Food for thought on racing and training

As a swim coach you will always face the issue of having swimmers absent through illness, holidays, school commitments and sometimes unexplained reasons. Often these absenses cannot be helped and you have to prepare swimmers the best you can regardless of them missing training.

I am often asked about whether swimmers should still race after having a period of absence and the answer is never the same.

If it is early season I.e January- February then the benefits of simply standing up and re-learning how to race are invaluable regardless of whether you have trained or not. The chances of a swimmer doing a personal best in the first long course meet of the season are quite slim anyway. Swimming long course is a different ball game to short course, it requires patients and practice. However the athlete must be mentally strong enough to cope with the fact that they might not PB. Focusing on race skills are the most important issues at the start of a long course season. In January the focus should be on the process and not the outcome, that matters more April-August.

I have read many an article on training and the effects of missing periods of work and the common theory is 1week off will take you 4weeks back to where you were before, however the does depend on the conditioning of the athlete.