What is Swimming About?

It is said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, but if you don't know where you're going even a thousand miles will get you nowhere. Let us start this swimming journey by figuring out exactly where we are going. What is our purpose here!?

Obviously, swimming faster is part of that journey. But if after spending 10 years in a pool every single day all you gained was a few gold medals and the ability to get across a man-made puddle of water faster than the person next to you, you will have missed a great deal.

The bigger goal is to become the best version of yourself. What is the best version of yourself? While I'm sure there is great debate and many ideals, the list below is a good start.

If you were going to design a human being in a lab and you were able to pick out their ideal characteristics, you would come up with a list similar to this. If everybody acted like this in the real world, we would not have very many problems! 

Both the performance and moral attributes listed above can be developed in a swimming career. Even though you will practice most of these in the world of swimming, every single one of them transfers from the pool to the real world. These are the same attributes that require anyone to be successful in their careers, their families and communities. This is a good start of what it takes to be the best version of yourself which in turn helps you make the best version of others.

Okay, but why do I need swimming to do this? Can't I just read a book or watch a YouTube video? Unfortunately, no. And that is because these attributes cannot be developed in a classroom by merely thinking about it. These skills are learned the hard way through practice and experience. "Practice and experience" of course are just nice words for failure. Failure is what teaches us and changes us to become better. The problem with failure is that there are consequences. If you fail at your job, you may be fired. If you fail at your family, you may lose your family. So, the question becomes: how can we learn the lessons of failure without the harsh consequences?

 You probably guessed the answer: Swimming!

Remember at the beginning we said welcome to the real world? While swimming may not be entirely the real world, it is a good simulation. It is a place where we are free to fail and the consequences, while painful, do not cause lasting damage. This way, we can learn all the lessons required to become fully functioning adults, avoid the lasting damage of failure, and have a lot of fun along the way!

Over the years of intense training and great sacrifice, this overarching goal can be forgotten. Especially when you start getting faster in the sport and it becomes more and more difficult to drop time and achieve high goals, it can be easy to lose your purpose. And if you have no purpose, you will start to hate the sport. Many who end their swimming journey angry forget all the personal growth they did during that time. If you can keep it in the back of your mind that win or lose, succeed or fail, swim fast or swim slow you are still becoming the best version of yourself. Then the swimming journey becomes more about mastering yourself and then mastering the sport.

You may not believe me when I say that these skills really do matter when you leave swimming, school and your parents to enter the adult real world, but consider this:

1. Hard times make strong men.
2. Strong men make good times.
3. Good times make weak men.
4. Weak men make hard times.

They say that this is a repeating cycle throughout history which takes about 80 years to complete, or about one full generation. One of the biggest challenges of modern life which has become so easy and good by the standards of history is how to create strong people during good times. According to the cycle above, it is not possible to create strong people without bad times. If we could just solve this catch 22, we can avoid many hard times in the future.

Many countries try to solve this by sending their kids to mandatory military service. Regardless of whether that is good or bad or whether this works or doesn't, we don't have it in America. In addition, we think creating strong people has to start much much earlier. Being part of a dedicated swim team and learning to sacrifice for the team and for your goals may be a way to break this cycle and create a simulation of hard times so that we can constantly make strong people.

Swimmer's Starter Guide book here!