Part 2 explores my reflections working as a group coach and helping eight different swimmers over the seven days of competition.

Group Coaching at a Major Championship

At a long championship, some coaches can spend the week with one or two swimmers. There’s dead time built into that - a little training, then a lot of waiting for races to arrive. However, coaching a bigger group of swimmers is the opposite experience entirely.

At these Europeans, each of the eight swimmers I was assigned were racing heats, semis, finals, relays, some combination of all four. There was rarely a quiet session. Everyone needed something.

The biggest task becomes organisation. Before the competition started I built a detailed championship map. Who was swimming and when; which races were medal chances; which sessions had relays. On top of that when everyone was training.

Without that helicopter view, you get lost. Not on day one. But moving into day three or four, when the meet stops feeling like separate days and starts feeling like one long cycle of racing and recovery, things start to blur.

My role in each session settled into a rhythm:

• Connect with swimmers before warm-up

• Time around the pool, listening and watching

• Support through warm-up

• Walk them to the call room

• Watch the race

• Debrief

• Transition them into whatever’s next

With multiple swimmers racing in close proximity, clashes are inevitable. That’s where support coaches really help. There were sessions where walking one swimmer to the call room meant I couldn’t be at another’s warm-up - and that’s where the support coach steps in.

What held it together was communication. Timelines planned, needs discussed and updates flowing. Messages moved back and forth all day about warm-ups, race prep, and whatever was emerging in real time.

The swimmers only ever see the finished version. What they don’t see is everything that had to happen behind it for group coaching at this level to work.

What that map doesn’t show is what it’s like to hold eight storylines in your head. All moving at different speeds, many of them medal chances, none of them prepared to wait for you to catch up.

By day four or five that can feel like keeping eight plates spinning. I don’t think you can prepare for that feeling - you just learn, each championship, how to manage it a little more effectively.

Communication is Everything

If I had to pick one theme from the whole championship, it’s this one. Running a team of 35 swimmers and a large coaching staff means everyone needs to know where the information lives and where the conversations happen.

For us that was mostly the Teamworks app - swimmer groups, staff groups, documents, calendars, schedules, all in one place. The challenge with any system like that is consistency. The moment information starts living in two places instead of one, something gets missed. For anything ‘group’ it was Teamworks.

Alongside this, plenty of individual coach conversations ran through WhatsApp - sometimes it was just faster when two people needed to move something quickly.

Every day we held a coaches meeting. These weren’t just results debriefs. They covered performances, relay selections, swimmer welfare, logistics - whatever was affecting the team that day.

Something I value in these meetings is coaches being willing to challenge each other properly. Different opinions, pushed on when the debate needs it - good decisions are usually better for having more than one perspective in the room. But once the discussion is done, the expectation is everyone gets behind the agreed direction and moves forward together.

Championship environments are sensitive places. Pressure’s high, emotions run close to the surface, there are plenty of opinions. Without strong communication, that can turn to chaos fast.

Staying Connected with Home Coaches

Part of the job that’s become more important to me over time is staying close to the home coaches through the competition. At these championships I was directly responsible for three swimmers whose day-to-day coaching happens with someone else.

I wanted those coaches to know their swimmers were being looked after.

My communication style is frequent, but I try not to overdo it. Each morning I ask myself the question - does this coach need an update today? If yes, it’s usually a voice note.

Voice notes suit me: quick, personal, and they carry more detail than a text does. I’m not sure that’s everyone’s preferred way to hear from a coach - but with the pace of a championship, it’s what works for me.

Depending on the swimmer, that might cover:

• How they’re presenting and training

• Feedback on races

• Technical or tactical observations

• Psychological observations

• Any important conversations we’ve had

There were times I asked the home coach for advice - years of history with a swimmer can offer something I simply don’t have access to in a week.

On one occasion I asked a home coach to deliver a piece of important feedback themselves, because I knew it would land better coming from them.

Championship coaching should never become ownership. The swimmer belongs to a bigger support network than the coach they are standing behind the blocks with that week. I hope every home coach I worked with came away feeling informed and respected through the process.

Staying Connected Across a Long Championship

One of the hidden challenges of a seven-day meet is staying connected with swimmers whose schedules look completely different from each other. Some race every day. Some race early and again late. Some don’t race until the final day.

Freya Colbert is relatively easy to stay connected with - you see her a lot through individual rounds and relays.

Max Litchfield is a different challenge every time, and rarely the same challenge twice. At these Europeans he raced day one, won bronze in the 400 IM, and then didn’t race again until day six - a long gap to manage well.

At the Paris Olympics he raced day one and was done. At previous World Championships he raced on the final day, with a long stretch before it. Three championships, three completely different versions of challenge.

Part of the coaching job becomes helping a swimmer use that dead space properly, whichever shape it takes. For Max at these Europeans, it was enjoying the bronze, then hitting a reset - a day or two to relax and recharge, then deliberately building motivation back up in time for the next event.

Mental batteries need to be full when that event arrives. For swimmers going through this for the first time, it can be a real challenge. People assume a championship is exciting every minute of every day. The truth is swimmers spend long stretches waiting. Waiting drifts into boredom. Boredom has a way of drifting into overthinking, and overthinking can have a way of finding its way into a performance.

I personally find the swimmer who races only once, on the final day, the biggest challenge. You’ve spent the whole week as a coach trying to hold day-one energy. The competition’s been running hot around you. Your attention is naturally pulled toward whoever’s racing in front of you each day. Yet you need to stay connected with them regardless.

That swimmer deserves exactly the same level of connection as everyone else. Lose that through the pace of the meet, and it can be difficult to have them ready when it matters, on the last day.

