Competitive Training Components

All the competitive training groups will be working according to the Annual Programme, the components of which are pitched towards ability, age and maturation principles.

The main emphasis for the junior swimmers ages 8 – 13 will be endurance based with high quality technique in skills and strokes expected.  All distances and strokes will be covered and swimmers will be encouraged to complete the BAGCAT criteria.

The main emphasis of the senior club squad programme will again be endurance based with high quality technique and again all distances and strokes covered.  BAGCAT criteria will apply for 11 - 13 girls and 11 – 15 boys.

The emphasis for the Premier squad is performance related to Midland district and National levels - a strong endurance and technique base with event-specific training.  BAGCAT criteria will also apply.

In order to apply correct and uniform techniques a selection of drills and skills will follow through all the groups and some changes to current practices will take place.

All squad swimmers will learn and utilise:

Drills for improving stroke length
Drills for improving balance and floatation
Drills for improving specific stroke components
Speed drills
Pull using ankle bands
Sculling drills
Speed and endurance kick drills
Starts – speed of take off, entry position and u/w transition
Turns – acceleration into and out of turn, speed of rotation during the turn
Finishes – acceleration into the wall
Swimmers need to be thoroughly aware of using pool markers for competitive skills
All swimmers will be expected to do a minimum of 5 power kicks from a dive start for free and fly and off every turn.  The same applies to backstroke.

We will endeavour to ‘enforce’ that every turn is a perfect one and no turns are ever missed out - there is no excuse for poor skills.  Competition should be practised all the time during training sets. Demonstrations will be used whenever possible to ensure that every swimmer understands the concept of each skill or drill.

We will utilise this training policy for all our development groups.

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