5 Reasons to Swim an Off-Event
5 Reasons to Swim an Off-Event
By Mike Gustafson//Contributor | Wednesday, April 26, 2017
Championship meets are all about perfection, or at least chasing perfection. You train the entire season for one minute of racing. Often, thousands and thousands of miles of training and technique comes down to just 100 or 200 yards (or meters) of a single race. Swimmers often specialize for an entire lifetime just to perfect that single 100-yard breaststroke.
Specialization is a debate. When should swimmers specialize and begin training specifically for a certain distance or stroke? Age 15? Age 17? College? When should a swimmer simply acknowledge that he or she will never be a great 200-meter breaststroker, and instead focus on the stroke or distance he or she is “naturally good” at?
Almost every swimmer specializes at some point in a career. Since swimmers can only swim three or four events at a championship swim meet, swimmers pick those events which they can best perform. Which leads to specialization. But what happens when a swimmer begins to think of switching strokes, or events, or distances? What happens when a swimmer who trained breaststroke for five years begins dominating butterfly sets in practice?
I’ve never been a huge fan of specific specialization. Mostly because bodies change, mentalities change, and the sheer physical nature of a swimmer changes with age. Swimming off-events throughout the season helps keep a checks-and-balances on stroke or event specialization, because it allows swimmers to explore other events they may not even realize they could excel in. However, dual meet off-events are a vastly different beast than championship meet racing. Which is why I believe, once a year, it’s great to allow a swimmer to swim just one “off-event” at a championship meet.
Here are 5 reasons why swimmers should try swimming an off-event at a championship meet:
