Joining a Competitive Swimming Club

Last Updated on October 23, 2022 by admin

**Joining a swimming club has many benefits**

In this article, we’ll provide advice, hacks and tips on successfully joining a competitive swimming club.

What type of swimming club to join?

It cannot be overstated enough, that it pays to do some research, before committing your child to join a swimming club.

Joining the wrong club can be a very dismal experience, however, joining the correct type of club can be a very rewarding experience for your child.
Find out about your local swimming clubs (if you have more than one locally) as they can have a very different ethos and emphasis.
Some are highly competitive and expect a high degree of commitment from their swimmers (and parents).
Other clubs are more relaxed and operate primarily for fun and to keep fit.
To find out further information regarding a swimming club. In the first instance look at their website.
It should tell you what type of club they are, when and how often they train, and the level of commitment required.
A club’s website should also contain the contact details of the club secretary.
They are usually the first point of contact if you have any questions regarding your child joining a club.

Swimming Club Trial

Before your child can join a swimming club, they need to be able to swim.

Swimming clubs usually have their own entry criteria, requiring the applicant to demonstrate that they can swim a length or two, of at least two competitive strokes, at a trial.
To arrange a trial, details should be available on the club’s website, if not try contacting the club’s secretary.
If your child cannot swim, I’d strongly recommend they attend a learn-to-swim class. These are usually found at your local pool.

Learning to Swim – Ages 4 to 9 years

**Many swimming clubs have their own learn-to-swim programme.**

Most local pools and leisure centres have their own learn-to-swim programme and so do some clubs.

If you think your child would like the opportunity of joining a swimming club at a later stage in their life, we would recommend that your child joins a learn-to-swim programme run by a club.
Although pools and leisure centres do a fine job of teaching children to swim, they tend to take longer developing swimmers to a competitive level.
Therefore once the child has gone through the pools and leisure centre’s learn-to-swim programme, the child may be a little late to be joining a competitive club.
By all means, start to take your baby swimming as soon as you can, new babies love the water.
You may even join a toddler and parents class at your pool or leisure centre, which is great for building your child’s confidence in the water, but as soon as your child reaches approximately 6 years old I’d recommend they join a club’s learn-to-swim programme.

The benefits of joining a swimming club

Apart from the direct rewards such as medals, records and personal best times, joining a swimming club introduces your child to a fit and healthy lifestyle and helps them develop a range of key life skills and disciplines, including:

Commitment and Dedication:

Swimmers develop a sense of commitment and dedication to training, in order to achieve their swimming goals.

Communication and Social Interaction:

Swimmers develop their communication and social interaction skills, whilst working with their coach, squad members and teammates during training and competition.

Concentration:

Swimmers develop greater concentration, helping them focus on their technique during training and their event, during the pressure of competition.

Confidence:

As swimmers develop a growing sense of confidence and self-esteem as their training makes them fitter, more skilful and quicker.

Disappointment:

Swimmers learn how to overcome the inevitable disappointment of not performing as well as they hoped in either training or competition.

Fair Play:

Swimmers develop a sense of fair play and good sportsmanship.

Good conduct and respect for others is a prerequisite of membership of many swimming clubs.

Friendship:

Sharing the same swimming experiences with their training squad or teammates often leads to many long-term friendships.

Goal Setting:

Swimmers develop goal-setting skills, which help them to identify, work towards and achieve their key swimming development objectives.

Nutrition & Hydration:

Swimmers develop an understanding that to train and compete to their optimum, they require plenty of quality nutrition and hydration

Organisation & Planning:

Swimmers develop organisational and planning skills, to balance and prioritise their increasing school, swimming and social commitments.

Rest & Recovery:

Swimmers develop an understanding of the importance of proper rest, recovery and relaxation.

Responsibility:

Swimmers develop an increasing sense of responsibility for their actions, particularly, how often and how well they train and compete.

Team Building:

Although swimming is seen by many as an individual sport, there are many team opportunities during training and competition, where swimmers develop a sense of squad and team identity.

Armed with this range of skills and disciplines, it’s little wonder that many successful competitive swimmers go on in life and are successful in their educational and/or professional careers.

The health & fitness benefits of competitive swimming

The rise in overweight and obese children

In developed countries since 1980, the number of children that are either overweight or obese has risen during this period from 16.9% of boys and 16.2% of girls to 23.8% of boys and 22.6% of girls. (See table below)

**International Overweight and Obesity Table**

You only have to observe the children coming out of your local school to see that so many of them are the same shape as their parents, to reveal how true the above statistics are.

