As a swim dad watching since the 6-and-unders, I’ve noticed that some of the little kids just seem to have the swimming gene. Without any special or previous training, they look like a competitive swimmer and have a very good natural technique and can easily outpace the other 6-year-olds. As those kids get older, if they don’t put in the work to train, the other kids will eventually catch up to their ability and they won’t dominate the competition as much. But if they work at the training, they typically stay a top swimmer. However, the normal kids seem to show more overall improvement since they went from normal to competitive. The natural swimmer had less improvement since they went from untrained competitor to competitor.
I was wondering if you’ve experienced this in your coaching. As a spectator I’m not closely tracking the performance difference of the kids, so I’m not really sure of the quantitative difference of training. Have you had a group of 8-year-olds where some kids are normal and some are naturally gifted and they stick with training until 16? How would you compare the increase in performance between the two groups in that consistent training environment?