How to tailor your own swim training plan

Why do swimmers train in different ways, and what’s the best way for you to train?

In our December issue, we looked at why it’s beneficial to structure your pool swimming into training sessions and gave an example of what a simple pool training session might look like.

In brief, breaking your swim into several components, including a warmup, a main set (or sets) and a cool-down allows you to practice swimming at a range of intensities. It also gives you the opportunity to focus on swimming technique. Both of these are harder to do if you simply swim lengths at a steady pace during your pool time.

This issue, we want to explore training further and how you might design your training to suit your swimming ambitions.

One size doesn’t fit all

Swimming events and challenges range in distance from 25m to multiple miles, from a less than half a minute to several days. The physiological requirements of these are massively different. Sprinters need explosive force, strength, and technical skills. Long distance swimmers need efficiency, endurance and pace control. Middle distance swimmers need a mixture of both. Each has to train according to the demands of their event.

But they have one thing in common: all need excellent technique. And that technique is broadly similar whether you’re doing the 50m dash or swimming the English Channel. Sure, there are some differences. In front crawl, sprinters tend to use a straighter arm recovery, more of a windmill action, and a more powerful kick than longdistance swimmers. But the fundamentals of a horizontal position in the water, a streamlined body shape and an effective well-timed catch are universal. Similarly, breaststroke sprinters tend to bring their bodies higher out of the water and use a high stroke rate than long distance swimmers. But both need to be streamlined and efficient.

Technique first

Whatever you’re training for then, always dedicate part of your session to thinking about and working on your technique. This is achieved through concentrating on stroke focus points and specific swimming exercises. Sometimes it’s not practical to set aside a chunk of time for this (for example, if you’re swimming in a group or a crowded public session) so try to incorporate it into your warm-up and untimed parts of your session.

Sprint training

A sprinter needs to squeeze every drop of speed from their body. The effort required is intense but brief. Sprint training sessions typically include bursts of all-out efforts separated by long recovery periods, sometimes of several minutes. These might be active recovery, meaning slow swimming, or a complete rest.

Sprinters will also spend a lot of time working on pool skills: starts, turns, finishes and underwater dolphin kicking.

Speed endurance

For longer pool races and shorter open water events, it’s likely that you want to improve your capacity to swim at a fast (but not quite sprint) speed for a longer period. Typical training sessions break up a long distance of say 400 or 1500m into short sections. For example, you might break 400m into 8x50m and 1500m into 15x100m. You then swim fast but controlled for 50 or 100m, take a short break and repeat the required number of times. These are often done on a fixed “swim and rest” time. If you hear 8x50m off 50 seconds, it means you have 50 seconds to swim each 50m and rest. If 50m takes you 45 seconds, you have 5 seconds rest.

A good aim is to be able to complete these sets while holding the same speed throughout. This also trains your pace judgement and control.

Going long

Endurance is built through long steady swimming. While it might be useful to spend your entire time in the pool swimming continuously, there are benefits to breaking up your long training swims into, say blocks of 400m, even for breaks of a minute or less. This gives you a chance to check your pace and reset your thoughts, ensuring that you stay focused on swimming with good technique at the right intensity.

A bit of everything

The proportion of training you dedicate to these areas depends on what you’re working for. But do try to cover all the bases. Sprinters will benefit from some endurance sessions, and long-distance swimmers would do well to speed up their arms and legs occasionally. And everyone needs to work on technique.

Finally, although pool training can give a fantastic base to build on, remember that if you’re taking on an outdoor swimming challenge, you need to build open water skills too. These include coping with rough conditions, tolerating the cold, navigating and more. It’s sensible to do your training indoors in the winter but be ready to move some of it outside in spring.