The Four-Minute Walk to the Call Room

One of the more interesting parts of this championship was the walk from the prep area to the call room. Around four minutes. Doesn’t sound like much. It is.

Some coaches walk with their swimmers. Some don’t. I always have. Part of me occasionally wonders if it would be simpler to deliver the last message and let them walk alone. But I still make the walk most times.

Four minutes is a long time if neither of you knows what to say. You don’t want awkward silence. You also don’t want to spend the whole walk repeating technical instructions the swimmer has already heard many times before.

Over the years I’ve learned those minutes are best spent talking light, not going deep on the race ahead. I always go in with somewhere to start the conversation, or a couple of questions in my back pocket. Stories. Humour. Something random. Something that gets a smile onto the swimmer’s face.

One of the stranger four-minute conversations I had at these championships was about pet cats - I came out of it knowing both their names and exactly how much the swimmer loved them. That walk was never really about performance advice. It’s about the swimmer staying relaxed, smiling and knowing you’re their belief partner for the next few minutes.

As we get close to the call room, I make a shift. Eye contact. A positive tone. A final reminder, piece of belief, and a fist bump. Then they’re gone.

The Window for Feedback

I always notice at big championships how receptive swimmers become at key moments. When a swimmer believes something significant is possible - a final, a medal, a relay result - they get more attentive than at almost any other point in the year.

They listen differently. They take advice in. They lean into the process. That’s an open window. The coaching skill is being concise inside it. One technical point. One tactical note. One psychological reminder. Not ten things - one thing. The same is true after the race, win or lose.

Timing matters as much as content. Sometimes feedback can go straight in. Sometimes the swimmer isn’t ready to hear it yet. Twice at these championships I deliberately waited until the next day and debriefed over a coffee - congratulations first, then a more specific conversation about the race and advice on what I felt progress at the next level really looked like.

Feedback delivered at the right moment can stay with a swimmer for a long time. What they do with it after that is always up to them. But recognising when the window has opened - and having the nerve to step through it - is the coach’s job, every time.

Thanks for reading Beyond the Blocks! :-)

There’s a suitcase open on our bedroom floor right now, half packed for Turkey, and every time I walk past it I feel something close to relief. Not because the season is over. Swimming is never over. But because, for the first time in two weeks, I think I’ve actually earned the right to close the lid on it.

The Tank Runs Empty

I’ve learned something about myself over the years of doing this job: I am no good to anyone in the week straight after a major championship. I’ve worked hard at getting better at it.

After Tokyo 2021 I was particularly bad. I had not accounted for the fall out of emotion after my first Olympics as a coach. But I’m now genuinely better than I used to be, post Paris 2024 one of my personal goals was to walk back through the front door and be able to continue life as normal – rather than be stuck deep in a hole for a couple of months like I was after Tokyo. But there’s still something about a long championship meet that hollows you out in a way you don’t notice until it’s over.

While you’re in it, you’re running on a different tank entirely. A reserve one. It only seems to switch on when the racing starts, and it carries you through the excessively long days, through a level of focus and emotional investment that would be unsustainable anywhere else. And then the meet ends, you get home, and you realise that the tank is bone dry.

That was me, the week after this European Championships in Paris. Waking up feeling like I’d aged overnight. Catching myself in the mirror and noticing the bags under my eyes properly for the first time. I found myself taking these long, slow breaths for no reason at all, like my body was quietly trying to offload the last couple of weeks – as if something it hadn’t had time to process yet.

I wasn’t unhappy. Not acutely stressed. A little numb maybe. But I definitely was very drained, in a way that’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t sat through 7-9 days straight watching eight swimmers you are coaching try to find the best version of themselves especially as the competition gets dragged into deep waters late in the meet.

Going straight from that into a family holiday has never sat right with me. I still have swimming running through my head - the highs, the near-misses, a hundred small conversations still replaying - and there’s a tension in that, a kind of annoying presence, that only really fades once I’ve had a proper week back at home first.

I mentioned this to a coach I respect enormously, Ian Armiger (legend of Loughborough Swimming), and he told me something that’s stuck with me since. He’d spoken to people in the music industry about what happens to bands after a long tour - how a lot of them don’t go straight home. They build in a few days of decompression first. A deliberate gap between the noise of the tour and the quiet of ordinary life.

I haven’t stopped thinking about that. Because right now, when I walk back through my own front door after a championship, I’m physically there long before I’m actually there.

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Through the European Championships I collected my thoughts daily. They were random but since I have returned from the competition I have worked them into a number of categories.

1. General reflections around myself through the competition

2. Some of the things I noticed through the Meet itself

3. Reflections as a Group Coach through the 7 days of competition

I plan to share these over a few articles. This post focuses on the reflections around myself through the competition.

Walking, Talking & Contributions to Team Meetings

One of the simplest habits I’ve come to rely on is walking and talking to make sense of each day. At times with the pace of the competition it can be difficult to find that space each day – but I managed it as I find it clears my mind and helps me retain focus.

The questions I often ask myself when pacing 5km.

• What happened?

• How did each swimmer perform?

• How can I help them go better in their next race?

It sounds obvious, but the discipline of doing it every single day, out loud with yourself helps.

Each day post the ‘heats’ as AGB staff we sit down and talk about our journey with the swimmers through the Finals the night before and the Heats that morning.

I find a thorough coaches’ debrief really valuable. My own practice of collecting thoughts is often shared in this meeting. I always find listening to the other coaches a valuable learning experience. For me this daily meeting encourages me to continue reflecting even when I tiredness creeps during the middle of the Meet.

Reflecting widely and narrowing concisely about what I actually want to report back to the coaching team is a critical part of me developing as an arena coach because in most cases, we mostly discuss the physiological and physical side of training: periodisation, how to get athletes into condition, how they have come to peak.

