The new serious coach had actually been trained in the elite swim club across town. So with him, we had the benefit of the good training at a lower price. Our daughter got the immediate benefit. We’d signed her up for the advanced level, which at the time was beyond her. I went up to the coach after her first practice with him with the intention of putting her in a lower level, but he said she’d be fine in the advanced group.

Soon the kids were swimming 3-4 nights a week, working on starts, finishes, flip turns, and anaerobic thresholds. It was rigorous–for our daughter.

Our son was in the intermediate group, with different more laid-back coaches. He’d finish swimming a half hour before his sister, and he’d still have energy to rip and run all over the bleacher area and the hall.

By contrast, our daughter would get muscle cramps in the middle of her set, and would drop down exhausted when practice was over.

I talked to the coach about extending our son’s swim time, which we did for a while. His improvement was slow.

The age group swim meets separated the kids into group A and B based on their times. Our children started out with low B times and worked their way up to high B times under this coach.

Things were progressing well until the coach announced he was moving to Korea. . .

(to be continued)

My daughter’s first swim meet was rather traumatic. She was old enough to have to swim 50s rather than 25s. At one point, she had swum down to the wall, turned around and started crying, “I can’t do it!” Her father told her to suck it up and finish it already. She did, and in retrospect, it was good for her to have to swim harder. While she and her brother started at almost the same level, she took off and left him in the dust, out of necessity.

Everything came hard to her at first. She couldn’t dive, which is an important racing skill. Until she learned to dive, she couldn’t compete in freestyle. I tried everything to get her to dive, from gently coaxing to threatening, but in the end, the only thing that worked was going to the pool with her father. He is not a swimmer, but is quite the coach, and he found out what she needed to work on and emphasized that. She picked it up for good in a few hours.

Before we knew it, the girl who was afraid of water became the girl with the perfect form. After 2 years in the club, our kids got a serious coach. It got all military in there, and that’s when we really saw some improvement, especially with our daughter. Our son wouldn’t be pushed as hard until we switched clubs. . .

(to be continued)

The Red Cross program was a city recreation dept. summer only program in an outdoor pool. We live in Michigan, so that’s a pretty short season in and of itself. We had to take this thing indoors.

We tried a program at the University in town. The shallow end of the pool was way over both of the children’s heads, so they had to tread water or hold onto the side all the time. The program was ok; they seemed to improve–until they next got into a pool.

After we started homeschooling, I looked for a program that ran during the day. We tried the new hospital fitness center. The kids knew more than the instructors there–which wasn’t saying much.

Then we looked for the homeschool swimming program at the Y. We couldn’t find that one. Maybe it didn’t exist yet? Anyway, we signed up for the typical Y swim program, named after various little swimming animals, the eel, the pike, etc. There were only three kids in the class, and I thought my folks were doing ok. I mean, they weren’t scared of the deep water, and they moved through it more or less autonomously. What more could I ask?

When my husband saw the kids swimming, he said, “I’m not spending any more money on Y lessons.” And he meant everything like the Y. Everything they had been enrolled in up to that point. He told me that the way to learn to swim was to join a swim team.

I filed that bit of information away in my brain. I didn’t bit know more about a swim team for kids! Then one late summer day in 2001, we dropped in on some neighbors/church members’ house unannounced. They had the slip ‘n’ slide out and invited the kids to join them. Their oldest daughter was wearing her swim team suit. She was 9. I asked her mother about the swim team, and then called myself.

I enrolled my daughter immediately, and my son by the winter season. This was an age-group swim club, which basically existed to create future swimmers for the High School where it met.

My husband was right. The kids went from ‘they can swim–kind of’ to learning about negative splits and shaving their times, etc.

to be continued

My oldest daughter started swim lessons the summer we hosted the family reunion. The only reason I mention that is because I found the need to give her diva hair in honor of the reunion, but it had to be hair she could swim in. My solution? Braid extensions, complete with some blue in the front. She was
5 1/2.

And her fear of the water made sure that she barely got those fancy braids wet in three weeks of lessons. It was hard to watch her flit around, scowling at everyone who splashed water on her in the pool! Somewhere in the second session or so I got the idea to have her practice putting her face in the water in the wading pool at home.

While she had no problem at all with pouring water all over her little brother’s head, (he of the no fear), she got all indignant at the idea of getting water anywhere near her nose and ears. So I bought her nose plugs, and ear plugs, and goggles at some point, too.

By the end of her first summer of swim lessons. . . she was able to get her face wet. A little.

