Practice lane etiquette

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes that's normal and NO you don't touch the other swimmer.

YES, you do. You tap them on the foot.

No, you don’t. My kid got kicked regularly from another kid. It was really obnoxious and made my kid not want to swim. No reason to touch another child. Just wait and give yourself enough space. I had enough and coach would not help so I told my kid to kick harder back. Only then did the coach care. Don’t start a war you are not prepared to finish.

The foot tap is universally accepted swimming etiquette. If your kid wants to keep swimming, they should learn it.

My kid is a teen and it’s never been practiced with us. It’s rude. Just wait a bit to start so you don’t need to pass.

It's the opposite of rude. I am confused about the antipathy. You know it's the person behind reaching out with their hand to tap the foot in front, right? No one if kicking or hitting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I had enough and coach would not help so I told my kid to kick harder back.

Great parenting there. Why not tell DC to use their words and switch it up at the next set?

I did. But the kids were about equal in speed and the kid was competitive. He told the kid to stop, kid would not. He went to the coach who ignored him. I pulled him out for a week because he refuse to go and emailed the coach and organization with no response. I walked him into to the practice and coach refused to talk to us. So, he refused to swim and we went into the regular lap lane to swim. I finally convinced him to go back and told him he had to stand up for himself and kick back. Finally the coach cared and then had the nerve to email me about him and I reminded the coach what we did to stop it first.

Stop letting your kid hit other kids in practice or they may get hit back.

Honestly this is crazy. Why would you send your kid back to a program where the coach clearly didn’t care about the safety of your child? There must be more to this story.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes that's normal and NO you don't touch the other swimmer.

YES, you do. You tap them on the foot.

No, you don’t. My kid got kicked regularly from another kid. It was really obnoxious and made my kid not want to swim. No reason to touch another child. Just wait and give yourself enough space. I had enough and coach would not help so I told my kid to kick harder back. Only then did the coach care. Don’t start a war you are not prepared to finish.

The foot tap is universally accepted swimming etiquette. If your kid wants to keep swimming, they should learn it.

My kid is a teen and it’s never been practiced with us. It’s rude. Just wait a bit to start so you don’t need to pass.

What’s rude is insisting on leading a lane if you’re not the fastest in the lane, or being ahead of a kid in the lane who is faster than you. The younger kids are notorious for this, especially when lanes are mixed gender and the 9 year old boy refuses to let the faster 9 year old girl go first. You also can’t “wait a bit” at a competitive club practice, you’re on an interval, you go when you are supposed to and if the kid in front of you is too slow you need to be able to get around them. Good coaches actually monitor this, they give the kids a chance to sort it out but they will step in and order the lanes if it’s not working.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes that's normal and NO you don't touch the other swimmer.

YES, you do. You tap them on the foot.

No, you don’t. My kid got kicked regularly from another kid. It was really obnoxious and made my kid not want to swim. No reason to touch another child. Just wait and give yourself enough space. I had enough and coach would not help so I told my kid to kick harder back. Only then did the coach care. Don’t start a war you are not prepared to finish.

The foot tap is universally accepted swimming etiquette. If your kid wants to keep swimming, they should learn it.

My kid is a teen and it’s never been practiced with us. It’s rude. Just wait a bit to start so you don’t need to pass.

It's the opposite of rude. I am confused about the antipathy. You know it's the person behind reaching out with their hand to tap the foot in front, right? No one if kicking or hitting.

I’m confused too. The only person potentially getting kicked is the kid behind, if he is getting up on the kid in front of him and the coach has them leaving every 5 seconds, then the kids should swap spots in the lane.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes that's normal and NO you don't touch the other swimmer.

Agree. Typically the swimmers work it out. They don’t need to touch/tickle/pass, but if they’re on someone’s feet, at the conclusion of the set, they should tell the person in front of them that they’re going in front of them for that reason. If that swimmer consistently blocks that from happening, then the swimmer should engage the coach to help order the lane. But managing lane position in a workout is also a part of competitive swimming that kids need to learn.

They do the tap/tickle. It is a thing. We have swam club here, Texas and California. It was universal in all three. It is part of the etiquette.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes that's normal and NO you don't touch the other swimmer.

YES, you do. You tap them on the foot.

No, you don’t. My kid got kicked regularly from another kid. It was really obnoxious and made my kid not want to swim. No reason to touch another child. Just wait and give yourself enough space. I had enough and coach would not help so I told my kid to kick harder back. Only then did the coach care. Don’t start a war you are not prepared to finish.

You are crazy. Foot tapping is a thing in competitive swim. My kids get annoyed in summer swim because non-club swimmers don’t know the passing rule.

Are you the driver that sits in the left hand lane doing the speed limit too?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes that's normal and NO you don't touch the other swimmer.

YES, you do. You tap them on the foot.

