Children's swimming is about learning to face failure, not arrogance and victory. Fong Lishen: "My swimming club teaches you how to lose and how to face failure."
I remember seeing an interview clip with Alex Fong. Regarding the issue of swimming between children and parents, Alex Fong said to himself: "Other swimming clubs teach you how to win. My swimming club teaches you how to lose and how to face failure."
This reminds me of the various problems children encounter while swimming.
Today, I would like to share with you how my child grew up in swimming six months ago, as well as the various difficulties and challenges he faced. I hope parents facing similar problems today can get some solutions and inspiration from it.
An episode half a year ago
More than half a year ago, I heard a teacher share a story about a student who, after successfully transferring to a prestigious school of his choice, lost the motivation and enthusiasm for learning. He only showed off his previous certificates every day, was complacent because of the small success in the past, and never stopped. Think enterprising.
In the end, the teacher persuaded the family and the student to leave because his nature changed after entering a prestigious school... he no longer studied hard.
When Fang Lishen was interviewed by the media in 2018, he said that there is a spirit that never changes, which is the "spirit of sportsmanship." When he opened the swimming school, he wanted the students to learn to face adversity together and learn to lose. Only when they can afford to lose can they win. forward.
From the bottom of my heart, I really appreciate the teacher’s attitude towards teaching, which is the same as Fang Lishen’s school spirit.
A swimming coach once said to me, if your eldest daughter is 7 years old and can swim the 50-meter free for 55 seconds, and others can swim for 39 seconds, then you should just give up early. If you don’t want to be first in the swimming competition, if you can’t afford it, just swim here. Why?
Today, one year later, my eldest daughter improved from 55 seconds to 39 seconds in the Dragon City Cup, while her strongest opponent only improved from 39 seconds to 36 seconds. This coach's son has never participated in large-scale 50-meter competitions in the past year, including the Dragon City Cup and Shatin Cup.
In fact, I understand his philosophy of life and education very well - to be powerful, you can never lose, and you can't afford to lose, so you can only show off your 25-meter score that year, show off that your son has entered the most prestigious boys' and girls' school, and use the school's aura , earning all his income as a coach (the problem is that he doesn’t know how to teach young children at all, and keeps asking them to work hard).
My sister’s Dragon City Cup
On that day in May 2024, I followed my sister to watch several 50-meter men’s and women’s races. I found one thing in common: when many athletes swim 50 meters, they burst out with all their strength in the first 25 meters, but the last 25 meters become more and more laborious and lack strength. This is an important detail.
If you often participate in competitions, you can pay attention to this. Many masters focus on the explosive training in the early stages, but ignore the most important thing - mentality.
When children learn to swim, they must not exert too much force to reach 25 meters, resulting in no progress after 50 meters. I see a lot of coaches teaching 4 to 6 year olds this wrong way.
I repeatedly reminded my sister to relax and maintain an average speed throughout the race, and never use excessive force. In this game, you only need to swim for 40 seconds.
In the competition clip, you can see that my sister used no force from beginning to end and swam naturally with the current. In contrast, other opponents obviously exerted too much force in the front stage, which caused the speed to drop in the back stage, which actually increased my sister's average speed.
Let those opponents who have been swimming for 567 days continue to explode. It is impossible for you to catch up with them at the moment. What you need to do is follow them easily.
Winning the game early doesn't count as winning, because if you win at 5, what about 6? What about 8 years old, 10 years old, 12 years old? By the age of 14, you may have given up going to the water every day.
As my children grow up steadily, I hope they can do more interesting things, learn and play.
As for swimming? When those top opponents chose to give up during the challenge, I played for another 34,567 days and there were still many choices. Even if Swiss music is playing, I still have greater choices in life.
This is the most important basic lesson for growth - mentality training, because winning early does not count as winning.
My sister’s Sha Tin Cup
After sharing my sister’s Dragon City Cup, On the same day in May 2024, there was my sister’s Shatin Cup on the other side of the box.
