The Top Ten Training Tips for Swimming
By Wayne Goldsmith
1. A long-term plan is better than a short-term plan.
It is human nature to want success as soon as possible. It is possible to gain short-term success in swimming with a sharp and aggressive training program. This approach is often evident in age group teams where some youngsters are pushed hard and come up with good results in the 10-15 year age bracket. However for various reasons, many of these swimmers do not progress right through to senior ranks. A better approach is to provide young swimmers with a full range of skills and techniques that are essential at the highest level.
The Tip Top youth programs in Australia endeavour to provide a full “education” for swimmers, rather than act as a means of intensive training. The best senior swimmers are more likely to be those who train hard (and smart) with a high level of skill, rather than those who train hard or harder without the same level of skill.
The temptation for the coach (and the swimmer and parent for that matter) is to try and win all the time. This is particularly so of the so-called ‘early developer’. The physiological advantages of the early onset of maturation, like increased size and strength, often make early success come relatively easy and the swimmer seams to improve at every meet. In the long term, success will be significantly influenced by technical abilities. It is important with all young simmers, that technique is not compromised by promises of early short-term gains through excessive training.
2. Work on the weaknesses as well as the strengths.
One thing that often surprises observers of swimmers at the training camps and national/international level competition is sloppy technique, poor skills and weak strokes. While it is not possible for every swimmer to be equally proficient in the four strokes, it does raise the question of the importance of polishing up weaknesses in a swimmers profile.
Of course, there have been and always will be unique individuals who can achieve great success despite some aspect of their swimming that is not ‘lifted’ out of the textbook. All coaches can quote the textbook and identify weakness in their or others swimmers. Some coaches actually get around to target individual swimmers and work on their weaknesses. This may include different strokes, stroke patterns, pull, kick, drills, starts, turns, finishes and so on.
Where possible isolate a swimmer and work with them individually for 5 or 10 minutes. This approach of direct intervention may be more effective than a month of drills where swimmers can get lost amongst the crowd. With this approach, even for a squad 20 to 30 swimmers, everyone can receive some personal coaching and attention on a regular basis. It gives the coach a feel for how individuals are handling training and may provide valuable feedback for future planning.
3. Learn all skills before perfecting one.
Further to the theme of a full ‘education’ for young swimmers, it makes good sense to learn and develop all the necessary skills and strokes in swimming. It is tempting to categorise a talented young swimmer as a “specialist”. After all, the principle of specificity tells us that training for a specific activity is far more effective than doing a wide range of general training. The danger is that changes in limb length, body mass, strength, flexibility and coordination, can make it difficult to succeed at the higher levels in a given stroke, even though a young age group swimmer may have had a great deal of success in that stroke.
It is common sense to give all swimmers a strong background in every stroke, emphasising good technique in all aspects of the sport and to facilitate all round development. Swimmers generally leave the sport because they stop winning, improving and/or enjoying the training and competition. By limiting a young swimmer to one stroke or one event, and therefore limiting their options in the long term, a coach may be risking their swimmer’s involvement in the sport.
4. Have a flexible plan and attitude.
Some people are their own worst enemy. Do not become a slave to your training program. While it is the expectation of coaches and swimmers that the training program should be completed as written, there will be occasions when it is prudent to modify, curtail or even delete a drill, session or training day. Sometimes swimmers have to be tough and go that extra step when they would be happy to get out early and make a fast exit to the spa and/or change room.
Many coaches (or their reputations at least!) are renowned for being authoritarian in nature. However you have to be smart enough to know when to be the ‘good guy’ (or gal). Continually flogging tired swimmers up and down the pool with deteriorating technique is not likely to be of any real benefit in the long term. A practical way to monitor this is to periodically check stroke counts and stroke rates during a session. For example, if a swimmer is taking more strokes to complete each 50m in a set it may be one indicator that fatigue is catching up with them.
A good rule of thumb is to TRAIN HARD, REST HARD. In other words, if you work your swimmers hard and push them to their limits, is smart enough to realise that their bodies adapt to these training loads when allowed the opportunity to rest and recover. Massage, good nutrition, flexibility work, sleep, cross training and relaxation techniques can all aid in the recovery process.
5. Record work done and not just the plan.
Do knowledge and information make for a powerful position, or is it knowledge of where to find the information that is the key? Coaches are invariably good planners. They have to cope with all sorts of details, swimmers, training sessions and club programs. Every coach has a training diary, but many only list the workouts and little else. A better approach is to record supplementary information such as attendance, injuries, training information (times, splits, heart rates, stroke counts etc) and other important details.
This process is most easily undertaken with a computer and there are many coaches who couldn’t spell computer not long ago who are now pretty handy at finding their way around on a PC or Mac! ASCA does run computer courses and is a useful source of information on the application of computer software and technology to coaching. In terms of monitoring the progress of your swimmers (and your training program), it is extremely valuable to know whether they are, for example, holding faster interval or repeat times in longer sets, can maintain a good stroke rate and count, and have improved their heart rate at a given submaximal swimming speed.
The top priority of the ASI Sports Science Coordinator is to collect data on the performances and testing programs of national team members and Tip Top team swimmers. By collecting and collating the data, Don Talbot and Bill Sweetenham are then able to track the development of the team members and assess the training status of swimmers across Australia. This allows them to work with coaches on strategies for individual swimmers, plan national training camps, development programs, and a range of other functions not possible without the home coaches keeping good records on training and testing.
