Courtesy: Elizabeth Wickham
What do Mozart, Benjamin Franklin, Tim Cook and Oprah Winfrey have in common with our swimmers? They were or are early risers—getting up before dawn—just like our kids wake up for morning practice.
Leaving the house in the dark at 5 a.m. to drive kids to the pool doesn’t make my list of favorite moments as a swim mom. Fortunately, I shared the duty with other parents and eventually, the kids got old enough to drive themselves. With numerous studies stating that teens need more sleep and school start times should be shifted later to accommodate their body clocks, are we harming our kids with morning practices? If you look at the benefits of morning practice, in my opinion, no. If practices are limited to two or three mornings a week, they can actually help our children.
In addition to improving their swimming, here are three ways kids benefit with morning practice:
ONE
Organizational skills. Our kids need to be in their suits with swim bags packed with gear, towel, shampoo and conditioner way before 6 a.m. Plus, school backpacks must be ready to go with homework, books, lunches and school clothes. Preparation has to start the night before. Most likely this will keep them from becoming a kid who prints out an essay minutes before school only to fight with a printer jam or discover it’s out of ink. They’ll want to get homework done and not procrastinate so they can fall into bed early.
TWO
Early riser habit. Many successful people are early risers from CEOs to artists. They find early mornings to be conducive to quiet time to think, be creative and to get work done without interruption. Our kids benefit by being introduced to early mornings as teens, which may become a habit throughout their swim careers and beyond.
THREE
Accomplishment. Our kids have tasted success before the sun rises. They fought against a desire to stay in bed and won. They’ve finished a demanding workout all while their classmates are still under the covers. This feeling of accomplishment feeds into their earned self-esteem. Yes, they may be tired, but they’ll feel confident and empowered.
What are your experiences—pro or con—with morning practices?
Elizabeth Wickham volunteered for 14 years on her kids’ club 
team as board member, fundraiser, newsletter editor and “Mrs. meet manager.” She’s a writer with a bachelor of arts degree in editorial journalism from the University of Washington with a long career in public relations, marketing and advertising. Her stories have appeared in newspapers and magazines including the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Parenting and Ladybug. You can read more parenting tips on her blog.
I am so sick of those kids morning practices. My daughter is 10, and should arrive school for morning practice at 7:am , even that she has to get up in the dark in the cold Toronto winter at 5:30am. School have this arrangement from G3, that means they start this from age of 8. lots parents don’t work, so they can afford this style of life, and for the teacher, they are adult, they will need far less sleep than a 10 years old, at least mines need 10.5 sleep in a normal day. I cant image that she went to bed at 7pm, it is just not normal, kids also need family life too, all in all is… Read more »
My son was up at 4am, out the door by 4:15am on deck at 4:40am, swam until 6:30am, headed to school, HS practice after school then homework and bed by 8pm. When he was younger and I had to drive him, I hit the gym at 5am. He loved it and is now swimming in college. He learned great time management skills and learned to prioritize. He did afternoon practices until he was 14 then switched to mornings by his choice.
Like anything difficult in life that is worthwhile, make the adjustments and reap the rewards. Kids are more resilient than most give them credit for.
Do the math. There simply aren’t sufficiently many hours in the day to: get the recommended duration of sleep, attend HS, eat (at least three) healthy meals, conscientiously complete assigned homework, and do doubles (especially if you have to commute any significant distance to/from practice. Even if the commute is just 30 minutes, that adds 2 HOURS per day.) What happens? Sleep gets sacrificed. From my observation, happy, healthy kids that achieve academically and do doubles are home schooled. Oh, if swim practice could count as Phys. Ed. class that would help, but that’s against state law here. Don’t even get me started on that!
I agree no 12-yo should be swimming at 4:30 am, but neither should teenagers! Unfortunately it is a common practice for seniors (in our case kids 15 and older) to have 4:30 am swim practices! Not enough pool space could be one reason, but the starting time of most high schools is just too early. Many studies have shown that teenagers tend to be nigh owls and later school start time is more beneficial to their academic studies as well as their physical well-being.
In my experience, I believe doing doubles can be beneficial. However, one thing I haven’t seen come up in any of these discussions is one key difference I found between high school and college swimming. In high school, we would go from morning practice to school all day, and then afternoon practice. In college, it was often possible to get in a nap sometime between morning and afternoon practice. I am interested in hearing thoughts on this.
This is yet another problem USRPT would solve. A single 1.5 hour practice in the afternoon would be enough for kids until they reached very high levels. Morning practice is overrated. Yardage is overrated.
I did doubles during the school year in high school (my parents wouldn’t let me start before then even though my coach wanted me to), and I feel asleep in school every day. Luckily, I wasn’t challenged much academically in high school and could get by even with sleeping in class. I ended up plateauing during high school and was a major head case, so frankly I probably could have benefited from stopping doubles and taking the intensity down a notch. I think doubles in the summer and during holiday breaks are great, but I agree that they aren’t worth the fatigue during the school year. Save them for college when you can nap liberally during the day.
I think it affects people differently, I definitely wouldn’t be as confident at the end of the season without doubles
there’s no way morning practice ISN’T correlated with depression