Some children are ‘being killed’ by overprotective parents. Some parents overfeed them with food and drink of poor nutritional value.
Whilst others keep them inactive and indoors in front of the television or playing computer games.
To compound this problem even further, unfortunately, some schools are under increased pressure to deliver academic achievement at the expense of physical exercise.
Research shows that children who are overweight or obese are more likely to be overweight or obese as an adult.
Adults who are overweight or obese run a greater risk of serious health issues such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer and stroke.

The health benefits of swimming

As a parent, you should be pleased that your child has chosen competitive swimming as their sport, because there are so many major health benefits associated with it, including:

Muscle Development: Swimming uses all the body’s major muscle groups and therefore develops your child’s muscular and skeletal growth.
Fitness: Swimming develops a high level of fitness, especially aerobic endurance and stamina. The high level of fitness developed by swimming has a huge benefit for children participating in other sports such as football/soccer, rowing and athletics.
Low-Impact Exercise: Swimming is a low-impact exercise and if performed correctly, is almost injury-free.
Flexibility: Swimming uses all the major muscle joints and therefore enhances your child’s flexibility.
Coordination: Swimming develops your child’s coordination as it requires some complex muscle movements of all parts of the body.

Competitive swimming demands greater levels of fitness than almost any other sport.

As a result, swimmers find themselves representing their schools in a variety of sports and activities.
Swimming training is a very beneficial cross-trainer for a variety of sports, especially football/soccer and long-distance running.
However, football/soccer and long-distance running are only of minimal benefit as a cross-trainer for competitive swimming.

Parents Commitment

Swimming parents play a key supporting role in their child’s development and enjoyment when joining a competitive swimming club, which requires an investment of both their time and money.

The key responsibilities of a swimming parent are:

Support and encouragement: Support and encourage your child at all times, regardless of their performance.
Preparation: Ensuring your child arrives prepared and on time for training and competition
Organisation: Ensuring they have packed the correct kit for training and competition.
Supporting the club: Supporting your child’s swimming club and keeping informed and up to date, regarding its events and activities.
Feeding: To assist and support in developing your child’s nutritional and hydration requirements for swimming.
Supporting the coach: To provide support to the coaching staff.
Provision: Ensuring your child has the opportunity to properly recover from the rigours of training and competition.
Financial Support: Ensuring your child’s swimming costs are met. For example, club fees and the cost of swimming kit and equipment.

Reaching your child’s swimming potential

For your child to reach their full swimming potential, they will need to be committed and dedicated, and be provided with the correct support and training.

The support is mainly the responsibility of the parents and the training is mainly the responsibility of the coach.
As swimmers develop and mature, it’s important that they take a growing sense of responsibility for their own actions.
In swimming as in many walks of life, ‘you only get out of something, what you are prepared to put in’.
How your child trains, competes and what they eat etc. will increasingly and ultimately be down to them.

Takeaways

Joining a swimming club, introduces your child to a healthy sporting environment, with many lifestyle and social benefits.

However, it pays to conduct some preliminary research to ensure your child joins the correct type of club for their needs.

Swimming resource library

We have provided a swimming resource library.

This contains links to all of our publications and blog articles.
Now with an easy-to-use index.
To access any article simply click on the attached page link: swimming resource library

Swimming Publications

EatSleepSwimCoach produces a growing range of publications on a wide range of swimming subjects.

These include competitive swimming drill publications for backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and freestyle.
Which are now available in both Amazon Kindle and paperback formats.

For information regarding our portfolio please follow the Swimming publications link on our website https://eatsleepswimcoach.com/publications/

Recommended swimming equipment

We have provided a recommended swimming equipment page.

It contains the swimming equipment that we and our swimmers use and recommend.
You can access this page by clicking on the following link: recommended swimming equipment.

The Competitive Swimming Exchange – Facebook Group

We are members of the Competitive Swimming Exchange.

This is a competitive swimming Facebook group to help exchange ideas and information to collectively improve the sport we love.
It’s an international group for all swimmers, coaches, teachers, masters, triathletes and swimming parents. It’s for all those who are interested in competitive swimming, either in the pool or in open water

For more information about joining this group please use the following link: The Competitive Swimming Exchange

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