Quote:
Originally Posted by Breeze
FM,
Quote looks fine in the thread and I'm glad you've enjoyed it so far. There were several driving factors behind the creation of this thread...
1. It gives me a chance to organize my thoughts
2. It serves as a journal that I can refer to in order to see my thoughts and the assessments of the kids performances in the past
3. AND PROBABLY THE BIGGEST REASON - to attempt to describe and illustrate the emotions of being a year round swimmer... (as you've seen the whole DQing can be very gut wrenching)
I would love for you to continue to post the progress of your son...feel free to put whatever you'd like down. Also, I'm not sure if you come from a swimming background, but if you didn't and you'd like to discuss anything, just let me know, we are ending our 6th season...
I'd be interested to know how long your son has been doing year round swimming, and what made him decide that it was a sport he wanted to be involved with.
Breeze
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I am not, personally, from a swimming background but my wife is. It's her sport. I grew up playing hockey and soccer, she was born near that one big lake you can see up North called "Lac St-Jean" (google it, you'll see, it's not as big as one of the five great lakes but it's still a pretty sizeable lake
). She would spend her Summers in cabins next to the lake and eventually got to compete in synchronized swimming and had various Summer jobs as lifeguard in her youth.
Anyway, I did take some swimming lessons when I was young and I can swim ok. We signed up both our kids for swimming lessons when they were both maybe 18 months old. Idea was simply to be responsible and give them a chance at not drowning if they ever fall in water. Anyway, our oldest (Andrew) took lessons up until he was maybe 9 or 10, when they started introducting them to the different strokes. He didn't like doing laps much and he stopped a little after his first session of mostly training, as opposed to "playing" in water.
Our youngest (Matthew) is quite different in mentality. He's a fierce competitor. He needs to be first in everything he tries, while our oldest is a more mellow kind of kid. When they started barely learning the strokes, Matthew would always want to find someone to race, even sometimes slowing down so he could "go at it" with any other kid. He'd often be in lessons with kids maybe a year or two older than him, i.e. him at 5 with kids 6-7yo or at 6 with kids 7 to 9 and so on, and he would most often keep the pace. My wife knows her swimming a bit and she sees a lot of potential in him. Some of the coaches have told her so too. Me, I'm just the proud daddy who knows little to swimming styles (although I'm learning
) and who's just happy to cheer his kid on.
Because of his competitive nature, when they asked him if he'd like to train as part of the swimming team of our club, he showed some interest. He went from a mere once a week in Fall of 2011 (when he was 7) to twice a week in January, to the full schedule of four times a week this Fall (2012). In fact, he probably should be in the three times a week schedule for the 7-9 yo but there were not enough kids in the 10-12 yo group that do four times a week and too many in the 7-9yo group so they "promoted" some of the faster younger swimmer. Even though it's his first full season of training, he was seen as one of the faster young ones which we took as a sign that he might have some potential. He does Monday-Wednesday-Thursday-Saturday and as I said, it's his first full season doing that. Prior to this season, he'd been signed up for swimming lessons since he was very young. He had done a couple of swim meet, once every year in the last couple of years. He almost decided not to swimm at all in June of 2011 when he got all flustered during warmups. He was so tiny back then and he felt like he was being pushed around during warmups when all the other swimmers of his club were in the same lane and now he wasn't the fastest in the group and was being passed by most of the others. He started crying back there and my wife had to cheer him up big time. I was teaching karate that day and couldn't be there for the beginning of the meet and my heart still hurts thinking about him. He went on to have a great meet that only fuelled his competitive spirit where he set his basic times that he's been improving on ever since.
I was tempted to say we don't really have year round swimming, but it's mostly that it's not split like yours is. Main training/competing season is September to June and it's all done in the 25m pool. We don't have access to a 50m one and no outdoor facilities either, it's just too cold for us around here. There was some sort of Summer training that lasted from the beginning of July to mid-August last Summer but that was mostly for younger swimmers to perfect their styles and not really an intensive training period. We're nearing the end of our season, with I think one more meet in the season at some point in June.
In recent years, swimming at the Olympics has become a big part of our Olympics TV watching as my wife became a big Phelps fan, as did Matthew, almost by osmosis I could say.
I bought my wife a DVD of all of Phelps's events at the Beijing games and she's watched is several times with Matthew.
Other than swimming, Matthew also still practices karate. His regular class would be Wednesday evening and Saturday morning but he can only attend Saturday morning and even then, it's after his longest training of the week in the pool. Luckily for him, his dad is the sensei and owner of the dojo so I give him pravite classes of about 45 minutes on Sunday morning. He's set to test for his brown stripe on his blue belt in three weeks. I'm thinking that the training in both disciplines can be complementary. He's very agile and swift when in the dojo, with amazing stamina and I hope that the concentration required for karate can be useful later on in his swimming.
Sorry if this got long. I'm still reading on the first page and I'm careful not to be spoiled about the latest results, but I wanted to write that down now. Back later with more.
FM