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."
Swimming is about teaching children how to face failure, not arrogance or pride. Alex Fong: "My swimming club teaches you how to lose and how to face failure."
I vaguely recall seeing an interview clip of Alex Fong about swimming between children and parents. 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'd like to share my child's swimming journey over the past six months, as well as the various challenges and difficulties he faced. I hope that parents facing similar issues today can gain some insights and inspiration from my experience.
A little incident six months ago
About half a year ago, I heard a teacher share the story of a student who, after successfully transferring into a prestigious school he wanted, lost his motivation and enthusiasm for learning. He spent his days showing off his past certificates and became complacent about his past small successes, and from then on, he stopped striving for improvement.
In the end, the teacher persuaded the family and the student to withdraw from the program, all because their fundamental nature changed after entering the prestigious school... and they stopped putting in the effort to study.
In a 2018 interview, Alex Fong said that there is a spirit that will never change, which is the "spirit of sports". He said that when he opened the swimming school, he wanted his students to learn to face adversity, to learn to lose, and to be able to lose gracefully in order to win.
I deeply admire the teacher's attitude towards teaching, which is the same as Alex Fong's educational philosophy.
A swimming coach once told me, "Your daughter is 7 years old and swims 50 meters freestyle in 55 seconds, while others swim in 39 seconds. If I were you, I would have given up long ago. If you can't win first place in a swimming competition and have any presence, what's the point of swimming?"
A year later, my eldest daughter has improved her time from 55 seconds in the Lung Shing Cup to 39 seconds, while her strongest competitor has only improved from 39 seconds to 36 seconds. This coach's son, for the past year, has not participated in any major 50-meter races, including the Lung Shing Cup and the Sha Tin Cup.
Actually, I understand his character and educational philosophy very well - he wants to be powerful, he can never lose, and he can't afford to lose, so he can only show off his 25-meter achievement from back then, showing off that his son entered the most prestigious boys' and girls' schools, using the school's halo to make a fortune as a coach (the problem is that he himself doesn't know how to teach young children at all, and keeps telling the children to use their strength to the death).
My elder sister's Longcheng Cup
In May 2024, I watched several men's and women's 50-meter races with my sister. I noticed a common thread: many swimmers exerted all their strength in the first 25 meters of the 50-meter race, but struggled more and more in the last 25 meters, showing signs of exhaustion. This was an important detail.
If you frequently participate in competitions, pay attention to this. Many top players focus on explosive training in the early stages, but neglect the most important thing—mindset.
When children are learning to swim, they should never try to exert too much effort at the 25-meter mark, which will cause them to stop progressing after 50 meters. I have seen many coaches teaching this incorrect method to children aged 4 to 6.
I repeatedly reminded my sister to relax and maintain an average speed throughout the race, and not to overexert herself. In this race, you only need to swim 40 seconds.
In the race footage, it can be seen that the older sister didn't exert any effort at all, swimming naturally with the current. In contrast, her competitors clearly exerted too much force in the beginning, causing their speed to drop in the later stages, which in turn allowed the older sister to increase her average speed.
Let those competitors who have been swimming for 567 days continue their explosive performance; you can't catch up with them right now. What you need to do is stay comfortably behind them.
Winning early doesn't count as winning, because if you win at age 5, what about age 6? Age 8, 10, 12? By age 14, you might have already given up on going to the water every day.
As my children grow up in a stable environment, I hope they can do more fun things, both learning and playing.
As for swimming? When those top competitors give up during the challenge, I can swim for another 34,567 days. I'll still have plenty of options. Even if there's Swiss music playing then, I'll still have more control over my life.
This is the most important foundational lesson for growth—mindset training, because winning early doesn't mean you've truly won.
My sister's Shatin Cup
After sharing my older sister's experience with the Longcheng Cup, On the same day in May 2024, there was a Shatin Cup belonging to my younger sister in another box.
The Sha Tin Cup is considered the most representative competition in Hong Kong's children's swimming world. It is held annually, and the strongest age groups of children come to the Sha Tin Cup to compete and exchange ideas.
Although my younger sister won one silver and one bronze medal, my father was actually very upset when he saw her swimming technique.
Anyone who knows how to watch will see that the younger sister's swimming style is very forceful and doesn't go with the flow. To be honest, winning the competition is useless because this kind of swimming style won't improve much by the age of 7 or 8, unlike her older sister.
Anyone who knows how to swim will notice that the younger sister's swimming style is very forceful, but she doesn't swim with the current. To be honest, although she won the race, this kind of swimming style won't lead to significant improvement at the age of 7 or 8, unlike her older sister's situation.
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It all stemmed from a wrong decision I made six months ago. I trusted a coach who claimed to be a former member of the Hong Kong team and that his son had been admitted to a prestigious university under his pedagogical values. Based on this "superficial evidence," I entrusted my younger sister to him, becoming his first client and paying him a four-figure monthly private coaching fee. As a result, this coach took my sister to perform at various swimming pools, attracting a large number of parent clients within six months.
My younger sister, whom I had spent over three years training, learned to compete in swimming after overcoming her autism. At that time, she had already achieved excellent results in the 25-meter race and had a solid foundation in all four strokes. However, this coach destroyed all her foundations in just six months, forcing her to rely solely on explosive power.
Ultimately, after taking on over 80 clients, the coach felt he needed more time to coach children aged 4 to 6, so he told me directly that he could no longer coach my younger sister. It was then that I realized how treacherous the world truly is.
As a father, I failed to protect my daughter, allowing her to become a tool for others to profit. What pains me most is my wrong decision at the time; I failed to see through his actions and only listened to his words, which harmed my sister's progress during this period.
After I personally took my sister home and trained her for a month, I realized the major problem she faced. Today's results do not guarantee continued strength a year from now, and it's clear from the clips that this swimming style cannot be improved in the long run.
Sometimes at competition venues, I see other parents who are clients of that coach, and I feel incredibly ashamed. I can tell from the data analysis whether those children are making progress; if they stop after swimming 25 or 50 meters, it's because they started from the wrong point, and correcting that requires a lot of effort. I feel this indirectly harms many families' children and also affects a large group of toddlers in Hong Kong who are just learning to swim.
As a father, I must now take responsibility to redesign a suitable training program for my sister, hand her over to a qualified coach, so that she can go further and face a bigger world.
Starting anew
What I often train my two daughters in is not skills or physical fitness, but a strong mindset and attitude towards life.
In modern society, fast-food culture is prevalent, with examples such as learning to swim in 10 minutes, the 7-minute diet, a daily diet pill, three essential investment techniques, and five key entrepreneurial promotion skills.
However, in my heart, education, learning, and sports cannot be rushed. Sports are not about striving for victory, but about learning to face failure through effort. Success is often just a matter of luck, because everyone is working 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 first place in the 15-meter or 25-meter challenges that no one cares about, instead of striving for the dream of an Olympic ticket.
"It is better to fail in planning something great than to succeed in not planning anything at all."
Even if you fail in pursuing big goals, it is still more meaningful than succeeding without seeking any goals.
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As Katie Ledecky wrote in her memoir "Just Add Water," swimming has always been about perseverance. Katie Ledecky, now 27, won a gold medal at the London Olympics at the age of 15 and dominated women's long-distance freestyle for 12 years. Her book details her training before the 2012 London Olympics, which is a source of great interest.
That's all for today's sharing. Feel free to email me with any questions or comments . See you next time, bye-bye!
Benice Cheung