But the ability to win, to optimise performance, often sits in championship coaching itself - and there’s not a lot written about how to actually do that well.

These meetings offer some great insights into this area.

Curiosity Over Answers

For the first time at this competition, we were challenged as coaches to work on something specific throughout the meet - and I found it genuinely useful to keep anchoring back to these points during the competition.

I’ll admit the initial email, when asked to think about the two focus areas and then communicate them to leadership team before the start of the Meet did have me rolling my eyes. But once I stopped, went for a walk and actually approached the task properly, I found two points that I thought could really help me.

The first was this: in the flurry of a championship meet, I can turn into a coach who just gives solutions - who hands out opinions to coaches and athletes because time is short and the competition is fast. That approach isn’t always the best. So my focus was to bring more curiosity into conversations - listen more, lead with questions rather than always having the answer.

The second was to be more pliable in how I coach, depending on who’s in front of me. At this competition I was managing eight athletes with a realistic shot at the podium - different characters, different personalities.

Five athletes I coach day-to-day in Loughborough; three I was working with for the first time, or close to it, some considerably younger than the athletes I usually coach. And naturally, there are staff you gravitate to and staff you don’t.

So a real focus for me was making sure the athletes I wasn’t as familiar with and the staff I don’t naturally gravitate to - got the very best version of me, especially during the middle of the Meet when challenge is high.

I actually requested a check-in with a member of the leadership team halfway through the meet - half an hour over coffee, just to revisit these two points and talk through where I felt I’d done well and where I could do better.

The honest self-assessment I had been working on since Tokyo 2021, into Paris 2024, had been:

• Resilience through competition

• Managing my emotional bandwidth better

• And being a better husband and dad when I come home from something as consuming as an Olympics.

I got to really like this exercise at the Europeans - it kept me honestly checking in on how I was going about my coaching.

Flattening the Wave

It’s common for a coach to feel real highs and lows across a championship meet - how you flatten that wave matters to how you move through it.

Different coaches operate at different emotional levels. Some naturally run on a narrow emotional bandwidth and are, in a way, better suited to conserving energy across the meet.

Most, in my experience, run wider - capable of being elated or devastated depending on the result. I’m one of the wide-bandwidth coaches, and it’s something I’ve had to work hard over the years to narrow, or at least manage, during competition.

At a meet as high-standard as this Europeans, you’re likely going to feel more lows than highs - that’s just the nature of it. Not everyone reaches the podium every time, and the feeling of what could have been can really challenge you.

Having experienced more than a few fourth places at Olympic level myself, I feel very qualified in knowing exactly what that feeling can do to you, and where it can pull you.

It’s particularly interesting in sessions when as a coach you have two or three finals back to back. There were multiple points at this Europeans where coaches on our team found themselves in this situation, all with athletes in genuine medal contention and the rollercoaster that creates can be draining.

A swimmer wins a medal, but you know as the coach the performance could have been better - which might have meant an even better result.

Or, on the flip side, a swimmer produces a lifetime best and just misses the podium. The feeling from a lifetime best that qualifies them onto a team versus a lifetime best that narrowly misses out on an International podium can leave a coach at completely opposite ends of the emotional continuum.

String enough of these moments together and it’s enough to exhaust any coach - especially with more days of competition to run.

Learning to flatten that wave, to park both the highs and the lows and move on, is an important skill to develop.

Day-One Energy

Stamina and motivation are two of the most important characteristics a coach needs for a Championship Meet that runs seven to nine days.

There’s a “day-one energy” mentality required - the stamina to approach every single day like it’s the first. Coaching continuously across a meet that long, managing a full group of athletes, is tiring - physically and mentally.

The strategies each coach uses to stay energised will be personal to them, but for me, mental toughness and resilience are the two non-negotiables.

The expectation I hold for athletes - particularly those multi-eventing - I hold for myself:

• How you turn up each day

• How prepared you are to endure

• How much you’re prepared to give as you move through the meet

That often plays a critical part in how successful the meet is overall.

It’s something that’s genuinely difficult to prepare for until you’ve lived it. I’ve learned it through experience, and improved getting my mindset right going into, and through, competitions like this.

A Team Coach

As I’ve become more experienced working at championship meets, it’s really dawned on me how important it is to think of yourself as a team coach rather than an individual coach.

It can be difficult to manage that concept - when you’re steering the athletes assigned to your own group, it’s very easy to get wrapped up in just those swimmers.

But success at a competition isn’t just about the eight athletes in front of you. This Meet was about how effectively a team of 36 athletes and many staff operated as a whole.

You learn, over time, to look out and keep track of what’s going on more broadly.

• How are other athletes presenting?

• How are staff presenting?

• Checking in with them when the moment feels right.

A good example from this competition: watching a swimmer perform at the very highest level, winning events and delivering performances that were, at times, unbelievable.

I wanted to make sure that beyond their own group coach, they got a moment of positive feedback from me too - something I felt had value as a team coach, especially with more events and relays still to come, and the podium still in play.

Those moments didn’t need to be long - maybe a comment on a part of the race I loved, or reflecting back on the journey they’d been on and what they’d overcome.

Short and sweet, but genuinely valuable. As a team coach, you cannot and should not miss those moments.

On the flip side, there will always be athletes who experience a near-miss or an underperformance, and you’ll see them extremely upset often in a lonely place.

I always think that’s a difficult situation for a coach; often there isn’t much to say. Some coaches don’t say anything, and perhaps some athletes prefer it that way. But for me, as a team coach, if I see that happening, I’ll generally try to check in on them and offer some concise feedback that circles back to the positive.

