The inspiration for this question were the responses from the kids after the NZ Winter Swim Championships, held last weekend. Most had a great weekend but we got talking about why some feel they didn't have a great meet, even after swimming personal bests. The uniform response, including from those who did enjoy the meet, involved the idea that target times are set and if you don't hit them the meet is a failure even where the result was a personal best. That seems crazy to me and I thought it needed a little analysis.
We're using the question and feedback format on our Facebook page:Sport Performance Facebook page. Our blog will present what I think are some important considerations but feel free to contribute your own ideas on our Facebook page.
The first thought I wanted to share about the use of target times, is that it's a risky strategy for measuring success. It permits no nuance or flexibility in relation to the conditions of the race. It essentially says that, while other sporting events may contain natural variability, a swimming pool is always and only a 25m or 50m stretch of water. Is this reasonable?
The first fact to question concerns the pool. Unless you train at the competition venue, the pool is not the same. Differences in water depth, which are common from one pool to the next, impart big contrasts in the movement of the water, as any swimmer knows. There are also the facts of competition to consider. Try as we might, humans are not static creatures or even close to it, and children are practically a storm of day to day variations. Competition throws many balls into the air, and the notion that 'it's just the same stretch of water' is at best naive. The allowance that most sports permit for variation is important because it recognises that every race and every competition is unique in many ways.
Is a target time a valid proposition: are they supported by sport and coaching science? Peaking certainly is and we see evidence of this in the achievement of personal bests: prepare and execute correctly and you will advance. Target times derive from the same thinking but they take the basic idea into the realm of fortune teller. We simply cannot extrapolate progress with such precision. My suspicion about target times is that they're not supposed to be thought of as 'real' expectations but as a kind of inducement: 'believe it strongly enough and you will achieve it'. That kind of psychological strategy doesn't concern me. What should concern us, is the effect they have on athletes after the fact. At Sport Performance, we have young athletes in every major sport played in NZ, and many minor ones as well, and swimmers hold the most negative impressions of their performances of all sports.
Target times are not the sole reason for this but they're part of the landscape of poorly conceived coaching propositions. Sport, by it's nature, will challenge self-belief and an individual's sense of capability. The most important job of the coach is to add balance to this thinking; to show the athlete all the good that is done. A stop watch, like a personal best and a placing, says little of what happened. It says nothing specific about preparation and execution. It provides no information about mood and attitude. It gives no clues for the future.
The problems, as I see it, with target times is 1) they're basically unreasonable, and 2) they're not counterpointed sufficiently well with coach feedback to permit individuals a balanced and wider sense of what was done. Most young swimmers I observe do a very good job conducting themselves and too many don't realise it.
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