows me that there is an unrest in the Swim community that I was not aware of ie an internal turmoil about the swimming LTAD and how it should be applied against the club model that has developed over so many years.

I had said previously that Speed Swimming, as a sport, is not the problem and that I was reacting to SOME swim clubs. That needs to be repeated as I have had that confirmed by several coaches who state clearly that they agree with me and what I wrote. If you are a swim coach, or club, that follows the LTAD ie uses it appropriately, then I am sorry if my discussion of swimming was so broad as to imply that all swim clubs misuse their development science.