For the very end of the year, I will present all my important observations about training for competitive swimming, from the youngest ages to younger adults.
These observations of mine are exclusively written from my point of view as a professional trainer from the previous year, and they were made on the basis of my qualifications, scientific knowledge and my personal experience of many decades in training and sports.
I wouldn't want to get into any other story than what is most important in swimming training.
And this is just that.
A coach in competitive swimming, who works with a large number of children, must socialize the child swimmers in the right way, to raise them and teach them to live a sporty and healthy life. In addition, he must use his own example and attitudes to introduce them to sports "fair play", and in this way establish sincere camaraderie among them through training and healthy sports fighting, and competition. That is, in the shortest terms, my personal view of the figure of a children's swimming coach.
Nobody likes to be yelled at, and children are especially sensitive to it. If, as a coach, you raise your voice authoritatively, due to some childish mischief to avoid a possible injury, it's not a big deal, but if you do it with mockery and contempt, then it can't be good. I especially don't like it when derogatory terms are directed at children... Children experience it particularly painfully, in their childish way. The consequences can often be trauma and fear, aversion to training or even permanent phobias to any type of training.
I am absolutely against it and I will always react in favor of children to such phenomena.
About my colleagues with whom I regularly cooperate and work, as in previous years, as well as now... all the best.
These guys are precious. Because anyone who involves these children in sports automatically means that he is distancing them from all vices.
A healthy fight between coaches, for results and prestige, always exists... and always will exist.
My specific observations over the past year, when I have been active in the role of a competitive swimming coach, concern several fundamentally important things.
In my opinion, it is fundamental that competitive swimming training must have a certain flow and the right guidelines if you want to create top competitive swimmers.
I will list a few significant ones.
1. Developmental dynamics in swimming implies a dialectical approach of the coach. This means that you do not get attached to various training templates, but that you improve the swimming technique of the competitors through a systematic progression (daily and gradual correction of mistakes ordered by importance). This also means that at the same time, you systematically work progressively to increase their sports performance, depending on their current physical abilities.
2. Since this is about competitive swimming and not about artistic swimming, in that story as a coach you must know crystal clear, what is more important, the beauty of the movements that the competitors swim, so that swimming looks beautiful to watch or the speed they achieve while swimming.
3. You must think logically and establish a hierarchy of importance in the elements that make competitive swimming more effective. There are wrong but entrenched attitudes that arise from established templates that have not changed for decades.
One example of this is the importance of aerodynamics when swimming or "streamlining".
"Streamline" ie. aerodynamics in swimming is important, but not the most important.
It is just as important as it is for a BMW car when it is moving at a speed of 200 per hour, but not for young swimmers who have not yet technically even swum to the end. It is especially not useful if, due to the insistence on aerodynamics, you have 30% weaker strokes or weaker body movement through the water in competitive swimmers!
4. Phenomenon And one of my experiences that you don't have in other sports, is that water tells you everything about swimming technique.
Several times I accidentally experienced that while I was standing at the edge of the pool, a swimmer splashed the water all over me. while swimming past me. It cools you down nicely, but it made me aware that the energy produced by that swimmer during swimming is dissipated at the wrong angle because the water splashes from the side when rowing. When you focus on this phenomenon of splashing water, you can immediately see whether the swimmer, while swimming, captures that water under his strokes in the right way or not.
As a coach of competitive swimming, I must be primarily interested in the most effective movements for the swimmer's constitution and biomechanics, and this phenomenon helps me to see the movement in swimming very clearly, i.e. whether it is well or poorly executed.
That's why I started following swimmers as they swim, walking alongside them. If you swim, effective splashing of water must be symmetrical, and evenly distributed on both sides, mostly vertical. However, if you throw water asymmetrically and to the side during the stroke, then you are wasting energy in the wrong direction!
5. What I learned a long time ago in sports, and it is extremely pronounced in swimming, is that you can have the muscle strength to lift 100 kg, but if your little finger is weak, you feel unbearable pain in it when you try to lift even a small load, because of the weakness of the little finger, you will not be able to lift even 5 kg.
Applied to swimming, this means that all the muscles of the upper and lower body, working in sync during swimming, achieve a kind of synergy between each other, so you will then have maximum effect in swimming. Only in this case will you have maximum physical utilization of the swimming strength that you have in your body.
The torso, or "core", is actually the coordinator and transmitter of this synergy as a natural anatomical connector of the upper and lower body. No matter how strong, explosive, and durable your arms and legs are, if your core is not strong, explosive, and durable enough, you will not be able to use the full potential of your powerful arms and legs. The load that falls almost entirely on the limbs often causes rapid fatigue of the limbs and often cramps occur in them during swimming. Adequately strengthening the torso and connecting, above all, the diagonal kinetic chains of the muscles of the upper and lower body, means optimizing swimming movements, which automatically become much easier, more efficient, and faster.
The most advanced level of training, which requires even more combined engagement in the development of explosive strength, is increasing fascial elasticity, or maximum development of the entire fascial network of the body. This also means an incredible advantage in swimming because it provides the maximum quality of movement required by competitive swimming at the highest level.
Adequately developed kinetic chains of muscles, which are connected by adequately developed fascial tissue, inevitably lead to the achievement of maximum physical performance. This is especially pronounced in swimming because it is precisely the explosive elastic force that grinds the water during swimming and non-progressively brings the swimmer to the finish line and the champion's podium.
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