Competetive Swimming Question

[peggyfromwastate]

I know that several of you were competetive swimmers or have kids who do this-- my question is about Dryland practice. Steven is 10 years old, he practices 4 times a week (practices are 1.5 hours of swimming usually except for Sunday practice which is 2 hours). The team does dryland practice after the mid-week 1.5 hour practices. Dryland workouts for his age group are only body-weight resistance (so pushups, pullups, no free weights) and some ab work and what not. Scheduling wise, dryland is a total PITA bc it means we are at the pool a LONG time. And the 3 year old gets bored after about 40 minutes... So 2 hours is pushing it definititely.

What do you think of Dryland? Is it worth it? Is it beneficial? I'm not really sold on it TBH. Steven wants to go because his buddies go... Right now I have him scheduled to be able to do 2 of these Dryland workouts a week. But I think 1 would be enough, especially since he wants to do other sports.

(I encourage them to play other sports- they all pick 1 sport every quarter- these are team sports, for fun, 1 practice/1 game per week. Of course it makes my schedule CRAZY bc I have to fit in the swimming workouts too... Sigh).

Anyway, any advice about dryland?

[scrub-jay]

Honestly, unless he is building toward something (a qualifying meet, etc) I don't think it is essential. When I did it, swimming had become my sport. It will separate the competitive from the casual, but that is not necessarily a "bad thing" just depending on what you are looking for. I think if he is interested in other sports, I'd nurture that for the time being and skip the dryland (often the other sports will serve the same purpose anyway). If he decides swimming is his passion, then I understand the dedication (and dryland training), but the time commitment is huge.
Good luck!!

[SoonerTexan]

Honestly, unless he is building toward something (a qualifying meet, etc) I don't think it is essential

Ditto.

Though, I kind of have a bad attitude about swimming due to my experience anyway. To be on Varsity at my high school, it was an unspoken requirement that you had to be on the local club team (5:15-7am daily practices) as well as participate in Varsity practices the same day (3-5pm). IMHO, that is just too much. Let's just say I wasn't willing to swim 4 hours a day and I languished on JV for 2 years until I quit/couldn't make it my senior year. And then I discovered photography I still make my kids do summer swim team, though--the endurance and skill you get from it is just to valuable and important.

[peggyfromwastate]

Wow ST. Our local high school team isn't that strict lol. But we don't have pool space so the high school ST can only practice 3 days a week. The expectation to be on varsity is that you so some formal year round training program at least-- but not 5 am every day. That's available but not mandatory.

[SoonerTexan]

It's largely because I went to a 5A (very large) school in a competitive athletic district. The competition was just too good--there have been several Olympic hopefuls from my district. It was like that with just about every sport...the downside of large high schools and the crazy Texas focus on athletics

[Phoebe]

I think 1 is enough at this age.