The next summer, I enrolled my daughter back at the Red Cross lessons, and my son at the Y. The Y actually took 3 year olds, so that’s why I condescended to take him there. What a difference between the two kids! My son had barely dipped in the water before he was challenging his teacher to races. He took direction well, and the biggest issue with him was to keep him from jumping in out of turn.

My daughter was still a little squeamish, but she was catching on. By the end of this summer, she was actually jumping off the diving board. She was a nervous, skinny little girl, so she swam faster and shook harder than anyone in the pool, but she would make it to the edge.

After that summer, I thought it might be a good idea to have the children in swimming year round so they wouldn’t forget so much between lessons. That was a good strategy, but I would soon find out that all swim programs are not equal. . .

(to be continued)

In 1992, I took a trip to California with my husband and baby. I couldn’t wait to share my love of swimming with my baby girl. I had thought she, at 5 months, must have had memories of being in the womb. Surely, she was a natural swimmer.

She couldn’t swim at all. She didn’t even kick or move her arms. I became terrified.

A few years later, we had our second child, a baby boy. We lived in a townhouse complex with a pool, and it was the hottest summer ever. We were at the pool daily. My little girl was afraid of the water and chose to spend her time outside of the pool. The baby was the opposite. He had no fear at all and tooled around the pool in a baby inner tube. We had neighbors that had three young children that could all swim–including their 1 year old son. She suggested blowing over the baby’s mouth and nose, causing them to inhale and hold their breath. She even tried that with my baby, and it worked, but I couldn’t do it right. She was the one that gave me the baby inner tube, though, and the baby loved it.

One day while the two of us were in the pool, I saw my three year old daughter fall in the shallow end of the pool. I rushed over and pulled her out by the head, terrified. She was fine, but shaken up a bit. We had taken baby and me swim classes at the Y the summer before, and I’d learned enough to know that babies can’t take real Y swim lessons until they’re 3. They couldn’t take Red Cross swim lessons until 5. I remembered how I never learned how to swim at the Y, but finally made the connection in Red Cross lessons. I waited until she was 5.

She was really scared of the water by the time we started.

To be continued. . .

Yesterday I was equal parts looking forward to and dreading my workout. I still love swimming, but I was feeling tired and out of shape before I even reached the pool. Then I started missing the baby, and, . . .what was I saying?

The 1st 100: So I tried to do my own workout for moms over 40, like I talked about here. Right off the bat, I got tired. I set out to swim a 100 free, but did a 50 and flipped over unto my back. I felt more comfortable on my back and stayed there a minute.

The 2nd 100: I broke this down into 25s, alternating free and back.

The 3rd 100: I attempted to do 100 breast, but was so exhausted after the first 50 that I finished up this set with 50 elementary back.

The 4th 100: By now, I was feeling good to get 300 under my belt and was ready to swim the 100 IM. I was even going to time it. I pressed something on my watch and pushed off the wall into a freestyle streamline. Wait a minute, I thought! This is an IM; I’m supposed to be doing the butterfly. I walked back to the wall. My watch was adding time to the last thing I’d timed. I reset it, pushed the button, and started the IM properly. Just before I started the third stroke, breaststroke, I noticed another person in my lane. Not that they politely tapped my shoulder and informed me they would be joining me. No, they were just swimming. I hesitated, wondering if we were swimming circles or sides, and then moved over and swam that length. I was just gearing up for the freestyle length when I saw another person in the lane! I hugged the wall and finished out my IM at 3:04.20.

The 5th 100: Disappointed that I’d added nearly 2 seconds to my last IM time, I started my cool down 100. I swam 100 elementary back stroke, more or less, hugging the wall and scared I’d hit someone with my flailing elementary back arms and legs.

The 6th 100: I really wanted to quit at this point. Sharing a lane zapped my confidence to work on the IM again. I swam 2 5 free and 75 back.

The 7th 100: I was torn between quitting after this length and continuing on to 800; I try to pick up 100 every time I swim, and I’d swum 700 last time. I did 50 breast in pretty raggedy form and finished up the set with backstroke kick.

The 8th 100: I felt restored after the back kick and decided to finish strong. I swam alternating freestyle and back stroke. I noticed that I only shared the lane with one other person, and she was swimming freestyle at a steady pace.

I couldn’t believe I’d made it through 800 with so little elementary back stroke. It turned out to be a good thing that I had to share the lane; that forced me to swim more freestlye and less elementary back, the filler stroke. At this point I’m only swimming once every two weeks or so. You gotta start somewhere.