Dropouts & Workouts

I came across two interesting blog entries recently that made me think and raised more questions than answers.  The two blogs are from Swimming Science and Verne Gambetta.


The first article from Swimming Science talks about dropouts.  In particular, it calls swimming a "survival" type of sport and instead of looking at the failure of the program to retain athletes, the coach blames the swimmer for not being tough enough.  It also cites the reason's for dropouts as "having other things to do" which is true with everything, so I don't by that one, rather, I look at the next couple of reasons as pretty important which are "lack of fun," and "perception of failure."

In the next article from Verne Gambetta, he talks about the "Strength & Training Wasteland," referring to thousands of toys in the weight room, different programs, and youtube video's.  It seems to me that it is easy to make any exercise more difficult, and pride ourselves by working harder than the other team, but do we get in the way or our athletes performance? to try to be tougher.

How do these play off each other?

1.  How much "fun" is being had at practice?  I am coaching my 8 year olds little league baseball team and I hate to admit, baseball practices are a lot more fun for the kids, and even a little for me.  What can we learn from other sports?  I think we can do better.  Is it more important for the coach to walk away happy that his team worked harder than any other team or that the individual walks away knowing they improved and are part of something bigger.

2.  How important do your athletes feel to the success of the team and to their own future?  I think most athletes don't think that their contributions matter unless they are on the A relay.  Coaches need to work to change that.  Being around triathlons quite a bit, I find swimming is such a valuable skill that most adults would love to be better at and understand more.  I was an average swimmer at best, yet lead the pack in most triathlon swims.  Swimming is a skill as good as gold, when it comes to healthy living and enjoyment of life.  How can we get kids to look into the future?

3.  Are we just making it too hard, to soon, and too often?  Granted, there is a time and place for hard work.  Are we always trying to make it tougher, and sacrificing the fun and the learning opportunities for our kids? As Dr. Rushall writes, “[t]he canon that "if hard work leads to good performances, harder work will lead to better performances. The number of young people who have  been turned-off by swimming  training following that tenet, is likely to be much greater than one might care to admit.”  Let's be more creative, and scientific, before we just make last weeks dryland set harder than the week before.