Aiming to be Average!

The October issue of Fina Aquatics World has just landed. It's sent out to all National Governing Bodies although you can subscribe if you wish. In the past it's been a pretty useless collection of paper but lately its had a make-over and now contains some interesting stuff. This month there's part 2 of an article on Legendary Coaches highlighting Lawrie Lawrence, Mark Schubert, Richard Quick, Tamas Szechy, Gennadi Touretski and Alberto Castagnetti and an article titled Age Group Coaching Patterns which I have scanned and will upload for all coaches of Squad swimmers as soon as blogspot sorts out its uploading problems (now uploaded).

It's a mini-version of LTAD and was written by FINA Coaches Commission Members John Leonard, Osvaldo Arsenio, Alan Thompson and Leif Carlsson. A simple overview shows four stages:

1 Learning to swim
2 The Younger Age Group, 6-12 years
3 Older Age Group Development, 13-17 years
4 Becoming Senior Athletes, 18-22 years

For the 6-12 year olds they recommend two 'swim team experiences' a week at age 6, increasing to 4-7 experiences at age 10 with practices being 20-30 minutes at 6-7, 30-40 minutes at 8-9 and 60-90 minutes for more advanced 10 year olds and a total volume between 50km and 75km a year. Competition should be limited to 1-2 days each month.

The 11-12 year olds is where it gets interesting for NZL. They recognise significant differences in training needs between males and females with the females having a 'window of opportunity' for great aerobic develoment (males 2-3 years later) ... 'with substantially increased strong aerobic training each week'. They recommend training 5-8 times per week for 60-90 minutes with some 12 year old females doing more.

'Training should increase from 40 to 50 weeks and between 150km and 175km of distance each year.' That recommendation should be noted by many Kiwi programmes; it equates to an average of between 30km and 40km each week. DO NOT BE COMPLACENT. That's an average. It means most training weeks have to be at least 40km to 50km. For 11-12 year olds. They don't train 52 weeks a year. They have holidays. They get sick and miss training. They travel to competitions. For some unknown reason many 11-12 year olds taper! Maintaining an average of 40km per week is not easy. Your programme probably doesn't even approach it (the 'rucksack and rifles' coaches out there and Gary Hollywood please bear with me, it's everyone else we're talking to.)

Stage 3, 13-17 years sees training progress to 12-14 sessions per week and maybe up to 28 hours during training camps. The authors excellently recognise that sprinters may spend more time in the pool than distance swimmers but will do lower volume. Also worthy of a sign on your office wall is their statement, 'Common wisdom in this age range will dictate training aimed at twice the distance that the athlete will actually select as their main competition emphasis.'

The authors sum up with (this is a condensed version):

1 Athletes are individuals ...
2 Aerobic development is paramount to competitive success ...
3 ... the rewards of sport must be internalised because no external rewards are sufficient enough to produce the work necessary for world class success ...
4 Improvement ... is a long term proposition, with no shortcuts to success.
5 The athletes must 'own the sport' ...

All in all, an excellent article.