I’m not sure anything you say in those moments makes a huge difference, but reflecting back on their season, how well they’ve done at certain points, reminding them of who they are - that’s about helping them not sink into a particular moment. Keep the chin up, shoulders back, be resilient in adversity.

I think there’s real value, as a team coach, in giving energy to those moments - almost like reserving a pocket of energy in your tank specifically for them. It’s even more challenging when you’re tired yourself, or rushing between different swims and your own group’s schedule.

But the success of the team requires coaches to look beyond their own athletes, beyond their own group. At this Europeans, from an Aquatics GB perspective, I saw that practice in abundance, and felt it was a real strength of the experience this time around.

Personally, having someone to talk to and being willing to be open and honest about the highs and the lows matters. People are different, and there’s no doubt that experiencing championship-level competition repeatedly helps you learn to cope better with it.

But if you’re someone who runs with a level of emotion that brings genuine ups and downs, being able to have conversations to offload and reset is genuinely helpful. Having that depth of relationship with other coaches and staff on the team is something I always value - never more so than during a meet with as many full days and important moments as this one.

Thanks for reading Beyond the Blocks :-)

More reflections to come!

In Part 4, I want to build on that. Specific training category pairings that keep a week genuinely polarised.

The True Respect of Polarisation

The true respect of polarisation isn’t really about categories at all - it’s about not being greedy with how many training categories and units you’re asking the body to absorb at once.

Coaches will have different views on how components of training pair together across macro-cycles, meso-cycles and micro-cycles. But in my experience, there are a some pairings that help a programme stay polarised.

Extensive Aerobic + Intensive Aerobic Pairing

Extensive aerobic training is the lightest, least intense form of training, but it’s essential - it stabilises aerobic capacity, which swimming demands in abundance for most events, and which underpins a swimmer’s ability to recover between units and cope with a busy competition schedule.

For me, extensive aerobic work sits between easy swimming (essentially low-level active recovery and technique work) and AEC1 (or A2, or 60–40bpm) - a light-to-moderate aerobic unit of decent volume. Its purpose is to strengthen and grow the aerobic engine, not to push the aerobic system into stress.

This makes it a natural complement to every other, more intense training category.

When the goal is to drive aerobic capacity higher, a polarised pairing of extensive aerobic work with more intensive aerobic work does that job.

In practice, that might look like an elite senior swimmer completing nine or ten sessions in a week: three specific units:

• 1x AEC2 session (which develops both aerobic and anaerobic capacity)

• 1x AEC3 session (which develops aerobic capacity and aerobic power)

• 1x another AEC3 or an AEP (aerobic power) unit to keep the engine accessible

With the remaining five, six or seven sessions extensive aerobic work, plus things like kicking, pulling, or short speed/technique work.

The diagram above is a generic illustration rather than a precise prescription, but it shows how the pairing works while respecting super-compensation timing.

For athletes who don’t yet have a strong aerobic physiology, three specific units a week may be too much - it may need to come down to two, spread sensibly across the week (for example, one early week, one late week).

Threshold work should be treated as a specific unit, not a non-specific one - so on the remaining, non-specific days, the coach still needs to manage intensity carefully, with reference to the lactate guidance I covered in Part 2 of this series.

I think it’s reasonable to include some firmer kick and pull sets within non-specific units, as long as there’s some consideration given to their duration - they shouldn’t become units that are, in effect, excessive kick and pull sets that fully stress those areas.

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I cannot celebrate the competition enough. The production, the racing, the atmosphere, the standard of swimming. It was truly phenomenal.

I’m looking forward to writing more about the positives, the learnings and the experiences from the competition and this whole racing phase. But before I get to that in coming articles, I wanted to gently touch on a couple of things that left me a little frustrated over the period.

I’m not sure how these two points will land, and I want to be clear about the spirit they’re written in. My writing on Beyond the Blocks is 99.9% positive tone, a platform where I want subscribers to learn and where I try to serve the good of the sport. This one sits a little outside that usual direction, but it comes from the same place - love of the sport, and wanting the best for it.

Frustration One:

I’d Love to See Swimming Get More Airtime

GBR finished top of the medal table with eight European golds and fourteen medals in total. As a team we produced some genuinely world-class moments across the week.

There were so many, but the women’s 4x100 Medley relay felt like a defining one. What a race, and what a standard. Lauren Cox producing her fastest 100 Backstroke effort of the week. Keanna MacInnes’s 200 Butterfly win followed by her turnaround relay performance. Angharad Evans’s phenomenal fastest-ever breaststroke split. The win completed on Freya Colbert’s final stroke. As a GBR team coach, it’s a moment that will live in my fondest memories.

The final night was everything GBR sport should be. World-class performances. The arena electric. And yet if you were sitting at home in Britain, I suspect a lot of people wouldn’t have known it was even happening. I don’t think that reflects on the sport itself - it feels more like a wider question of coverage and visibility.

Each night that week, after finals had finished and I’d got back to my hotel room, I noticed GBR athletics getting a lot of airtime, promotion and storytelling on the BBC.

Swimming, by comparison, was harder to find through the Eurovision app. It also took a fair bit of scrolling on the BBC Sport website to come across coverage of our performances, and even then it was fairly brief. That felt like a missed opportunity given we topped the European medal table and produced some of the most exciting racing of the week.

I’d love to see broadcasters lean into our sport a bit more. Our athletes train relentlessly to deliver moments like this. These moments create role models, help grow participation, and give younger swimmers something to dream about. It would be wonderful to see swimming get the same spotlight other sports regularly receive around major championships.

