Questions to Ask Swimmers

The questions

Open any question to see why it works.

1. 1

   How old were you when you started, and whose idea was it?

   Swimming is one of the few sports people are put into for safety reasons before anyone thinks about competing. Whether they were signed up at five or chose it at fourteen shapes how they talk about everything else.

2. 2

   What are your events, and did you pick them or did a coach?

   Most swimmers are sorted into events by a coach reading their build and their times, not by preference. Asking which one they would swim if it were entirely up to them usually gets a different answer.

3. 3

   What does a normal week look like in season?

   Ask for the week rather than the hours, because the number of sessions matters less than the doubles, the early mornings and the fact that most of it happens before school or work. The shape of the week is the sport.

4. 4

   What time is your first practice, and what time do you actually get up?

   The gap between the two is a small honest window into how much of this is habit and how much is dread. Follow up with what they do in that gap, because the routine is usually strange and specific.

5. 5

   What is going through your head during a race?

   This is where sprinters and distance swimmers stop sounding alike. A fifty is mostly one thought or none at all, while a distance swim has counting, splitting and a running argument with yourself, and the contrast is worth drawing out.

6. 6

   What is the set your coach gives that everybody dreads?

   Every squad has one named set that has become a piece of local folklore. Getting the description is entertaining, and how they talk about surviving it tells you where they sit in the group.

7. 7

   Does staring at a black line get boring, or does your head go somewhere?

   Swimmers spend hours a week with no music, no scenery and nobody to talk to, which is unusual among sports. Some describe it as the calmest part of their day and some describe it as the worst, and both answers are honest.

8. 8

   What separates a good practice from a bad one for you?

   Notice whether the answer is about times on the clock or about how the water felt. Swimmers talk about feel more than most athletes, and the ones who only measure are often the ones struggling.

9. 9

   What do you do after a bad swim, in the first ten minutes and then the next morning?

   Splitting the timeframe gets past the rehearsed answer about moving on. The ten minute answer is usually about the warm-down pool and being left alone, and the morning answer is about whether it is really finished.

10. 10

    What do people misunderstand about swimming?

    Expect something about it not being a team sport, or about the hours nobody sees. The complaint they reach for first is a good indication of what they have had to explain most often to people outside the pool.

11. 11

    What does taper feel like?

    Cutting training right before a meet leaves people restless, oddly heavy and convinced they have lost fitness, which is the part outsiders never hear about. Ask whether they trust it or fight it.

12. 12

    How does a swimmer get injured, given there is no impact?

    Shoulders, mostly, and it happens through repetition rather than a single moment. The answer often reveals a stroke change, a period of overtraining, or a coach who did or did not listen.

13. 13

    How do relays feel different from swimming for yourself?

    A relay is the only time a swimmer can lose it for other people, and most of them will say they swim faster because of it. Ask about the handover, which is the part that actually gets rehearsed.

14. 14

    What is your routine before you step up, and what happens if it gets interrupted?

    Pool routines are elaborate and very fixed: the same warm-up, the same order, the same spot behind the blocks. What happens when a heat gets moved forward tells you how much of the routine is superstition.

15. 15

    Have your times ever gone backwards, and what did you do about it?

    Plateaus and regressions are common and rarely discussed, especially through growth spurts and stroke rebuilds. Whether they blamed themselves, the programme or their body is the useful part of the answer.

16. 16

    What is your relationship with the team, in a sport where you race alone?

    Swimmers train together for years and then compete individually, which produces a specific mix of closeness and quiet comparison. Ask who they warm up next to and who they check the results sheet for.

17. 17

    What has a coach said to you that you have never forgotten?

    It is almost never a motivational speech. It tends to be one short sentence after a bad swim, and the fact they can still quote it exactly says a lot about the relationship.

18. 18

    How has what you eat changed since you started?

    The training load makes swimming one of the few sports where the notable thing is quantity rather than restriction, particularly for teenagers. Ask what the morning of a meet looks like, which is a different problem entirely.

19. 19

    Do you want to keep swimming past this stage, and what would that take?

    For school-age swimmers this means recruiting, times and honest conversations about level. Listen for whether they are describing their own ambition or somebody else's plan for them.

20. 20

    If you stopped tomorrow, what would you miss and what would you not miss at all?

    The second half is where you get honesty, because it gives permission to complain. Nearly everyone misses the water and the people, and nearly nobody misses the alarm.