BigNate and others:
I see Larry, being a proud father, has posted an English composition by his daughter about swimming. Being the father of a swimmer, and a rag tag swimmer myself, I thought you folks might appreciate a deeper understanding of what BigNate goes through to become the best he can be.
"The Journey of the Swimmer
by Laurin Weisenthal
?The philosophy is simple; to achieve, you must work. You must work very hard.?
~Erika Salumae, 1992 Olympic Sprint Cycling Champion
The time is five o?clock A.M. The sky ripples in a deep, velvety black as I
race
across the pool deck, tugging my unruly hair into a latex swim cap. The frigid
wind
bites into my nearly bare body; the icy deck numbs my toes as I adjust my
goggles
over weary eyes. I glance about, feeling the warmth of comradeship as my eyes
light on the four others who have made the effort this morning. With a deep
sigh of
resignation, my body launches into an arch, convulsing slightly at the initial
shock
of the crisp, eerie blue water. Forced awake, I automatically begin the
powerful
strokes of my warm-up, preparing myself for the first of the day?s two training
sessions that will test the physical strength and mental tenacity of each
athlete who
dares make the attempt.
Day in and day out it is the same routine; if you want to be great, if you one
day
want to be ranked among the few who can call themselves the best, you must
maintain a lifestyle that nears insanity. Commuting time not included, swim
training
eats up anywhere from 20 to 24 hours of your week, possibly more, depending on
the coach. Not even illness, weather, or holidays are allowed to interfere with
your
training schedule: unless you are vomiting or feverish you drag your protesting
body
to practice; unless lightning threatens your life you endure whatever nature
hurls in
your way; if something as inconsiderate as Christmas causes you to take a day
off,
you make up the training you missed, perhaps by adding another round of doubles
to your week.
Athletes vying for the coveted label of ?the best? all face grim circumstances
and
sacrifice. The unfortunate high school student has a structured school schedule
to
contend with, translated into required school hours and nightly class work.
Life
becomes a fearful experience of day to day survival: directly after school
comes
practice, so homework isn?t started until 7:30 at night. If this sounds like a
simple
inconvenience, the factor of morning practice has been forgotten. Swimmers rise
for practice anywhere between 4:00 and 4:30 in the silent darkness of early
morning. They are lucky to snatch five hours of sleep on the eve of a double
practice day. The other days they cannot make up the sleep they have lost
because
they must finish the homework they couldn?t complete the night before. There is
always a Saturday morning practice as well, so the only time a swimmer obtains
a
decent amount of sleep is Saturday night. On the other end of the spectrum is
the
post-grad. He faces the ominous threat of financial difficulty.
Training itself is rigorous and painful, both on the body and on the mind. It
involves
a demanding combination of dryland exercises and two hours of pool time per
training session. People have hinted swimming to be a boring sport, swimming
?up
and back along a black line? for all eternity. These critics cannot be any more
wrong. Swimming requires more thought and focus than many of the common
sports others play. True, you don?t contend with a ball, nor do you need to
devise
strategies and plays involving other people. But what makes it so difficult is
the
overwhelming emphasis on technique: forcing your body to move in just the
perfect
way to minimize resistance in the water and maximize the power of your stroke.
There are four different strokes in swimming, and for each stroke you must
consider a multitude of tiny factors: where is your hand entering the water?
how is
your body positioned? are your elbows bent enough on the catch? are they bent
too
much? are you over-reaching? are you dragging your hips? are you rotating
enough? and so many more. Resistance through water is a factor that is much
more
significant than resistance through air, and any little error can add tenths
that build
up over the course of a race. You must feel where your body is in relationship
to
the water, and there is always, always something you are doing incorrectly.
Swimming becomes an intricate dance of perfecting one thing and discovering
another that is flawed. Even the best in the world, the Olympians and world
record
holders, are forever looking for minute adjustments in their technique to drop
mere
hundredths from their times.
This quest for perfection involves endless repetition of unimaginable drills to
discover the right niche for each athlete. You must always be thinking about
what
you are doing, feeling each element, to detect the flaws. At the same time you
must
be thinking about starts, turns, finishes, pacing, and racing. You must be
smart to
be a swimmer.