No, you don’t. My kid got kicked regularly from another kid. It was really obnoxious and made my kid not want to swim. No reason to touch another child. Just wait and give yourself enough space. I had enough and coach would not help so I told my kid to kick harder back. Only then did the coach care. Don’t start a war you are not prepared to finish.

Why was your kid getting kicked? Is your kid not crickets swimming correctly? This sounds so made up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I had enough and coach would not help so I told my kid to kick harder back.

Great parenting there. Why not tell DC to use their words and switch it up at the next set?

I did. But the kids were about equal in speed and the kid was competitive. He told the kid to stop, kid would not. He went to the coach who ignored him. I pulled him out for a week because he refuse to go and emailed the coach and organization with no response. I walked him into to the practice and coach refused to talk to us. So, he refused to swim and we went into the regular lap lane to swim. I finally convinced him to go back and told him he had to stand up for himself and kick back. Finally the coach cared and then had the nerve to email me about him and I reminded the coach what we did to stop it first.

Stop letting your kid hit other kids in practice or they may get hit back.

Poster, you sound like a terrible parent that does not understand swim etiquette or rules.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is DC’s first time on a club team. I’ve noticed that the coaches don’t really do anything about swimmers colliding in the lanes. For example, if DC is faster than the swimmer before them, rather than re-order the line, the coaches just leave them to constantly run into each other throughout the practice. Is this normal? Seems silly not to just change the sequence rather than have two swimmers constantly fighting with each other for the space.

DP here. This happens all the time and it's annoying as heck to my DD. However, she's not shy about speaking up when she's kicked by a swimmer in front of her. At a pause moment, she tells the kid that s/he either speeds up, or switch. If the kid doesn't do either, she asks her coach to handle it.

What's even more annoying to DD is when the meet host doesn't give enough lanes for the number of swimmers to warm up, or where the meet host "shorts" the team out of 5-7 minutes of warm up time because they're running late (but gave full warm up time to other teams).

[Anonymous]

While we're airing grievances, I will say one of the most annoying things for my fast 10u swimmer is when kids don't wait the interval before starting behind him (basically start on top of him) and then sprint to grab his foot so he lets them pass. He then sits on their feet, going slowly for the rest of the set because he's faster, but feels like he shouldn't pass them back after just getting passed. We talk about this in the car after 50% of practices and it's incredibly annoying, but I've never gone to the coaches - these kids (mine included) need to pipe up with the coaches or figure it out on their own.

[Anonymous]

Lane ordering only works if the kids are pacing themselves. My kid is consistently the slowest going out and the fastest at the end because she keeps a steady pace. Heep tap and move over works well. Also...counting before you go! This is my biggest pet peeve when kids don't count and are automatically on top of the person in front of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:While we're airing grievances, I will say one of the most annoying things for my fast 10u swimmer is when kids don't wait the interval before starting behind him (basically start on top of him) and then sprint to grab his foot so he lets them pass. He then sits on their feet, going slowly for the rest of the set because he's faster, but feels like he shouldn't pass them back after just getting passed. We talk about this in the car after 50% of practices and it's incredibly annoying, but I've never gone to the coaches - these kids (mine included) need to pipe up with the coaches or figure it out on their own.

It gets better as they get older, partly because the kids do a better job recognizing where they should be placed in the lane and partly because kids like yours find their voice and start calling them out for “cheating”. My DD had a coach that considered this type of thing (along with pulling when you’re supposed to just be kicking and vice versa) cheating and had no patience for it. If you got caught more than once (the first time you would get loudly called out) you had to get out and sit for 10 minutes, and if it was a continual thing she would put the swimmer out of practice. Yes, it was a little harsh but it ended the petty lane BS.

[Anonymous]

If the OP's kid is in the 10&U and you're concerned then reach out to the coach to discuss. Generally, kids work it out. In fact kids joke (or make fun of) annoying lane habits all the time. You have the kid who always leaves less than 5 seconds apart and swims right on your heel, the kid who's slow and just won't let anyone pass, etc. etc.

Just a general observation, but maybe watch less practices? summer swim is just chaos. Not much you can do with that many kids per lane of even more diverse swimming abilities unless you want to scale up the number of practices/coaches and/or reduce the number of kids participating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes that's normal and NO you don't touch the other swimmer.

YES, you do. You tap them on the foot.

No, you don’t. My kid got kicked regularly from another kid. It was really obnoxious and made my kid not want to swim. No reason to touch another child. Just wait and give yourself enough space. I had enough and coach would not help so I told my kid to kick harder back. Only then did the coach care. Don’t start a war you are not prepared to finish.

The foot tap is universally accepted swimming etiquette. If your kid wants to keep swimming, they should learn it.

My kid is a teen and it’s never been practiced with us. It’s rude. Just wait a bit to start so you don’t need to pass.

You are incorrect. It is literally international swim etiquette. See #3 https://www.speedo.com/blog/advice/the-7-commandments-of-lane-swimming/

[Anonymous]

Foot tapping is definitely a thing and is the proper etiquette for going ahead.