How much swimming is too much for my child?
Unlike most other team sports, swimming has dozens of different commitment options depending on athletic ability and availability. Parents new to the sport of swimming can easily be overwhelmed by the amount of practice times and options when signing up for your local team. As you introduce your child to the sport of swimming, it’s important to find the balance between exercise, building social skills as an adolescent, and pushing to success.
Too much swimming for children too early on will produce burnout. This article will demonstrate some ideas to consider when choosing how much your child will swim and provide some recommendations for training durations.
The health perspective
According to the CDC, all children between the ages of 6 and 17 should engage in at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity daily. Now, this is the base recommendation and many teens should strive to be active for much longer than 60 minutes a day, especially as teen culture shifts to a predominantly sedentary lifestyle. There are countless doctors, journals, and websites outlining the positive effects extra physical activity boasts in the development of adolescents. So, from the physical exercise sense, there really is reasonably no such thing as too much swimming for children; the more time your child spends exercising, the better.
Swimming is a mentally tough sport. No other sport requires the athlete to stare at the same, monotonous object like swimming requires its athletes to stare at the ever-haunting black line on the bottom of the pool. Topped with the lack of oxygen and being surrounded extraordinarily close by teammates scrambling to grab the wall, swimming can pose many mental challenges. As hard as these things can be, they do promote grit and perseverance in the lives of swimmers, which is a valuable skill in today’s world. Developing that determination must be balanced with adolescent’s love for the sport so it is very important for you, the parent, to be aware of any toll too much swimming may be taking on your child and take steps to address it.
Defining your goals
What’s the reason you currently have your child involved in the sport of swimming? Swimming is great for children because it requires a lot of energy, has great health benefits, and has a very low injury potential (read more about those benefits here). If you’re just looking for health benefits, that’s great and swimming those 60 minutes a day will help achieve that goal. It would really benefit your child to substitute other sports or activities with swimming to provide a well-rounded physical training routine.
Do you desire your child just to have fun, develop social skills, and learn the basics of a life-saving skill? Then similar to swimming just for health benefits, there really is no requirement to train beyond those 60 minutes daily. In this case, you should look to see what works into your existing schedule and commitments the best. Find a balance between boy/girl scouts, church groups, other sports, and financial costs to determine how long and how often your child should swim each week.
But if you’re looking for more than just health benefits, you’ve got more questions to consider. Are you looking for your child to train to compete successfully at the state/national level in the future? If so, you’re going to need to have your child stay on the high end of the training volume. Are you looking for your child just to do well at regional meets (those big three day meets most of the teams in your area attend)? Then you’re going to want to be right in the middle of the total available time. As great as it is to push your child to success, it’s important to make sure they are progressing on their own. Personal motivation due to foreseen success will drive them to desire to swim more. Success could be competing at high levels, but it could also mean seeing their friends at practice.
Your child’s current skill level
How long your child has been swimming plays a big part in your recommended commitment. If you’re new to swimming, you want to ease into the time dedicated to the sport. The best thing you can do as a parent is allow your child to progress at their own pace. This develops a love for the sport and the child develops a personal motivation to succeed. Too much swimming early on and too much of a push from parents can easily detract from the sport.
Teens who have a few years under their belts should realistically be spending time each day to keep a “feel” for the water. As swimmers get faster and their technique improves, taking a day off becomes more difficult because it takes a day to get back in shape. There’s no real description for this, but taking a day or two off makes the following practice slower and more difficult to get moving. For this reason, parents must balance how many days their child takes off during the week because it can be very tough to start and stop continually.
The recommended quantity
There is not and will never be a one-size-fits-all answer: your individual situation will dictate commitment levels. However, here are a few recommendations based on personal experience, consultation with other parents, and coach input to make sure your child isn’t swimming too much too early:
| Skill level | Age | Goal | Recommended duration | Recommended frequency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beginner | <10 | Health | 60 minutes | 3 non-consecutive days per week |
| Beginner | <10 | Social skills | 90 minutes | 3 non-consecutive days per week |
| Beginner | 10+ | Health | 60 minutes | 5 days per week |
| Beginner | 10+ | Social skills | 120 minutes | 3 non-consecutive days per week |
| Intermediate | <10 | Health | 60 minutes | 3 non-consecutive days per week |
| Intermediate | <10 | Social skills | 60 minutes | 4 days per week |
| Intermediate | <10 | High performance | 90 minutes | 5 days per week |
| Intermediate | 10-14 | Health | 60 minutes | 4 days per week |
| Intermediate | 10-14 | Social skills | 90 minutes | 5 days per week |
| Intermediate | 10-14 | High performance | 90 minutes | 6 days per week |
| Intermediate | 15+ | Health | 60 minutes | 5 days per week |
| Intermediate | 15+ | Social skills | 90 minutes | 5 days per week |
| Intermediate | 15+ | High performance | 120 minutes | 6 days per week |
| Advanced | <10 | Social skills | 90 minutes | 5 days per week |
| Advanced | <10 | High performance | 90 minutes | 6 days per week |
| Advanced | 10-14 | Social skills | 90 minutes | 5 days per week |
| Advanced | 10-14 | High performance | 90 minutes | 6 days per week |
| Advanced | 15+ | Social skills | 90 minutes | 5 days per week |
| Advanced | 15+ | High performance | 120 minutes | 6 days per week |
For beginners, many of the options recommend 3 days per week to allow an adjustment for the rigor of practices and to develop a liking for the sport. As skill level and age increases, you will notice a comparable increase in the frequency of training to maintain the correct intensity through these changes.
When in doubt, the frequency should be followed to avoid burnout. When swimmers make the effort to get to practice and get into the water, the time spent working out is negligible to swimming burnout–the frequency is what takes a toll. As a swimmer’s goals grow, there will become a need to stay in the water extra days to maintain that “feel” for the water.
Meets
A quick note about meets: proceed with awareness. Meets are the best way to analyze your child’s improvement and it can be tempting to participate in every meet that becomes available to you. When determining how often your child should practice, always account for how often you plan to attend meets. Consuming every weekend with a multi-day meet takes its toll on both you and your child. Too much swimming, be it practice or meets, can easily bring about burnout.
There isn’t a good rule of thumb to follow here because meet participation is based on so many different variables. Just remember that unless your coach is training your child on a taper (intentionally resting to perform better at a championship meet), it is oftentimes unlikely your child will experience major time drops each meet.
Conclusion
Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing…swimming included. Define your goals, analyze your child’s current level, and make advanced decisions about swim meets. As always, monitor your swimmer and note major changes in behavior and mood. Letting your child love the sport of swimming starts by making the right decisions when you get started.