Within the swimming world, I’ve encountered a dichotomy when it comes to Masters Swimming. First, the types of people you meet at Masters swim meets are amazing. The overall atmosphere is more or less beaming with positivity. While there may be the usual grumblings and disappointments, at the foundation are people who have no ambiguity about why they’re there. Because they want to be!
When I interact with coaches, many of them on the higher end of the club or collegiate level, there’s what I could only describe as a borderline hostility to Masters. To be sure, this is entirely the same part of the population that doesn’t choose to compete anymore, for many valid reasons that I will enumerate below. Yet the eyes of many a coach roll when considering adults continuing on in the sport.
So in this post, I want to talk about why I swim, and compete in swimming. Lest I sound like I am passing moral judgment on others, I will add why I very much chose not to swim for large parts of my post collegiate life. The answer to why is pretty simple: because in my day to day life, I love it.
Learn by Doing
I’ve written before that I believe in the concept of “learning differences” although perhaps not in the way many other people interpret that term. That is, I think that people can be more or less open to receiving new knowledge depending on the way that they encounter it.
I’ll give you an example from my own life. During my work with Sherri Fisher I completed a four hour battery of aptitude testing. The test, which I have discussed before, was actually many small tests trying to isolate various cerebral tasks. At the end you were given a percentile score to compare yourself to others.
I scored 5/100 (that is, 95% of others were BETTER than me) on a particular test. I was shown an image with fifteen or so items on it for 30 seconds. Then the screen went blank. Then a new screen appeared and I was asked three questions:
What objects were removed?
What objects were added?
What objects were moved (i.e. in a different location of the image)
I was in a complete panic completing the test. I could not, for the life of me, remember the first image. As soon as I saw the second image, that was all I could see.
Now it may be accurate to say that I’m not a “visual learner” or have a poor “visual memory”. It may also be accurate to say that like any other human being, I can’t remember simple details when I’m panicking.
Our emotional state has profound influence over our ability to absorb information. Which brings me back to swimming, and why it is so important to me. When I am swimming, I am happy and open to learning. And in those moments, I find that I can learn things that are applicable to my life, both personal and professional.
So for me, swimming is a sport that I enjoy. I’ve even learned to enjoy the competition much more than I did in my “real” competitive days. It is also a vehicle for growth.
So do I advocate other coaches swim? Yes! As long as swimming is something you enjoy and therefore grow from. I also understand why that’s not the case for many coaches, because I was one.
Another Hour at the Pool
I started training and competing most recently on January 2nd, 2023. My last day as a full-time, day to day coach was December 31st 2022. I would have started on January 1st but the pool was closed for New Years.
It wasn’t by accident that the two lined up. When I was spending considerable time on the pool deck coaching, I didn’t much feel like showing up at other odd hours to do my own swimming.
In perhaps an aside, I was talking with a coach this week about what is the optimal distance to live from the pool you coach in. Coaching swimming involves irregular hours and it can really help you if you live close by work, allowing you to easily go from home to your “office” multiple times per day.
Even with proximity, for a lot of coaches swimming themselves could mean another round trip to and from the pool, or cutting into work or personal time at particularly inconvenient times. It could also mean training alone, which I tried for quite a while and which cannot, in any way, compare to a coached workout.
Beyond practicing there is also the issue of attending meets. When you already go to a meet every few weeks, do you really want to spend one of your other weekends swimming in a meet? I sure didn’t! But your mileage may vary.
At the end of the day, the point of doing something voluntary is that you feel like it adds and doesn’t detract from the rest of your life. I’ve found that swimming is a valuable addition to mine, but that value is situational.