July 1999 Magazine Articles Big Little Kids Wayne Goldsmith Dear Wayne, I am always being told I am small for my age. I train really hard but other kids my age seem to do less training and beat me because they are bigger than me.
Swimmers mature at different rates.
Some swimmers at 13 years of age are almost fully mature and practically adult height. Others are much smaller and shorter at the same age and don't mature until their late teens. At senior elite level, where the training methods, aerobic fitness, strength, and other physiological attributes of the top swimmers are relatively similar, success will be determined by factors that are NOT related to growth. You can't control how tall you are-but you can control how great your technique is, how excellent your skills are, your attitude, and your desire to succeed. This might mean doing drills better than anyone else, streamlining further than everyone in your team, doing kick sets faster than anyone else can.