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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My thinking as a former swimmer and parent of a 9 year old: at most of these clubs there are too many kids in the lane for coaches to be giving a ton of individual feedback. If you're lucky the coaches will have a good progression of drills that the kids work on and they will give your kid some individual tips from time to time. This age should still be very heavily skewed toward stroke drills and practicing turns, with just a little bit of endurance work so they can swim a 100 at a meet without struggling too hard.

Another thing to consider is that there is a lot of variability in the extent to which kids will receive feedback and want to or be able to implement it. I was the kind of kid who was super conscientious and tried really hard to do drills exactly the right way. I am the same way now at the gym. I want to do the exercise exactly the way the instructor shows it and I take pride in getting complimented for good form.

My 9 year old did not seem to inherit that tendency. He will sort of try to do a drill the right way but ultimately doesn't care too much if he isn't quite doing it correctly. I don't see him becoming any kind of elite or even fast swimmer because he just doesn't approach it with the intent to master what is being taught, and he isn't naturally talented enough to just do it right the first time. I think you either need one or the other in swimming and any other technical sport.[/quote]

I replied in a different thread about swim team expectations with many of the same thoughts. Almost every parent has the same reaction after their kid joins a swim team - why aren't the coaches correcting technique? And the answer usually is, they are being taught correct technique through words, demos, and drills, but if the swimmer doesn’t apply the correction, and, more importantly, practice the corrected form, they won’t progress. I see kids still swimming after many years without a good streamline, and I know for sure that the coaches have spent a lot of time emphasizing it ad nauseum. The kids might do it correctly in a drill, but they go back to their comfort zone in practice. They also do things like skip laps, pull on the lane line, go to the bathroom, etc. There are a lot of ways for kids to avoid working hard in swim practice, just like there are a lot of ways for kids to avoid learning at school.

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work” is a favorite swim coach mantra. The kids who go to practice and just go through the motions are not going to achieve as much through osmosis as the ones who are motivated to learn and improve.  This is also a reason to put your kids in meets - it motivates them to work harder in practice so they can feel good about themselves in races. [/quote]

+1. A lot of parents complain that their kid isn’t being taught technique because from their perch in the viewing deck, they don’t see a coach interacting 1:1 with their kid all the time. That’s just not how group practices work.[/quote]

These are also the kids who practice once or twice a week and there are some kids who never go to meets. There is a difference between elite swimmers and club swimmers. Not all club swimmers are elite and the coaches know it. [/quote]

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