The money reason for the new swim league

I wondered what is driving this new swim league movement.

One remark of Sarah Sjostrom in an article published by the BBC explains that performance swimmers often suffer from poverty problems. They sometimes cannot pay their rent, even if they are Olympic swimmers.

Well, the sport is extremely time-consuming and the rewards are little or

Photo by Sabrina Schulz on Pexels.com

non-existent if swimmers do not get major sponsorship money.

This ISL discussion is now letting the cat out of the bag. Often we just read about the glory of the sport.

The competitions, the medals, the achievements.

We hardly ever hear about the pitfalls and problems that swimmers suffer. I aim to make a difference to this by discussing what is actually happening to swimmers doing the sport.

If that ISL system is poverty driven and swimmers see no other way to make money, but to swim for it, then that is what they need to do.

There is hardly any point in gaining the skill through years of training, which is initally financed through parents paying, and then just stop doing it because of a lack of money.

It is hard to get used to the performance swimmers lifestyle just to find that there is nowhere to go.

I’ve pointed out in previous articles how training is set up to peak swimmers at yearly national, european and international competitions and then again at Olympic games but those extra money earning competitions could put a lot of extra strain onto the swimmers.

I am sceptical.

Especially, as already said, the skills of swimmers are often earned from sponsored training and if swimmers then earn money from it the training providers could ask for their money back.

Perhaps the whole system needs an overhaul. In our society, sport is seen as a voluntary and amateur activity, yet sport stars are expected to win the medals and put in the work, that takes more than just doing some side-line training; it is a full-time activity.

When 5% of people in the world own 95% of all the wealth, then those in between are always either working very hard to make ends meet or end up begging those having all the cash.

Now FINA wants to counter-act the legal action taken against them by Katinka Hosszu in the USA by launching a new innovative Champtions swim series in 2019.

Whilst the ISL has announced Swim League teams and international venues.

I am still around

Still going to training regularly with the performance squad but haven’t been competing since the end of last season, e.g. August 2018.

Have already obtained 8 County times for this season during last season.

Don’t be put off by injury. Even though swimming is a very active sport with constant competitions, having an injury is no reason at all to drop out of the sport.

You can continue training and keep fit, even if you can’t enter every competition for a while.

Don’t let your coach tell you otherwise because if you love swimming you will want to stick with it.

Just thought, that swimming is the ideal sport for hyper active kids. Stick anybody into a swimming club and even the most lively kid will be tired by the end of the day, with little time left for being hyper-active.

Think about it if your child attends morning training before school, by the time they get into the benches, they will already have spent all excess energy during the AM session and if they get active again the after-school training session will take care of that.

Doctors should prescribe more sport less pills.

I think the key is to get parents involved as much as the children to develop the healthy life-style for the whole family.

The B-tech sport

Whilst with the swimming things go just steadily from training to training session and whilst the shoulder is kind of debilitating, and whilst the legs still work and Madison has to do two sports through the B-tech exam, it stands to reason that Madison uses those body parts that still work.

The legs are ideal for football and Madison has been selected for the school’s girls football team. What a great surprise.

Over the years Madison cut back on all other activities to concentrate on swimming but now another activity has opened up.

Obviously coaches want swimmers to just swim and spend every free minute either at the pool or in land-training or to go gym session to do with the swimming development but the education system has other ideas.

I suppose, when I read that younger people should do as many varied things as possible, the reality is, that all sports want their athletes to concentrate on a particular sport as soon as because an athlete’s peak comes usually about 20 or even younger. The international athletes field is hugely competitive and the most developed nations do their utmost to produce the fastest, strongest, best in whatever discipline possible.

It takes a lot of resilience to stay in any sport and I am questioning that it is possible for any average person to make it in any sport without specialist medical support, which usually costs a lot of money and is not available on the state, at least not in the western world.

Madison currently does get support with her shoulder and sticks to the training but also now has to do some football for a while, whilst the sport b-tech program is being dealt with.

I think that any sport is exercise and does good. And if you look how few athletes actually make it to the very top out of all that are in the clubs and on the competition scene, it just makes you wonder whether you are the one that will be it.

In the end, every sporting person counts towards supporting the ones that make it big because the more competitions we take part in, the more training sessions we do, the more we help each other and somebody somewhere is going to be the top.

 

Are they really?

The first words Madison uttered when I came to collect her from MMSwiminspirations swim camp, under supervision from Mel Marshall were: “I swear they are trying to kill us with that land training!”

What does that tell you? What should it tell me?

Madison has had land-training regularly. Yoga, Pilates, and exercise. That has been going on since a year.  All soft training and still an injury of the shoulder. Perhaps the soft training is too soft to strengthen the muscles enough.

1 week at Mel Marshall’s swim camp and Madison’s feels totally overstretched.

But, who is winning the medals at top competitions? Those who work with Mel or those who work with Madison’s regular club?

I am just glad that Madison is going to train with the top squad in Hackney Aquatics from September with 2 gym sessions per week. It seems that all the soft options like Yoga and Pilates do not do too much for high performance athletes.

Our local Hackney Aquatics club is the only one we can attend, from where we live and school.

 

Use your loaf

Just to mention that when Madison had the Better sponsorship, during her membership with LACPP, Madison hardly had any time to go to the gym to top up the water-based club training. Madison never needed to see the physio. One felt invincible.

Better membership card for the GLL training support

Then, the following year, I did not apply for the Better GLL sponsorship, which brings with it, free physio treatment. I thought we do not need it, Madison was never injured to a significant degree. I thought better let other athletes have the sponsorship, those who do need to supplement their training with extra gym sessions.

Now the injury has finally arrived. No, I have not been waiting for it but it has happened.

My GP told me that coming to the NHS for advice is a waste of time because the NHS has no resources to treat sporting injuries quickly enough. Perhaps the NHS should reconsider their treatment options. NHS constantly peaches to us about healthy life-styles, yet that brings with it more sporting activities with sporting related injuries. If the NHS wants to specialise in deteriorating illnesses, which are not sport related only, they should re-name themselves.

Now I have been told that the physio in my own club charges at least £50 for a consultation. Obviously like most average people I am not made of money.

I have to find ways of solving problems without spending even more than I already do on the swimming.

We have enormous cost because we not only need to pay the club membership, we also constantly got extra costs like:

• Travel costs – to and from training and going to competitions
• Accommodation cost – most further away competitions require hotel stays
• Performance costumes – can cost around £300,–
• Training equipment – quite a lot of stuff
• Competition entry – At the LAC can cost up to £12,– per event.

Now having even more cost, would just about break the camels back.

I do not understand, that Swim England, doesn’t make Physios available for free. Just perhaps a physio per region. Or perhaps advertise for physios who want to help the sport on a voluntary basis.

I need to turn to the Internet for advice. There is quite a lot about. There are some useful pages, which are seriously useful. Search the Internet for Swimmer’s shoulder and some good pages with advice come up for free. Obviously it only needs a terra bad and a wall to do a couple of exercised.

Our club coaches are also pretty good and allow the continuation of training, just not using the injured shoulder. Yet active Physio intervention is not available, especially in the holidays. I am hoping that the Mel Marshall camp, that also cost quite a lot of money has gotten some solutions available.