That week in France made something clear to me. French swimming is given that spotlight, the celebration of their swimmers soars. They are visible. They’re known. Their names are chanted.

I’d love for more of Britain’s swimmers to get to feel that at home too, rather than returning from incredible performances to relatively little recognition.

Above: The celebration of Leon Marchand yesterday. The French crowd would chant his name so loudly - it was amazing.

None of this sits at the door of Aquatics GB - quite the opposite, I know how much everyone wants moments like last week to be seen and celebrated. This is really a hope directed at broadcasters: put the sport on television, show people what happened, and let young swimmers see current British swimmers doing extraordinary things.

Frustration Two: A Hope for Even Stronger Commentary

My second, smaller frustration was around some of the commentary during the Commonwealth Games.

Commentary plays such an important role - it educates viewers and helps people understand what they’re watching. Commentating elite sport live, with no script and split-second calls, is a genuinely hard skill - I absolutely understand that.

But there were times through the week in Glasgow where I felt the coverage leaned a little more toward casual, off-the-cuff opinion than I’d have liked. I heard occasional assumptions about an athlete’s performance or mindset stated as though they were confirmed fact.

I accept commentary needs some opinion - that helps engagement. I just find myself hoping, as someone immersed in the sport, that this opinion is offered at times a little more carefully, given how much sits behind every performance that many people watching simply don’t see.

Elite sport is complicated. Nobody watching from outside can fully know what an athlete has been carrying physically or mentally into a race, or the journey that has sat between an athlete and their coach well before.

So moments like these made me think there’s a bit of room for the standard to be nudged up - a little more context, a little more care - and I say that with real respect for how hard broadcasting live sport actually is.

Where That Leaves Us

This past week showed Aquatics GB is in a genuinely good place. The swimmers delivered. The coaches and support staff are working hard, improving, and helping athletes produce performances like this. The product last week was fantastic - I’d just love to see it get even more visibility and warm coverage in the future.

I try to be a positive energy within British swimming, which is probably why even a small note of frustration may feel unusual through my writing on Beyond the Blocks, but it comes from wanting the very best for a sport I love.

I want to finish by congratulating our team on a brilliant week, in what has become a genuinely ferocious global standard this year. As a coach, you take the results from the Europeans and Pan Pacs together with a deep breath, and then look towards LA. Three weeks of rest. Then we go again.

Here’s to a great sport, and to the memories made last week.

Thank you for reading Beyond the Blocks :-)

This week has been the reset. Commonwealth Games behind us, European Championships ahead - racing begins tomorrow, Monday 10th August, and it doesn’t let up for seven straight days of morning and evening sessions. From an Aquatics GB perspective, Europeans is the benchmark meet.

Last week on paper looked relatively quiet - only eight moderate-volume pool…

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Part 3 starts to explore the ‘wave principle’ and how respecting the recovery process to different training units helps the supercompensation process, so the swimmer can make progress in a considered, well-paced way.

The Wave Principle

Ultimately, polarisation respects the wave principle and the rule of supercompensation.

When a training unit applies a specific stress to the body, it creates fatigue. The recovery period that follows allows the body to adapt to that stress and repair to a stronger state.

This process - where the swimmer adapts into a stronger state - is called super-compensation, and it’s where performance rises above the initial level. See the diagram below, taken from Page 3 of Jan Olbrecht’s ‘The Science of Winning’.

Timing of the next training stimulus matters. It’s what keeps the wave principle working in a positive direction. Leave it too long and the swimmer can lose those positive adaptations with performance drifting back to baseline. It can also drop below the previous level without further training.

The issue with many programmes can be phase one - the stress phase. This often can get overdone, without leaving optimal time for phase two (recovery) to do its work.

Sequencing hard units too close together over extended periods, or letting training intensity continually creep higher than intended - particularly on non-specific units - often keeps phase one constantly engaged. Phase two then continues to struggle to turn towards phase three, super-compensation, where the performance increase actually gets realised.

Recovery Windows: What the Research Tells Us

It’s important for coaches to have a basic understanding of how long the gap between phase one and phase three actually takes.

That understanding shapes how you design macrocycles (long training phases), mesocycles (medium training phases) and microcycles (short training phases).

The basic rule: anything intensive in the pool, or anything that demands a high level of force in the gym, requires more recovery time before the next exposure. Ignore that and the swimmer will likely end up fatigued or over-trained at some point.

It’s true that some exceptional athletes can absorb a larger stimulus of intense pool work or strength exposure than others; they simply digest and super-compensate faster.

From a coaching perspective, these are individual differences you learn to read over time. I always reference back to Page 5 from ‘The Science of Winning’ to make sure that, for the majority of training time, I’m respecting super-compensation windows.

That’s not to say, at specific points in a cycle, I don’t stretch those windows for short periods using certain strategies - but that kind of approach needs to be used with real consideration, not applied all the time.

Olbrecht’s guidance is a useful reference point, and below I’ve tried to explain it from my own perspective, in a way that’s easy to understand as possible.

Extensive Aerobic Endurance

aka:

• AEC1

• A1/A2

• EN-1

• 60-40 bbm

Recovery window: 8–12 hours

Coaches Notes:

You can complete units like this back-to-back, AM to PM, without fear of the swimmer becoming overly tired.

Intensive Aerobic Endurance

aka:

• AEC2 (fast and steady)

• AEC3 (multiple intensities) or Rainbow Sets

• EN-2 or AT or Threshold sets

• AEP (aerobic power) or EN-3 or Heart-Rate sets or MVO2

• 30-10 bbm

Recovery window: 24-30 hours

Coaches Notes:

Rarely advisable to repeat threshold-plus work until a day and a half later. A unit completed Monday PM could technically be repeated Tuesday PM, but for most swimmers that’s far too early; Wednesday AM or PM is more advisable. The more intense the unit the more recovery needed.

