Published in Volume 2008 Issue 1 of American Swimming Magazine
The Need for Dryland Training in Age Group Swimming
by Charlie Dragon
I’ve heard several veteran coaches over the years talk in one way or another about how the kids today aren’t as “tough” or “strong” or simply are lacking something the kids of the past had. How long ago one has to go back to find these ‘better’ kids isn’t all that clear, but it seems like the change happened somewhere around the late 1980s or early 1990s. At first I dismissed these claims as nostalgia for a past that didn’t really exist. I thought, how could the kids today be worse than the kids of the past when time standards are lower, age group records continue to fall, and world records are dramatically faster? Sounds like nonsense, I thought. But now through personal experience my mind is starting to change. I think we as coaches are witnessing the results in our swim programs of cultural changes toward raising children that affect their base-line fitness levels. Here is my try at understanding this phenomenon.
The claim is that at the middle and lower end we are seeing increasingly unfit, unathletic kids entering our swim programs. Whether that premise is true or not I leave up to each of you to determine, but I will assume its truth for the sake of discussion. Of course, this is probably not true of the high performing swimmers in our programs.
If more children are unfit today there would have to be multiple reasons, everything from unhealthy eating, to lack of rigorous physical education in schools, to an excessive focus on getting all A’s (David Marsh had a line about that in an ASCA talk after returning to age group coaching at Mecklenburg), but if I had to pin down one cause above all the others it would be the “indoor childhood” phenomenon most evident in the suburbs.
Despite school enrollment in my home town going up almost 50% since I was in school, I rarely see children playing outside anytime of the year. I see parents line up their cars outside the elementary school to pick up their children and literally drive them 2 or 3 blocks to home (their is bus service for the kids who live at a real distance). I see some parents stand right at the school doors and carry their children’s book bags to the car for them. The school playground used to have extensive monkey bars (talk about building upper body strength!), woods, big tires to climb on and jump off, and large fields. In the last 10 years almost all of that has been taken out and replaced with ‘safe,’ physically undemanding play structures. And we are all aware of the time most children spend indoors in front of the computer and television.
News articles about changes in childhood physical activity are plentiful, one from the New York Times on December 14th 2007 entitled “School Recess Gets Gentler, And the Adults Are Dismayed” caught my eye. At some schools around the country recess is often being shortened and games like tag and dodge ball are banned: “At Oakdale, Mr. Johnson finally relaxed some prohibitions after a parade of parents complained. Now, twice a week when a parent or grandparent is present, fourth and fifth graders are allowed to play a modified version of kickball as long as the score is not kept.” That is very depressing because children are getting a message that competitiveness and physical accomplishment are undesirable.
When I was growing up, and we are talking the 1980s here, my brother, our friends and I came home from school and went outside to play. Riding bikes, playing football, simply running, jumping and climbing on just about anything was normal for everyone we knew – including girls. I believe that a smaller percentage of kids grow up this way anymore. My parents tell stories that as children they were not allowed to spend much time indoors (their parents needed some quiet time, it’s too stressful to be around your kids constantly). On weekends they simply came back home for meals and when it got dark.
This outdoor, physical play builds up children’s base-line strength, aerobic capacity and coordination. It probably has all sorts of other less easily measurable positive affects on psychological states and dispositions. I cannot see how children who spend their time indoors can be as physically fit as children who grew up playing outdoors. Coaches talk about the need to “build a base” with age group swimmers, but that task becomes much more difficult when children’s natural base was not built through outdoor play. The result of the indoor childhood are kids entering swim programs far weaker and less coordinated then they used to be. Coaches see the effects of this in the kids not being “as tough” as kids in the past.
I am also surprised by the frequency of injury and illness among my swimmers, considering I run a somewhat low-yardage, technique-centered program. Shoulder and knee injuries, along with colds and high rates of asthma, make me wonder about whether the low fitness levels and lack of outdoor play contribute to these problems. While swimming does work many muscle groups, no single activity will build up true muscle balance, and unfortunately not enough kids are getting physical development in other places.
However, there is another phenomenon at work here and that is some parents viewing youth athletic programs as the child version of “going to the gym.” Mom and dad go to the gym to stay in shape, and their children do swim team for the same reason. The swim team is not viewed as a place for athletic children who like to compete, but as a place to keep kids active and off the couch. This may seem like a harsh assessment, but when I coach teenagers whose coordination levels are so low that they struggle to imitate me when I demonstrate basic stretch-cord exercises, I know something is up. And in no way is this an indictment of the underperforming swimmers as people. I have plenty of friends who are great people who could care less about sports and competition – the difference is they don’t join athletic teams!
This puts coaches in the extremely difficult position of having kids with vastly different baseline fitness levels and different views of the swim team in the same group. But try forming a group for the “staying fit” kids which doesn’t travel to out of state meets, which functions more like a JV or Recreational level team, and you’ll get parents calling for your head. So we are stuck coaching kids who want to compete, who want to push themselves, who want to work hard, alongside kids of low fitness levels and different interests.
While it might be comforting to vent about this problem, and pass the buck for underperforming swimmers onto cultural changes or parents who don’t understand competitive sports programs, that does nothing for improving the situation. The only way I can see to compensate for the lack of outdoor physical development which should happen naturally in children, is to do it ourselves with dryland. While it does look odd to have kids 10 and younger doing body-weight activities like push-ups, push-outs on the wall in the water, crunches, dips, pull-ups, or any kind of physical activity that you can get them to do, it fills the need. When I’ve casually tried this out with a group of 9 and 10 year olds, I’ve gotten reactions from parents, even other coaches, like “what are you doing to those kids?” I find the children often really like seeing if they can do 5 pushups, or a pull-up. Kids naturally like to see what they can and cannot do physically and I think coaches can use that natural physical curiosity to improve fitness levels. Don’t we remember kids challenging each other to foot races during recess? Or basketball games? We need to encourage that latent competitiveness through a variety of physical activities, because a child who may swim in the back of the lane might be able to out-jump everyone else and will get a huge thrill from doing so.
I think dryland programs must start young because when a child of low physical fitness doesn’t get dryland training until 13 or 14 it may be too late to catch up. Strength can and will be built at that age, but progress will come more slowly and never get to as high a level as it could have if training had begun earlier. The training may need to be more play orientated (which stresses facilities) but it should happen.
This point became very clear to me after visiting Germantown Academy and talking with Coach Shoulberg. The amount of dryland work those kids do is astounding. I have never seen so much equipment around a pool before. Germantown is known for high yardage practices and I realized that the swimmers were able to do those incredible workouts because of the extensive, almost unbelievable physical fitness of the kids. And their training starts young. I was told children as young as 1st and 2nd grade can climb the rope over the pool all the way to the top! No doubt my friends and I would have been falling over each other to get a chance to try that at 8 or 9. Coach Shoulberg also reports no shoulder injury issues with his swimmers, all the more remarkable considering the yards. The only answer is physical fitness.
Germantown showed me it is possible to overcome the indoor childhood phenomenon, but it will take vision and leadership. Maybe less pool time and more time on deck, or outside, or wherever the kids can exercise. Half the group being out of the water helps with pool space issues. I ask myself when I watch the underperforming kids, is more swimming what they need most?
I’m not one to throw in the towel and let our swim programs turn into “going to the gym” for children, and although it means more work and more planning for us coaches, I think some form of strength building in our young kids is essential to their health and our program development. I welcome anyone’s input about this topic. Are you witnessing more unfit children entering your swim programs today than in the past, and if so, what do you think can be done about it?