The Sha Tin Cup is considered to be the most representative competition in Hong Kong's children's swimming community, because it is an annual competition. Every year, children in the strongest age groups come to the Sha Tin Cup to compete and communicate through friendship.
Although my sister won one silver and one bronze, my father felt extremely uncomfortable when he saw her swimming skills.
Anyone who knows how to look will see that my sister is swimming very hard and not swimming with the current. To be honest, it doesn't matter if you win the competition, because this kind of swimming will not improve much until you are 7 to 8 years old, unlike my elder sister.
Anyone who knows how to look will notice that my sister's swimming style is very vigorous, but she does not swim with the current. To be honest, although I won the game, my swimming skills will not improve significantly when I am 7 or 8 years old, which is completely different from my sister's situation.
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This all stems from a wrong decision I made six months ago. I trusted a coach who claimed that he had been a member of the Hong Kong team and that his son had been admitted to a prestigious school under his own values education. Because of these "superficial evidences", I handed my sister over to him and became his first client, paying a four-digit monthly personal training fee. As a result, the coach took his sister to perform in major swimming pools and attracted a large number of parent customers within half a year.
My younger sister, who I spent more than three years training, learned to compete through swimming from an autistic state. At that time, she had already achieved excellent results in the 25-meter competition and laid a good foundation for the four postures. However, this coach destroyed all of her foundations in just half a year and relied solely on explosiveness.
In the end, after taking on more than 80 clients, the coach felt that he needed more time to coach children between the ages of 4 and 6, so he told me directly that he could no longer coach his sister. Only then did I suddenly realize that the world is really dangerous.
As a father, I failed to protect my daughter and allowed her to become a tool for others to make profits. What makes me heartbroken is that I made a wrong decision at that time. I didn't see his actions clearly and only listened to his words, which harmed my sister's progress during this period.
After I personally picked up my sister and trained her for a month, I understood the major problems she faced. Today's results don't mean they'll still be strong a year from now, and it's clear from the clip that long-term improvement is unlikely with this style of swimming.
Sometimes at the competition venue, I see other parents who are clients of that coach, and I feel very ashamed. Because I can see whether those children have made progress (based on data analysis). They stop after swimming 25 meters or 50 meters. This is because the starting point is wrong, and subsequent corrections require a lot of effort. I feel that this indirectly hurts the children of many families, and also affects a large group of babies who are just learning to swim in Hong Kong.
As a father, I must now take responsibility, redesign suitable training for my sister, and hand it over to valuable coaches so that she can embark on a longer road and face the bigger world.
Start afresh
What I often train my two daughters is not skills or physical fitness, but a strong mentality and attitude towards life.
In modern society, fast food culture is prevalent, such as learning to swim in 10 minutes, the 7-minute weight loss method, a daily weight loss pill, the three surefire investment skills, the five entrepreneurial promotion skills, etc.
However, in my mind, education, learning and sports cannot be eaten quickly. Sports is not about working hard to win, but about learning to face failure while working hard. Success is often just a fluke because everyone works hard.
Therefore, we have the courage to participate in the biggest competition in Hong Kong. So what if we lose? My children will learn to find the seeds of excellence in failure.
Some coaches only know how to pursue the first place in the 15-meter or 25-meter challenge that no one pays attention to, but do not work hard to pursue their dream Olympic tickets.
"It is better to plan for something great and fail than to succeed at nothing."
It is more meaningful to have the courage to pursue big goals even if you fail, than to succeed without pursuing any goals.
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As Katie ledecky said in her memoir "Just Add Water", swimming has always been about perseverance. Katie Ledecky, 27, won the London Olympic gold medal at the age of 15 and dominated the women's long-distance freestyle for 12 years. The book records the training details before the 2012 London Olympics, which is very interesting.
That’s it for today’s sharing. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me. See you next time, 88!
Benice Cheung