In my experience, plenty of swimmers need more than Olbrecht’s 24–30 hour guidance once they have completed one of the unit types above. Especially if they are to stay consistent across a longer training phase (e.g. a six-week mesocycle).

Repeat too close to the 24-hour mark and, combined with other units that week, the super-compensation process is unlikely to complete. Phase one stays over-engaged and phase three never gets realised.

Extensive Anaerobic Training

aka:

• ANC (anaerobic capacity)

• Lactate Production

• SP-2

Recovery window: 36-48 hours

Coaches Notes:

Short sprint work with generous rest, aimed at gradually building lactate production to a high level across the set.

The rest provides enough recovery for the fast-twitch fibres to reset before working anaerobically again.

If a coach feels more than one unit a week is required, these should be planned a couple of days apart.

Intensive Anaerobic Training

aka:

• ANP (anaerobic power)

• Lactate Tolerance

• SP-1

• Broken Swims

Recovery window: 40-60 hours

Coaches Notes:

Very intense - either extended maximal reps, or shorter maximal reps completed close together under short rest.

The blocks themselves might only be 100m–300m, but the density makes the physiological demand very close to a race.

Two or three rounds of this becomes highly fatiguing. The anaerobic demand also burns through a lot of muscle glycogen that needs time to restore, and any muscle damage needs time to repair - hence the longer recovery window.

Intensive Competition

• ANP (100–200m)

• AEP (400m+)

Recovery window: 48–72 hours

Coaches Notes:

The most intense swimming category of all.

Consecutive days of racing, or even a few days of a high volume of races, pulls hard on phase one of the super-compensation cycle. The coach needs to respect the 48–72 hour rule closely.

In my experience, during a training phase that also includes competition, more than 72 hours is often needed.

I’d often hold off any intense training until the Friday after a competition. Even then, some swimmers I’ve coached still struggle to engage a specific unit. Sometimes I’d keep the prescription to extensive aerobic work for most of that week, with maybe a small sample of other training categories.

Intensive Strength Training

• Gym work

Recovery window: 48-72 hours

Coaches Notes:

Can be genuinely destructive if mistimed. It’s the type of training that causes DOMS and can really affect a swimmer’s ability to train effectively in the days that follow.

A feeling of heaviness, sitting low in the water, or an inability to accelerate can often follow intensive strength training. Because of this, the swim coach’s communication with the strength coach becomes an important partnership - especially when planning the mix of pool training stimulus around it.

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Last week I wrote about how I approach periods where swimmers are required to race at two major international championships within a short space of time - in this case, the Commonwealth Games and the European Championships, four weeks apart.

That piece focused on the thinking behind the block: viewing it as one connected racing phase rather than two sepa…

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I put this infographic together after going back through Chapter 14 of Maglischo’s Swimming Fastest, with a bit of cross-referencing against Olbrecht’s The Science of Winning.

Both books detail a lot on different “fast swimming” categories, and I think it’s worth spending some time occasionally revisiting the information to keep clear on some of the important points.

Without being clear and considered ‘fast’ sets can get designed with too much going on or stacked too close together without really asking what each one is costing the athlete to recover from.

So here’s the short version.

Speed + Power sits at one end. Very short reps, maximal effort, full rest between them (1-3 minutes, sometimes more). The goal is rate of force development and neuromuscular recruitment.

Think 10-20m efforts, resisted or assisted, done fresh. Because the reps are so short and the intent so pure, the body actually recovers relatively quick - 30-40 hours (Olbrecht), roughly a day to a day and a half.

Lactate Production (ANC or Anaerobic Capacity) is more middle ground - anaerobic capacity work. Slightly longer reps (25s-50s… sometimes 65-75m) but the key is the length. It’s genuinely long enough to let the muscle reset and go maximal again so intensity can remain high.

The objective is deliberately generating lactate and pushing anaerobic metabolism. The set design with respect to rest allows that. This one takes a little longer to come back from - 36-48 hours (Olbrecht), call it a day and a half to two days.

Lactate Tolerance (ANP or Anaerobic Power) is the other end - anaerobic power, longer reps - around 400-800m total volume in a variety of repeat distances 25-200m; shorter relative recovery with the specific aim of improving buffering capacity and coping with high acidosis. This is the toughest to recover from - 48-60 hours, up to two and a half days.

The arrow across the top of the graphic says it plainly: the further you move along that spectrum, the more intense the physiological cost, and the longer it takes to fully super-compensate.

That’s the whole point of putting it together - not really to give new sets, but to provide a reminder of how different ways of putting together ‘fast’ swimming matter. And with the rest / super compensation information - a mental model for spacing them out properly across a training week.

I’ve also included two combination examples:

1. Speed + Power feeding into ANC

2. ANC feeding into ANP

These combinations can work if they are planned carefully.

This isn’t a Session Bank entry as such, more a reference piece - but it felt like it belonged in the same spirit. Hope it’s useful!

Thanks for reading Beyond the Blocks!

A few notes from what I’ve been thinking about in coaching this week.

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On paper, the ‘polarised’ concept is relatively straightforward. In reality, coaching it rarely is. Because coaching isn’t done in a laboratory. It’s done with real people, strong ambitions and pressures around performance outcomes.

And that’s where the conversation becomes more interesting.

A polarised approach is often built around patience. It places a value on long-term athlete development, building capacity over time and being disciplined with where intensity appears.

The challenge is staying patient isn’t always easy. Athletes want to improve. Coaches want to help them improve. And when hard work often produces visible results, there can be a temptation to push harder, more often.