Collecting and analysing data on testing can provide feedback on the effectiveness of your training program, identify talented and tired swimmers and give you direction for future planning.
6. Variety in speed is the key.
Untrained or novice swimmers always get stuck in one gear. They do not have the fitness or experience to train at the full range of speeds.
Buddy Portier, Swimming Coaching Coordinator at the Victorian Institute of Sport, recently related a story of his visit to Myanmar (Burma) late last year. They have many keen swimmers and coaches, but are hampered by a very basic level of development in the sport. After some instruction at the start of the first clinic, the swimmers enthusiastically punched into a series of 100m repeats. Irrespective of the instruction relating to speed (‘easy’, ‘moderate’ or ‘fast’) they would swim about the same moderate-fast pace (probably around threshold speed) with the same heart rate (160 bpm). They had no concept of pacing (this was not helped by the absence of pacing clocks at the pool). Some of our younger swimmers also fall into this trap.
Swimmers should be encouraged and educated to vary and control their speed. This particularly applies to swimming at slow speeds with good technique – this is often more difficult than swimming at fast to maximal speed. It does take a lot of time and patience before swimmers can properly perform relaxed but technically correct low-intensity aerobic swimming.
The body responds more efficiently to the stress of training when it is introduced gradually and sufficient time is provided for recovery. As swimmers develop and gain in fitness and strength, it is important to vary the stress placed on the body to ensure continuing improvement. It is particularly important with senior swimmers who have many years of training behind them.
7. Strength is important but not overriding.
Strength is an important facet of swimming, but sometimes its relative importance gets lost in the equation. One consequence of age and training, particularly in older male swimmers, is that they find it harder and harder to make gains in specific swimming fitness, and relatively easier to make gains in the strength area. Eventually there is a trade-off where increased muscle size and strength is offset by increased drag and reduced streamlining. A more important and often overlooked aspect is the elasticity of muscle.
In terms of strict physiology, strength is designed as the maximal force that a muscle can generate in a single contraction (ie. The 1 RM or repetition maximum), however we know that swimming, even the short and explosive 50m events, require many contractions, and thus attributes like muscular endurance, power and elasticity become important. Strength training is often misunderstood as being the process of bulking up and developing muscle mass.
Strength training can take many forms: running up a hill or steps, doing body weight resistance work such as push ups, sit ups, dips and chin ups, medicine ball exercises, band work and rubbers. The bottom line is to have a well-balanced dry-land training program that develops strength, power, muscular endurance and flexibility.
8. Nutrition underpins performance as well as body composition.
This tip is for the young male swimmer who thinks, erroneously, that they can eat what they like, as only females have to worry about making weight and skinfolds. It is true that the metabolism of young adolescent males is “turned up” to facilitate the processes of physical maturation and development. They can burn up kilojoules at a great rate and require seemingly a mountain of food to keep everything going. However the quality of diet is important for all athletes, irrespective of age, sex and size.
A high fat – low carbohydrate diet will inevitably result in carbohydrate-depleted muscles and a decease in the quality of training. Alas the exuberant young male may eat more junk food than your average American high school, have low skinfolds, but may tire and struggle through longer quality training sets. We have seen more than once, young males make fun of their female counterparts, who have a better diet, but because of gender differences, have higher skinfolds. Quite often the young lady with the better diet but higher skinfolds will train and perform at better level than the cheeky young male.
Good swimmers do some things right, some of the time. Very good swimmers do most things right, most of the time. Great swimmers do everything right all, of the time.
9. Beware of ineffective mileage.
There is no magic formula regarding the winning training mileage. While training volume is an important consideration it is not an overriding one.
Many coaches and swimmers when asked about training will comment “I’ve done 60 km this week”. If another coach or swimmer says “I’ve done 70 km this week”, everyone assumes that they are working harder. It is the intensity and variation, and not simply the volume, that are important contributors of training stimulus.
The 60 km team may have had a balanced program with good variation in speed, an emphasis on technique and racing skills, and an effective recovery program. The 70 km team may have dome more km but all at one pace, with sloppy technique, little race skills training and no recovery program. It’s not hard to figure out which team will have the better chance of success. Another trap is to round off training volume because it is tidier or easier to work with. Making a program 70 km instead of 64 lm or 67 km just to make the numbers even serves no real purpose.
10. Don’t be afraid to work in the taper.
Swimmers often rejoice at the thought of the taper in the weeks prior to a big meet. They assume that all the hard work has been done and it is time to put the feet up, rest, and get ready for some fast swimming. This is a big mistake. The most important consideration is that the taper is an active rather than a passive process. Just sitting back and waiting for some speed to come along is a common mistake made by both swimmers and coaches.
The taper involves the reduction of training vole and sharpening of speed. The training program must be designed to transfer the physiological benefits of a long and arduous training program into specific performance improvements. This is best achieved by a series of steps or microcycles in the first 10-14 days of the taper period. Each microcycle has a specific goal of increasing speed and power with a concomitant reduction in residual fatigue.
It is important to take care of fluctuations in individual performance and psychology during the taper. One method used by some of the top coaches is to practice the first days of the taper earlier in the training cycle. For example, if on a 12 week cycle, practice the first three or four days of the taper on the first three or four days of a recovery week. That way the swimmers know what is coming and the taper holds nothing surprising or novel.