|
Hi everybody,
This is a very good article,
and it goes straight to the point of what I am trying to do right
now. Most of our kids are too worried about improving their times,
and that's it. They need to be focusing on "little things" like
turns, finishes, starts, breathing patterns, etc. Every time they
go to the blocks I give them some kind of goal like that, and they
should be trying to master what I ask them to do. But still they
are thinking too much about TIMES, and then they forget to focus on
those little things.
Time improvement is a
consequense of a lot of things that need to be done right: start,
streamlines, stroke tecnique, breathing patterns, turns, race
strategy, finishes. If they thinking things like "I have to go
under 1 minute" they forget about everything else they should be
thinking while swimming.
Our goal is to improve all
the techniques needed in order for them to swim fast. They are
getting better in starts, finishes, and technique, and we will
start to move on to turns, and breathing patterns.
Here is the article. Have
fun.
Coach Mavi
News For
SWIM
PARENTS
Published by
The American Swimming Coaches Association
5101 NW 21
Ave., Suite 200
Fort
Lauderdale FL 33309
___________________________________________________________________
Competition
and Children
Here are some
thoughts on competition and children from Rainer Martens, founder
of modern sports psychology. Martens,
Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois, founded the
American Coaching Effectiveness Program, and is one of the leading
authorities on children in sports.
The Early
Years
According to
Martens: “Competitive sports evolve out of the process of
social evaluation.” Children begin
competing with each other from a very young age, but focus mainly
on their own efforts. Each can happily
claim to have “won,” simply meaning they have done
something well and are satisfied. These games are
very healthy growth experiences because there are no
“losers.” At 5 and 6 years of
age they begin to compare their efforts with
others. In other words, they learn to keep
score. Martens says this process of
competing and comparing is part of what helps kids “find out
what they can and should be.”
Problems
emerge when winner/loser comparisons overshadow the importance of
competing with oneself to do things better than they have been done
before. At this point, competition stops
building character and confidence and begins to tear it
down.
Can
Competitiveness Be Taught?
All coaches
are familiar with the idea that some youngsters thrive on
competition, while others shrink from it, but Martens thinks that
in the right environment, children can learn competitiveness by
being taught to concentrate on mastering specific
techniques. This not only improves the
mechanical aspects of performance, but is also the best way to
reduce competitive stress. “If people
focus on mastering specific acts they can learn to control their
performance.” On the other hand, the thing over which a young
swimmer has the least control – how fast competitors swim
– is the greatest source of anxiety in
competition.
Martens
advice to coaches and parents of young athletes is to concentrate
on how to improve performance rather than on what happens if the
child wins or loses. “Focusing on
smaller, more solvable technical challenges increases physical
efficiency, and reduces anxiety and stress,” Martens
says. “This increased the number of
potential winners because skill instead of the final score has
become the immediate objective.”
Every Child
Is A Winner
In this
scenario, an age group swimmer’s final instructions before a
race would focus on successfully doing something he or she
previously had difficulty with – keeping the hips up on the
last half of a butterfly race; or pressing through to the hips in
the freestyle stroke -- rather than on “beating that kid in
lane 5.” After the race, the child
could then be congratulated on his or her technique improvement, no
matter where he or she placed. In this way,
a race with 30 contestants could potentially yield 30 winners
rather than 1 winner and 29
“losers.” This gives life to
the credo “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s
how you play the game that counts.”
Martens
thinks the competitive climate for youth athletics is steadily
improving as more youth coaches learn to teach mastery of sports
skills, and understand why it is advantageous to do
so. “At the recreational level there
is more and better, more useful and pleasant competition going on
than ever before.”
|
