what do you say, good or bad idea: My son’s swim club is short on coaches and I am contemplating to take on a group of kids that are 9-14 and beginner/intermediate swimmers.
Thing is, I have never coached, never swam as a kid, never had any swim coaching myself and as a cherry on top have a hard time breaking 2min/100 in a triathlon myself…Not exactly pro-coach material I would say. Of course I could keep the kids entertained for an hour per week, but I don’t want to be the crap coach that messes up everybodies stroke…Have seen that happen to quite a few talented kids in Tennis (which is my main sport), so would like to not become THAT guy
Thoughts?
Thx
Uli
The reality is most coaches don’t do their job properly. Or the way the club system is designed, it is impossible for them to do their job properly and that is teach kids to be better swimmers. Better not faster. If you’ve got a coach managing 3 lanes with 20+ kids in a 50m pool it’s very hard to be focused on their technique and helping them with flaws in their stroke. There’s too many swimmers. Additionally all the important stuff happens underwater, which they can’t see.
So most coaches, a lot of whom were elite swimmers, end up being nothing more than whiteboard coaches. i.e here’s the set, go do it. So the fact they were elite swimmers is often immaterial in a lot of cases. Some of my worst coaches have been ex elite swimmers, one an ex olympian had more interest in the teenage girls than teaching swimming. And some of my best coaches have been non-swimmers, they recognise their lack of knowledge of swimming and try and make up for it in other areas as well as trying to learn as much as they can about the various strokes. Whereas elite swimmers know everything…
So my point id the fact you are a non-swimmer is more or less irrelevant. Keep the kids interested with tough, but varied sets, have a bit of fun every now and again and learn the main issues with the various strokes and how to correct them with the relevant drills. i,e you don’t to be a swimmer to spot a crossover or thumb entry or splayed kick or bad body position. The main issues with freestyle are generally pretty obvious. You can also look to doing some basic underwater video analysis with Gopros later on down the track and looking at more important stuff like catch and pull, which can be harder to coach/correct.
There are a lot of things coaches need help with that aren’t swim instruction. Every swim club can use more good people and so can every LSC. Knowing your limitations means you can improve on them. Yes, get involved.
P.S. you aren’t going to like us swims website. It’s frustrating but you will persevere! And no, I’m not a coach.
Hi, thanks all for your feedback. I did some more research on what kind of certificates I would have to get in order to take over a group in a swim club…turns out it requires a 6 whole-day course that is only offered a few times per year and would require a full week of vacation…with that unfortunately, 2025 will not be the year I become a swim coach. Bureaucracy at its finest.
This sounds like how half the parents on deck who are now coaching got their start
This is how I got my first start in coaching, although I did swim for a few years growing up. (coach quit with ~ 1mo left in the LC season so I got pulled from the water since I was going to college to run and everyone else was going to swim in college) Later I came back to the team and coached for real.
Coaching is not about what you did or didn’t do as an athlete. It’s the soft skills, how you talk to the kids, do you care about them and what happened that day at school, how are they feeling and then taking all that into account and giving them the workout, then monitoring them, asking how they are going etc.
IMO this is the best pathway to start a coaching career which IDK if that’s something you want or not. You get to work with a large number of kids at once, you have another coach or two or three to back stop you, you can ask questions of, they can help you with set design etc. You’ll gain a ton of experience quickly and within about 3mo you’ll look back at that first day a laugh about what a noob you were. Then 3 minutes later make a noob mistake and realize it vs just making it
If it wasn’t for my swim coaching stints IDK if I ever would have gotten into coaching. You will learn a ton, experience a wide range of emotions from frustration/exasperation - “we’re doing 50s on the 50 how did you guys start leaving on the :45? it’s the top 50,40, 30 …” to the ultimate high of having a kid tell you they couldn’t have swam that fast without your help.