Then you must take what you feel in the drills and apply it to the actual sets.
Coaches develop sets that are tailored to match the swimmer and the swimmer?s
needs. The sprint freestyler, for example, does not do the same workout as the
distance IMer. The breastroker does not do the same workout as the butterflyer,
who does not do the same workout as the distance freestyler, and so on. But no
matter which group you fit into, sets are devised to be arduous affairs. You
must
push yourself to your limit, and then push past that, over and over again, in
every
training session you face. You must always force yourself on, performing
whatever
your coach tells you to do. You never pause to consider disobeying: if he says
to
swim faster, you swim faster. The response is automatic; you listen, you
doggedly
nod, and you launch yourself off the wall, hurling your will into the set.
Swimmers
suffer some of the most pain imaginable, for their whole body is consistently
subjected to the wrath of the pool. After some training sessions your body is
so
beat up that you walk into your living room and drop dead on the floor. No
muscle
group escapes use in swimming. You tighten up in pain, force your way through
sheer physical exhaustion; yet the dedicated punch through the breaking point
and
continue on, knowing that this is what it takes to be the best.
At times you work so hard that you simply become numb to the pain; you are
aware that you can barely lift your protesting arms out of the water, and that
your
legs feel like solid granite, but you no longer detect your screaming body. Few
ever
reach this point; they begin to feel the rising surge of pain and back off,
afraid.
Hence the mental toughness and desire come into play, for you must defeat the
mind games you begin to play with yourself. You cannot ponder whether you can
go on; you must decide to go on, and if you do, you discover the beautiful,
liberating feeling of realization that you can do anything.
Swimming is a cruel sport. You can train with all your heart and soul for a
year
and, just before the important meet, fall ill. Or at that one meet you can have
a
single poor performance due to a large amount of details that could go wrong.
Or
you can get a devastating injury, the most common being one to the shoulder. To
come back from injury is a difficult journey in itself, and one that defines a
person?s character. Then there is the unfairness of the sport: the hardest
workers
and most deserving are not always the ones that reap the glory. Talent is just
as
great a factor in swimming as it is in anything else, and those that have it do
not
always realize the potency of their gift. An athlete may give her life to
swimming
and still never be as great as another, born with the natural gift, who gives
only
70% to the sport. Swimming can give the highest pinnacle of joy and elation in
success, but it can also bestow the most crushing misery and devastation in
failure.
Both are decided by mere seconds or less.
So why do you do it? friends ask me. Why do you do go through all that? Are you
crazy or something? Maybe I am. But they don?t understand, they can?t
understand swimming in the way that I do. I do it because I love it, more than
anything the world can offer. Even in the middle of the most painful training
sessions, performed on little sleep, with my body begging for relief, I am
content to
be where I am. I have been through the darkest hours of the anger and
frustration
of injury, wondering desperately if I would ever return to the pool. I have
been
broken down by the demands of the sport to be built back up again. I have cried
in
disappointment and doubt when I failed to perform as well as I expected to
after
months of the above described. Yet always am I drawn back to the glittering,
blue
water, ready to face another day.
I love swimming for what it is, a sport that represents all that is right in
athletics.
There are no judges to determine whether you are a superior athlete than the
next
girl. No coach can make a call as to where you will play, how much you will
play,
and how important you are to a team. The person to get their hand on the wall
the
fastest is the winner, whether you like that person or not. The clock does not
lie.
To many, swimming is just another sport, or a fun activity. Yet only those on
the
inside of the swimming world really understand what this sport is about. I love
the
people involved in swimming, for we all know what we go through, in the pool
and
out. Even those who aren?t willing to push themselves as far as others have an
appreciation and give their admiration and respect to those who do. We are
always
immediate friends because of the bonds we share; because we know what it is to
be
consumed by a sport that makes us whole, and to want something so badly that we
will do whatever it takes to get there. And that feeling of glory, that feeling
of
performing excellently after everything has gone right, is the most beautiful,
indescribable feeling in human experience. No matter how rare, that is what we
live
for, and I could never give it up."
Facebook
Twitter