Why group swimming lessons are better than personal trainers

Enroll your child in group swimming lessons. Healthy competition in swimming teaches several valuable lessons in life to swimmers. Group swimming lessons involve multiple swimmers learning and practicing swimming skills together under the guidance of a swimming coach.

Swimmers might choose to hire a personal coach where they train alone with a well-known coach who is certified from well-known training institutes. Though personal coaching is beneficial in many ways like training in a pool of the swimmer’s choice close to their home, get undivided attention of the coach and tailor-made training program for the swimmer.

But a swimmer loses out in many ways. She does not get to train with other swimmers.

Training with other swimmers during a practice session is very important for healthy competition. Other than this, training with other swimmers at your level has a number of benefits to improving physically and mentally. It is integral for your development as an athlete. Even though swimming is an individual sport, training with a team is the best way to improve your own timings. In this article, we will discuss the reasons why training with other swimmers is so helpful. 

Keep in mind, most of these are applicable only if you are swimming with other swimmers of your age, skill level, or sex. 

Provide motivation to swimmers

The most obvious reason for healthy competition is motivation. When swimming with other swimmers of your level, you may find yourself racing one another. While this does not often happen in lane swimming, it does happen during time trials and other timing-based workouts. Even if you are swimming in lanes, you may find yourself trying to overtake those ahead of you. 

This is an athlete’s basic nature. Being competitive is very helpful when you want to improve yourself. Having healthy competition allows you to perform your best. Often, when we see other swimmers inching ahead of us, we force ourselves to catch up. This motivates us to do better even when we are tired, to not be left behind, and to do well as everyone else. 

Pushing yourself is essential for improving. Sometimes, we may feel dejected, or demotivated in swimming faster to better our timings. However, with other swimmers, you may find your competitive spirit fuelling you to help you finish a difficult set to the best of your ability. 

Improves Pace

Pace refers to the speed at which you complete a set. Oftentimes, for larger long-distance sets, swimmers have a tendency to swim slower to conserve energy. However, this can be dangerous, as you might slow down too much and give a timing that is way off from what your time trials predicted. 

In a long-distance set, practicing with another swimmer, or with a group helps everyone keep pace. This ensures you do not swim too slowly.  Everyone is kept on their toes.

For example, I took two hours to swim 4k by myself. However, when swimming with my teammates, I took 1 ½ hours to swim the same distance. This is because my friends were competing with me, and I was able to maintain a better pace. 

Pace is very important in case you are a long-distance swimmer. Otherwise, it may be difficult to discern how fast or slow you may be going. With this parameter in mind, you have a benchmark to improve. 

Benchmarking with swimmers of your age group

When practicing with teammates, you are bound to have other members who are your age or sex. This is very important, as it allows you to compare your ability with others in your age group. In practice, if you are faster than all your teammates in your age group, chances are that in a competition, you will be faster than most people in your age group. 

Practicing with people outside your age group is also beneficial. Competing with older swimmers faster than you provide a sense of competition, and can make you faster if you attempt to keep up with them.

Improve swim levels

Often, swim coaches will divide lanes based on ability and speed. Each group is given a different workout or similar workouts that are changed based on the level of difficulty. From these levels, you can understand how far, or close you are to the top, and can therefore work towards improving, or leveling up. 

For example, if your lane is doing a 10 x 50 on 1 minute, but the lane next to yours is doing 10 x 50 on 50 seconds, you can tell that your ability is probably slower than those next to you. Therefore, you may find yourself working towards moving to that faster timing so that you are able to shift to the other lane. Levels are a way of measuring your stamina and speed, and a change in level is indicative of your improvement. 

Without other swimmers to compare to, this kind of leveling up and target setting is very difficult. For this reason, it is important to train with others, so that you may understand your standing, and what you must improve. 

Set achievable targets and goals

The most important part of healthy competition is that it provides swimmers targets and goals, If you train with very good swimmers, chances are that your subconscious goal will be to be first among them all. This is a very good thing for competition and personal improvement. You end up setting targets and goals for yourself. 

For example, if your timing is 30.5s for 50m freestyle, but your teammate’s is 28.5s. Your goal may be to reduce your timing down to a 28.5. However, if you were swimming alone, you may not have tried to improve your timing, as 30.5s is already a good timing.

But a 30.5 timing would not have allowed you to place in higher competitions. By training with others, you are able to set more realistic and practical goals for yourself. Your goal can also be to beat a fellow teammate, especially if they are your main competition. This will also allow you to place in competitions. 

In conclusion, having competition in practice is very helpful. From pace to motivation, to setting personal targets, it will help you in many different ways.

Social Interaction

Group swimming lessons provide a social environment where swimmers can interact with others and make new friends. This social interaction can help to motivate swimmers and make the learning process more enjoyable.

Cost-Effective

Group swimming lessons is cost-effective than having a personal trainer. With a personal coach, the entire cost is borne by the individual or their family, while group swimming lessons can be shared among multiple participants, reducing the cost per person.

So although personal training might be easier and more appealing, you should opt for training with other swimmers. It has so many benefits and adds a lot of adrenaline to the sport. Always find swimmers who are at your level, and challenge yourself in the sport. This is how you can become the best athlete you can be.