The reality is that some very hard programmes have produced exceptional swimmers. I’ve seen it. Most coaches in our sport have. So the question isn’t whether hard programmes work. The more interesting questions are:

• Who do they work for?

• How long do they work for?

• What do they cost?

And perhaps most importantly, if we are more patient now will that create a better swimmer in the future?

Welcome to Part 2!

Translating Physiology Into Something Swimmers Understand

This is where things start to get interesting from a coaching perspective.

If I’m working from an Olbrecht training profile, I’ve got something very precise. I’ve got lactate values, training times and a physiological framework that helps point me in the direction of what the athlete may need next.

The challenge, of course, is that athletes don’t train with a lactate analyser attached to their ear.

As coaches, we still have to communicate. We still have to explain intensity. We still have to help swimmers understand what we’re actually asking them to do.

That’s where things become more practical.

Over time, I’ve found myself trying to build bridges between different systems. If I’m looking at an Olbrecht training profile but coaching a group that is more familiar with colour systems or RPE, I need a way of translating one into the other. Not perfectly, because I don’t think that’s possible, but in a way that gives swimmers a useful reference point.

The physiology might tell me the pace. The challenge is helping the swimmer understand and deliver it.

Two diagrams illustrating how I bring multiple variables together on poolside when coaching:

Important: This is not intended to be an exact physiological model for every swimmer. It is simply a practical coaching translation that can help athletes connect physiology, pace and effort.

Now, people could quite rightly pick holes in that grid because every athlete is different.

Some swimmers naturally sit at higher heart rates. Some accumulate lactate more readily at lower RPEs. Some are incredibly good at judging effort, whilst others routinely struggle - usually by doing more rather than less.

The reality is that no system is ever going to perfectly describe every athlete. But as a coaching tool, particularly when you’re standing on poolside with a larger group, I think these sorts of translations can be very helpful.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned since spending more time around physiological testing is that true threshold is often slower than many coaches think. I know I’ve certainly been guilty of getting that wrong in the past.

I often used the sort of language mentioned in Part 1:

“Work it.”

“Hold stronger.”

“Pick it up.”

“Come on, you’ve definitely got more in you.”

The problem is that those cues almost always encourage swimmers to move in one direction - faster. And before you know it, what was supposed to be threshold becomes more intense.

It becomes very easy for athletes to overshoot the physiological response that was originally intended.

In reality, there have been many occasions where the response I was actually looking for sat at a pace that felt slightly more conservative than my coaching instinct initially wanted it to be.

That has probably been one of my biggest learnings over the last few years.

Clarity Is The Real Gain

For me, one of the most underrated benefits of a polarised approach isn’t necessarily that it produces better sessions. It’s that it gives you more clarity over a longer period of training.

The longer I’ve coached, the more I’ve realised just how valuable that is. When you commit to developing a particular area of physiology and then build a block of training around that objective, you give yourself a much better chance of understanding whether the work is actually having the effect you hoped it would.

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A question landed in my inbox recently that really got me thinking.

The coach asked whether a training philosophy develops from:

• What I believed in?

• The athletes in front of me?

• or what I wanted to see happen in a race?

I thought it was a great question because the truthful answer is:

To a degree all three.

But I definitely needed to spend some time bringing my answer to life.

This Coaching Notes [12] is a tidied up version of where I got to with it…

Where Does a Training Philosophy Actually Come From?

When coaches are young, we often talk about training philosophy as though it’s something we decide upon early and then remain faithful to for the rest of our careers. Almost as if one day we choose our coaching lane and spend the next thirty years staying firmly within it.

My experience was probably a little like that in the beginning. But over time, a lot has changed.

I no longer believe a training philosophy needs to be fixed. In fact, I think it should evolve. It should develop through the accumulation of experiences, observations and lessons learned along the way.

A coaching philosophy is built slowly. It is shaped by mentors, swimmers, books, conferences, conversations, successes, mistakes and everything in between.

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Where this started…

This article came off the back of a conversation with one of my Substack subscribers. We’d been talking about different training models, and it followed on from something I’d written around hard sets and ‘dialling it back’ in the Session Bank series.

The question was asked centred around a ‘polarised’ approach:

• What that actually is

• How it works

• Where it sits alongside some of the other training methods coaches use

This isn’t a simple conversation. If you look across the sport, there are very different training methods - and a lot of them have worked.

You have programmes that are:

• Highly structured

• Disciplined with intensity

• Scientific in how they’re built

Then you have others that:

• Feel more instinctive

• Can be more aggressive or chaotic

• Use higher frequencies of hard work and sessions that contain a bit of everything.

And both have produced world-class swimmers.

So for me, this article isn’t about saying that programmes which don’t use a polarised approach are unsuccessful. Plenty of them have produced exceptional athletes.

What I want to explore instead are some of the benefits that can come from a more polarised model and why, over time, I’ve increasingly seen value in that way of thinking.

Different Systems, Different Degrees of Clarity

Most swim coaches will be familiar with colour-based systems - Jon Urbanchek’s model being one of the more well-known examples. You’ve got white, pink, red, blue, purple, green and gold - different colours assigned to different intensities.

In theory, this gives structure and creates a shared language. But in practice, what I’ve often seen is that the disciplined physiological meaning of the colour and the language used during the session don’t always match.

You’ll have colours that are supposed to represent a controlled aerobic level - a low lactate range, a moderate heart rate zone - but the language being used on poolside can be things such as:

• “work it”

• “stronger”

• “pick it up a bit”

Within the programme, over time, despite an aerobic colour code on a session plan, intensity can still drift.

Athletes interpret colours and coaching language differently. If the coach is not clear and disciplined with their physiological instruction and language, what was meant to be one thing can quickly become something else entirely.

