So that’s it, season done. We finished with Hastings Seagull’s Terry Fitzgerald Open Meet, a meet that is very close to my heart. Some good swims we had, too!
The new season starts in September and most clubs will now shut down for a few weeks. We don’t quite do that, there will still be some swimming available, but I want to be really clear on this:
I want every swimmer to take 2-3 weeks off.
Not “2-3 weeks of secretly doing loads somewhere else”. Not “I’ll just do a little bit extra because I want to be ahead in September”. Not “but I feel fine, so this doesn’t apply to me”.
It does apply to you.
I can see the logic, and on the surface it almost makes sense. If everyone else has a break and you keep training, then you’ll come back in September fitter than everyone else, right? You’ll have a ‘head-start’, you’ll look brilliant for the first few weeks and everyone will think you’ve been very clever.
Maybe. But it won’t last long.
The problem is that I’ve seen this film before and I know how it tends to end. The swimmers who train through the break often do look good in September. They look fit, they look sharp and they get a nice little confidence boost from it all.
Then October and November happen.
The weather changes, school is properly back, everyone starts getting tired, bugs start flying around and the swimmer who decided rest was for other people suddenly gets ill. Then they miss a week or two of training, come back feeling behind, try to ‘catch up’, and the whole thing becomes a bit of a mess.
This would be annoying at any time of year, but October and November are not random months in the swimming calendar. Winter Counties and Winter Regionals happen around then. They are exactly the sort of competitions you do NOT want to be ill for. They are also exactly the sort of competitions where you do not want to be carrying tiredness that should have been dealt with in August.
”But I don’t want to lose fitness”
You won’t turn into a completely different swimmer because you had a proper break.
You might feel a bit rusty when you first get back in, obviously, but that’s fine. That comes back quickly. What I care about much more is swimmers returning healthy, motivated and ready to work for months, not swimmers winning the first week of September and then falling apart when the racing actually matters.
”But I want to get ahead”
Don’t.
Honestly, don’t. Now is not the time to try and get ahead. Now is the time to recover from the season that has just finished so that we can actually build the next one properly.
If you really want to do something useful, sleep well, eat sensibly, hydrate, move around a bit, spend some time away from the pool and let yourself miss swimming. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and, as dramatic as that sounds, it really does apply here. I want swimmers coming back hungry to train, not just turning up because training never stopped.
”Can I swim at all?”
I’m not saying you can’t get in a pool on holiday or have a relaxed swim if you really want to. That’s fine. Have a swim, mess about, enjoy the water.
But please don’t turn it into a set. Don’t go chasing A3 work. Don’t go looking for extra sessions because you think that will make September easier. It probably will make September easier, briefly, and then it may make October and November much harder.
That is a bad trade.
Take the break. Two to three weeks. Properly.
Then come back fresh in September and we’ll get to work. 💪
