Swimmers are a unique breed. We swim back and forth along a black line every day, sometimes two or three times a day, and much of the time underwater. We stress our bodies in every way imaginable as we develop our aquatic lungs and speed. Sometimes we sprint, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we wear gear, sometimes we don’t. We never really know what we’re getting ourselves into when we show up to practice, but we know we love it and that’s why we keep coming back.
As we challenge ourselves in different ways, over weeks, months, and years, amazing transformations take place. These processes take time, however, and giving ourselves permission to recover away from the pool or exercise at all is essential to coming back harder, faster, stronger, and better. The formula of Stress + Rest = Growth applies to our psychology as much as it does to our physiology. And the necessity of rest is not limited to athletes. Coaches must rest too!
The Role of Recovery
Imagine how you’ll feel and function if you don’t sleep for a night or two…terrible, right? Well, that’s exactly how your body and mind will function if they are not provided adequate rest—whether that is within a single practice or training season. Here are a few statistics about sleep from Why We Sleep by (the) leading sleep scientist Matthew Walker.
- 30% improvement in newly learned motor skills after a full night’s sleep. (imagine how much you would improve in the pool with a year of consistent sleep-full nights)
- Lack of sleep increases gastrointestinal problems by increasing cortisol (stress hormone) levels and fosters bad bacteria growing in your gut. (Imagine how an increase in stress hormones would affect your ability to stay focused, calm, relaxed and present when you are under pressure in a challenging practice or at a meet)
- Dream sleep increases creativity and problem-solving abilities significantly. (We might not think of creativity as a primary quality of a swimmer, but in fact, it is essential in developing self-awareness and creating solutions to overcome our inner limits as well as external barriers keeping us from swimming to greatness)
Recovery for the Swimmer
Your coaches are highly qualified individuals who know how to stress your body and provide adequate rest to help you recover so you can perform optimally. Recovery can (and should) be a part of every training session from warm-down to active recovery swims your coach sprinkles throughout the practice. Many of the secrets of fast swimming we all are searching for are in the recovery strategies we use. The tricky thing is that there are so many variables to consider when creating sustainable and high-level performance.
As a swimmer, your best resource for recovery strategies is your coach. It is important to talk to them about your rest and how it is impacting your training or racing. It is just as important for you to develop a sense of your body and its needs. Keeping a journal can be very helpful in helping you notice patterns in your performance based on your training and recovery.
It is important that we also remember recovery doesn’t mean ‘do nothing’. Sometimes it can mean that, but often we negatively impact our performance by living too sedentary of a lifestyle outside of the pool. Bring more movement into your life outside the pool and stay loose and limber for your swimming. Talk to your coach about what this can look like for you.
A personal favorite is just a simple yoga and foam rolling routine before and after each training session. Many times, just giving ourselves some quiet solo time, especially when paired with gentle movement, can create a long-term sustainable practice that supports our training and performances nicely.
Get To Know Your Athletes
As coaches, it is vital that we become more familiar with our athletes and their recovery needs. The success of our group or our entire program can hang on our recovery strategies, especially at the higher levels. It is important to keep track of performances as well as the rest we give them so we too can identify patterns.
Once we identify patterns, we give ourselves the power to make lasting changes. When you have a few or a few hundred athletes to take care of, the type, frequency, and duration of rest you integrate into your training is important. Not all rest is measured in time. Rest can be different things:
Let them swim a different stroke…have them wear gear…integrate some dryland or yoga instead of more swimming…mix up the type of swimming they’re doing (race vs endurance set).
When we know our athletes and how they work, we are in a better position as a leader to create and implement a highly intentional training or season plan with a more effective design.
Coaches Also Need Recovery
As coaches, we also put ourselves under immense stress—perhaps more psychologically than physically, but they are one and the same really. If we have too much in the attic, it will weigh down the rest of the house. Take some time to think about your recovery patterns…when was the last time you had a day off? What does your recovery look like right now? How would your quality of life, your coaching performance, and your team do if you have a little more rest each week?
This doesn’t mean we need to take a month off, it could just be that we need a few minutes throughout the day to ourselves, or one day a month for ourselves…or maybe we do need that two-week vacation. We can honor our athletes and ourselves by exploring what recovery strategy is best for us and will yield the best swimming and coaching performances.
When we rest, our minds reflect and process the many thoughts and questions we carry with us each day. When we take intentional rest, we allow our subconscious mind to create solutions to these questions and challenges we’ve been thinking about. Some of the most powerful medicines and solutions have come from dreams or after a full night’s sleep.
What is your energy like on your best day? What recovery variables can we modify to bring us closer to this ideal state?
What does your current recovery strategy look like?
How can you create a more effective and intentional relationship with recovery?
There are three great ways to recover.
Best done on a Wednesday or Thursday…
Is this a joke? A sport that deprives kids of sleep tells them that that they should get more sleep. Is this some weird form of abuse? Unbelievable. Be specific. How much sleep for what age? How should a swimmers’ daily schedule look if they have 5:15AM practices 6 days a week. How do they get a “full night sleep” and have any sort of existence outside of swimming. It’s a mess out here and just randomly saying “sleep more” doesn’t help.
Suck it up
It’s called Time Management by reducing cell phone and gaming time at night. I make my kids put there phones in the kitchen at 9:30pm and they can have them back the next morning.
I would encourage every swimmer and family to talk to their coach to discuss these specific details. As a general rule of thumb, the more committed a swimmer is, let’s say a national level swimmer, it is expected that they will have developed the organisational skills to get a full nights rest and complete their schoolwork. Most high level swimmers end up spending their time with other swimmers because of the alignment in schedules and interests.
As a coach myself, I do not expect ten year olds to be coming to morning practice six days a week at 5:15am. I do expect that by the time they are in their later teen years, they have practiced the organisational skills… Read more »