Anonymous wrote:My 9 yo is really into swimming and happily woke up at 5:45 many mornings this summer for early practice and meets. But when the 4:45 weekday practices start I honestly hope she won't want to go. Getting up anytime before 5:30 on a regular basis seems like a form of torture.

Anonymous wrote:I know 4:30 swim practice is common but it bares checking in from the outside to say that it should not be. High school kids need to sleep later than 4am! Obviously. The adults in the swim world need to stop offering morning practice.

Anonymous wrote:Former swimmer here. Please have your kid eat something before and after morning practice. Swimming burns up a lot of calories, and it will be difficult to focus at school without another meal after morning swim. I also had to go to bed at 8 am, and would study ahead on the weekends. I wanted to do this or otherwise it never would have worked.

Anonymous wrote:Agree with the PPs that morning practices can be detrimental for younger swimmers. That said, I've heard many coaches (and some parents) brag about how they enjoyed morning practices. Part of me thinks this is rose-colored glasses, while another part thinks this is probably true for some of them who were D1 swimmers. Regardless, there's no glory in burning out.

At the end of the day, AM practices should be what your child wants to do. Your job as a parent is to ensure that those AM practices do not interfere with your child's education, health and development. If they do, it's your job to switch to evening practices or scale back on them.

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Anonymous wrote:Not what you asked, but please reconsider. Teens that age need 8-10 hours of sleep a night. Unless your child can routinely fall asleep before 8:00 at night, they aren’t going to be able to get that and will go through some of the most critical years of their life sleep deprived.

I did this for swimming as a teenager and it was a horrible mistake. The chronic sleep deprivation affected my mental health and academic performance in ways that still hurt me now as an adult, even though at the time I appeared to be doing great.

NP. Kids need sleep. But if your kid is serious about swimming, they will go to bed before 8 every night. If your kid can’t commit to doing that, then they aren’t going to do well in swimming anyway, so you may as well stay in the afternoons.

I’m the previous poster who regrets morning practices. There was no way I could have gotten to bed by 8 after getting back from evening practice and then doing homework. Most serious swimmers who do morning practice are doing doubles (2x a day workouts) and if they’re taking a typical DCUM load of difficult HS classes, there is little time for sleep.

Not all kids need huge amounts of sleep. Mine does not. I regret not allowing them to do AM swim thinking they couldn't handle it. We let them do it over the summer and they did great.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not what you asked, but please reconsider. Teens that age need 8-10 hours of sleep a night. Unless your child can routinely fall asleep before 8:00 at night, they aren’t going to be able to get that and will go through some of the most critical years of their life sleep deprived.

I did this for swimming as a teenager and it was a horrible mistake. The chronic sleep deprivation affected my mental health and academic performance in ways that still hurt me now as an adult, even though at the time I appeared to be doing great.

NP. Kids need sleep. But if your kid is serious about swimming, they will go to bed before 8 every night. If your kid can’t commit to doing that, then they aren’t going to do well in swimming anyway, so you may as well stay in the afternoons.

I’m the previous poster who regrets morning practices. There was no way I could have gotten to bed by 8 after getting back from evening practice and then doing homework. Most serious swimmers who do morning practice are doing doubles (2x a day workouts) and if they’re taking a typical DCUM load of difficult HS classes, there is little time for sleep.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not what you asked, but please reconsider. Teens that age need 8-10 hours of sleep a night. Unless your child can routinely fall asleep before 8:00 at night, they aren’t going to be able to get that and will go through some of the most critical years of their life sleep deprived.

I did this for swimming as a teenager and it was a horrible mistake. The chronic sleep deprivation affected my mental health and academic performance in ways that still hurt me now as an adult, even though at the time I appeared to be doing great.

NP. Kids need sleep. But if your kid is serious about swimming, they will go to bed before 8 every night. If your kid can’t commit to doing that, then they aren’t going to do well in swimming anyway, so you may as well stay in the afternoons.

I’m the previous poster who regrets morning practices. There was no way I could have gotten to bed by 8 after getting back from evening practice and then doing homework. Most serious swimmers who do morning practice are doing doubles (2x a day workouts) and if they’re taking a typical DCUM load of difficult HS classes, there is little time for sleep.

That's your experience. I can counter with my own anecdote by saying that I feel the morning practices were worth it. I hated every. single. time. that alarm went off. I couldn't go to bed at 8 pm because of my courseload, including AP courses. I did go to bed really early on many Fri and Sat nights because practice on weekends started at 7 or 8 am. Dedication to my goals and a supportive coach/training group got me through.

It really depends on what kind of person you are. From a young age my parents would have described me as a hard worker, disciplined, determined. I applied this to my schoolwork and my sport. I was able to tough it out through the lack of sleep, the feeling of being "broken down" during heavy training, the juggling of various demands. My parents thought it was too much, but I insisted. I worked hard to make sure my grades stayed high so they wouldn't have a reason to tell me to stop. Not everyone can handle this. My sibling is not wired this way and quit club swim once morning practices became a requirement.

OP, if your child is the one pushing for morning practice and is someone you would describe as disciplined, goal-directed, and academically strong, I think you should let them try it. I would have been devastated if my parents had told me no before even trying. It did involve some lost sleep and time for them, but they look back on those years now as some of their favorites because they were supporting their child in chasing their dreams. And the fact that it paid for my college was a nice surprise they did not anticipate.

I’m glad it worked out well for you, but I take issue with “it depends on what kind of person you are” and the implication this is all about character and work ethic. Kids with perfectionist standards for themselves in and out of the pool are the ones most at risk for overdoing it. I could say almost everything you did about being driven, a hard worker, keeping great grades etc. At the time everyone thought I was handling the 10 AP classes and 20 hours a week of swimming really well. But it came at great cost to my health and I never achieved the times needed to be recruited for D1- though plenty of teammates who rarely attended doubles but had much more innate talent did.

There are some kids this can work well for, but the tradeoffs are real and need to be considered very carefully.