Sports
Ricardo Prado on Youth Swimming Challenges in Schools
The Olympic medalist details his training routine at an international school, grassroots technical gaps, and future plans.
In an interview with Stemma Sports, Olympic medalist Ricardo Prado detailed how school swim training works and highlighted a decline in technical fundamentals among younger generations. He also expressed his desire to return to youth coaching at major swim clubs.
With an illustrious career in world pools, Olympic medalist Ricardo Prado has found a new coaching format on the pool deck of a school. Working in the after-school program of an international school in São Paulo, he leads groups of youth divided into Middle School (ages 11 to 14) and High School (up to age 18). Although the students' primary focus is on academics and future undergraduate studies abroad, the program offers a structured competitive experience.
The highlight of the calendar is an annual competition that brings together international schools from across South America—with delegations traveling from cities such as Curitiba, Buenos Aires, Lima, Santiago, Quito, and throughout Uruguay. Prado travels with a squad of about 30 athletes to take on five intense stages, totaling 20 relay events and an average of up to 11 swims per athlete over the course of the meet.
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The loss of technical fundamentals in grassroots training
Despite the school's state-of-the-art facilities—which feature an indoor pool, electronic timing board, and a 400-meter track—Ricardo Prado notices a significant shift in the technical quality of children entering the sport. According to the former world record holder, it is common to coach affluent students who train at high-end fitness clubs yet still have not mastered all four competitive strokes.
For Prado, this gap reflects a transformation in the youth swim instruction market. In the past, former competitive swimmers made up the core of swim school instructors, ensuring the natural transmission of stroke mechanics and feel for the water. With the generic professionalization of these roles, many instructors teach without prior competitive swimming experience, ultimately limiting students' technical development to basic freestyle.
Weekly frequency, pullouts, and streamlining
Another major challenge in school training is competition with other sports (such as basketball, soccer, and volleyball) alongside low weekly attendance. While Prado is on deck five days a week, most students attend only two or three sessions, with no weekend practices. This spacing between workouts impairs the retention of fundamental mechanics.
The coach points out that elements such as the streamline (the hydrodynamic body line during starts and turns) and the underwater breaststroke pullout require consistent repetition. When an athlete trains only at the start of the week and spends multiple days out of the water, motor memory for these fundamentals fades, requiring continuous corrections in class.
Plans for club youth divisions
Although he appreciates the lighter routine of the school environment and the absence of the extreme pressure experienced during his competitive and administrative years, Ricardo Prado revealed that he misses the club competitive scene. His interest, however, is not focused on senior elite performance, but rather on developmental categories such as junior divisions, where he sees greater opportunity to make a lasting impact on swimmers' development.
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