10 Lies Your Swim Coach Might Be Telling You

Coaches are great, but some coaches might give pretty questionable advice that’s super outdated, or just downright wrong. And sure, they mean well, but sometimes coaches will tell you something that might make you slower. Today we’re going to break down 10 lies that your swim coach might be telling you, and what to do instead!

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:35 Lie 1
1:25 Lie 2
2:28 Lie 3
3:19 Lie 4
4:31 Lie 5
5:25 Lie 6
6:26 Lie 7
7:01 Lie 8
7:35 Lie 9
8:26 Lie 10

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About Coach Fares:

[cremonster]

I started working with a personal coach and she's told me none of these. For most of them she encourages the opposite. She's the best :)

[cupjoe]

As a young coach I am glad to see that I am not saying these lies to my swimmers! Always worried about how I am doing and reinforcement like this helps a ton! Love your video!

[morecoffee]

One reason I actually stopped swimming (in a team) was bc I’d just had enough of the swim meets. I did like them but not at the frequency we were doing them - it was stressing me out and I just wanted to swim for the sake of swimming. However swimming in meets was a requirement for being on the team / swimming at a very advanced level. Now I swim by myself and I’m very happy with it (haven’t even gotten any slower, despite not having a professional coach lol)

[SurfanFish]

Really enjoyed this video and feeling vindicated in my thinking, thanks! I swim (and sometimes coach) in a Master's club. The pressure to compete at times is crazy as is the distance over quality element. At 62 I usually trial just either side of 30sec for a short course 50 free but refuse to compete because I did that as a kid and have no interest, I just love the feeling of technique coming together for a good session and use swimming as a fitness base for other recreational activities and the well being benefits. I do 2 solo sessions a week to focus on technique, quality and try out different drills and approaches, along with 1 squad session for balance. Swimming should be about what you want it to be, not what others tell you it should be.

[henrybrill]

The one on specialising in a particular event/distance is something why I want to do everything the sport have to offer to help show swimmers that we don’t have to. We can do every event. I only have 6 events away from competing in all of the events in yards and meters. I just need to swim the 400, 500, 800, 1, 000, 1, 500, and 1, 650 freestyle.

[MM-jije]

I love how you give concrete examples with every lie.

[sunnyn]

My swimming coach says none of it. But my daughter's basketball coach said it all, so she left the team. Coach is very important for improvement, personal growth, also for fun.

[zakal]

I remember myself swiming for 7+ years and at the age of 12 after an intensive year preparing for the summer tournament in Greece my time in 200m freestyle was 2:21:00. After almost 2 months without any swimming workout my time dropped to 2:13:00.

[beckywebb]

Well, I’m swimming again and I started back on August 29, 2022. Began by swimming for one hour. Then my goal was to be able to swim a mile in an hour. Committed to swim 4x a week. Got up to 42 laps in an hour, then by Sept. 23, got up to 48 laps in an hour. October 6/ 50 laps in an hour. Yesterday, I managed 53 laps in an hour, but kept swimming until I did a total of 72 laps in a 25 yard pool! I’m 63 and I’m losing weight and getting my stamina back after the past two years of inactivity due to Covid. And like the videos I’ve watched, I am losing weight! I also am careful of what I eat. But idk what the person above is saying about not losing weight through swimming.

I appreciate your videos a lot!

[ndpmareligion]

Another thing I hear, especially from club coaches is you must swim year round. I am a big proponent of kids playing multiple sports. Builds other muscle that will protect swimmers from injury and make them stronger. I think this goes hand in hand with "take a break"

[no-fuse]

Oh, I have just realized how great my coach is. I was scared to try things without her during her vacation, but she told me that each km on my own is important to feel the water. Also she says after breaks usually swimmers have a break-through. And no pressure with competitions - “for now we just swim”

[eegnoagn]

Bold! I'm 57, quitted swimming because of traditional training 39 years ago, returned to swimming 3 years ago self-training alone, and now beat almost every personal best that I set when I was 18. 100 FL is my only 39 year-PB which I plan to beat soon.

Coaching/teaching has been commonly generic for all students. For decades, students who cannot keep up with the training simply quit. Such a fail-rate has actually been very high. However, it was not an issue as coach has been successful with the remaining gifted students.

Nowadays, teaching is known to be more effective the more it treats each student individually. This applies to every subject, not just sports. But that's a lot harder task for any coach/teacher. Your app introduces a new sport learning/training model that allows a lot more people to enjoy and benefit from swimming. The classical goal of winning competitions has causes swimmers to retire when they get old. But with self-satisfaction and effective self-training, they can remain in the sport forever.

[mradoku]

I love this video. It's about swimming for life and life is something one defines according to priorities and realistic schedules/goals. By far this is the best swimming YouTube channel !

[Tr-eyno]

I need to find a pool with palm trees and warm weather! For sure I think would help my workouts!

[clarkey]

I stopped swimming for a few weeks and when I came back it felt like a dream, it was amazing a break is good.

[moniquestra]

I Just stopped a lot of time with swimming and started this season with a New goodindset and i already saw a lot of New beter times

[travletheworld]

Over the holidays I took a break from swimming and when I came back I was at least 2 times faster than before. ITS TRUE! YOU NEED BREAKS SOMETIMES!!!

[colinreecerob]

I swim both short and long distance events and do quite well in both.

[GoalHornGeek]

There’s a team near us that burns out their swimmers so bad. They’re good for like 2 years on the team and then they’re all exhausted and the swimmers get no breaks. Compare this to our team where our coach is very understandable and will see why you can’t do a set, or why you need a few days off. Sometimes, we just have a day where we just chill for the most part because it’s been so tough to that point. Especially at this time of the year, we’re all burnt out because of testing and what he’s told us is that we are more than welcome to miss practices if we need the rest and is rather encouraging it. He also tries to get us to be our best in everything and wants every swimmer to swim every event possible in a season. We have certain meets where we can sign up for the events, and others he picks for us where he thinks we can improve or what he wants us to try. Normally he will leave Tech suit discretion up to us, but will strong encourage them for prelim/final meets, but he does not mandate anyone to wear them.

[thesebastiansanchez]

My coach is the MySwimPro app. The biggest lie I was told was that water is 800x denser than air ( but to be fare, Fares did examine this in detail in a video!) Love the app!