Sessions can end up containing multiple colours, multiple objectives and multiple intensities all layered through one unit. And when that happens, it becomes increasingly difficult to be precise around what physiological adaptation is actually being targeted.

At that point, the session isn’t really about targeted adaptation anymore. It grows into more of a challenge. A physical and mental test. Something to get through.

Repeat that through a training week (micro-cycle) and then a training month (meso-cycle), and that’s where the contrast with a polarised approach really begins to emerge.

Discipline, Not Ease - What Polarisation Is Really Aiming For

At its core, a polarised model is about discipline. It is not about making things easier. It is about being clearer and more intentional with where effort is placed.

You’re generally trying to spend a significant amount of time at lower intensities, building the aerobic system in a way that allows it to grow rather than constantly squeezing it.

Then, at carefully selected moments, you deliberately move into higher aerobic or anaerobic intensities, targeting specific physiological adaptations at the top end.

What you’re ultimately trying to avoid is that middle ground - the so-called grey zone - where athletes are working reasonably hard, but not necessarily in a way that maximises either aerobic development or high-end performance. This often sits around the threshold zone, a place that can feel incredibly productive.

And that’s where many programmes drift without even realising it.

The Grey Zone - When “Hard Work” Becomes the Default

Coaches see swimmers working hard, breathing hard, concentrating and holding solid paces. There is often a natural assumption that positive adaptations are taking place. And sometimes they are.

The problem is that threshold (plus) work finds its way into programmes very easily. You see swimmers becoming more serious, less able to engage with the coach or their team-mates, focused on maintaining strong effort on relatively short rest. They are not sprinting, but they are no longer comfortable either.

This is often described as the threshold zone.

It would sit as:

• Red or creep toward Blue in Urbanchek’s model

• Around La3-4 when referring to an Olbrecht training times profile guidance sheet.

From a coaching perspective, threshold can feel incredibly productive. It looks like work. It feels like work. Athletes often leave the pool believing they have achieved something meaningful. But physiologically, it sits in an interesting and sometimes awkward place.

Threshold can improve how effectively an athlete uses the system they already have, but it does not always expand that system in the same way more controlled aerobic work can.

In Urbanchek’s model, more controlled aerobic work leans more toward White and Pink zones. When referring to Olbrecht time guidance slower than La2 (you would follow La1 or La1.5 training times). This is where the focus is on building aerobic capacity rather than continually drawing upon it.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over time is that training hard and developing capacity are not always the same thing.

Sometimes, in our pursuit of productive-looking work, we spend large periods of training teaching the body to become more efficient with its current engine, rather than creating the physiological conditions that allow that engine to grow.

The danger is that threshold (plus) can gradually become the dominant intensity within a programme without the coach ever consciously planning for it.

Low level aerobic sets drift upwards into threshold.

Threshold sets drift upwards towards aerobic power or VO₂-type work.

Before long, large parts of the week are occupying a very similar physiological space.

As that happens, the adaptations being potentially targeted can start to shift away from the original intention of the micro-cycle or meso-cycle. The programme may no longer be producing the specific adaptations that were originally planned.

And that, for me, is one of the key principles behind a polarised approach.

It is not simply about distributing intensity differently. It is about being:

Disciplined enough to separate training objectives and allow each physiological system the opportunity to develop in the way you intended.

This in contrast to allowing the majority of training sessions to gradually merge into one large category of “reasonably hard” swimming.

Ultimately, that is where a programme begins to move further away from a truly polarised approach.

Everything Drifts Without Control - And It Happens Quicker Than You Think

One of the realities of coaching is that training intensity rarely creeps down. It almost always creeps up.

A programme that lacks discipline and control will see swimmers stepping up training categories. Controlled aerobic sessions can easily be found sitting closer to Rainbow Sets (AEC3), Heart Rate Sets (AEP), or VO₂ max work (AEP).

This is one of the reasons I believe controlling intensity is often far more difficult than prescribing intensity.

Most coaches can write an aerobic set. The challenge comes from ensuring that it remains aerobic once human nature enters the equation. The swimmer who starts to feel good, becomes competitive, and wants to impress the coach.

Many swimmers generally enjoy working hard. Coaches generally enjoy seeing athletes work hard. And when a swimmer is having a good day, it is very tempting for both coach and athlete to push beyond what was originally planned.

The result is that low intensity gradually disappears. High intensity begins to present itself more regularly. The distinction between aerobic development, threshold training, aerobic power and race-pace work becomes increasingly blurred.

At that point, the programme begins to resemble the opposite of a polarised model. What can emerge is a mixture of moderate, strong, hard and best-effort swimming across most sessions and most weeks.

Exactly what you choose to call that type of programme is open for debate. But the most aggressive examples could probably be described as ‘relentless’.

This type of programme and the polarised programme achieve physiological adaptation in very different ways.

Tools Help - But They Don’t Replace Coaching

The coach who is passionate around keeping their programme more polarised has some tools. Lactate measures, heart rate monitoring, and RPE are very useful when used in addition to the coaches eye.

Lactate gives you something precise. Heart rate gives you a guide. RPE brings in the athlete’s subjective feeling and experience. But all are just information / feedback for the coach to consider and help make better decisions.

For example heart rate can be useful on display to athletes when working lower level aerobic sets. However, some athletes naturally sit at higher heart rates than others.

I have seen swimmers operating at relatively low or moderate lactate levels whilst displaying surprisingly high heart rates. That doesn’t make heart rate monitoring unhelpful - far from it. But it does highlight just how individual physiological responses can be.

Likewise, some athletes misjudge effort. Others become extremely skilled at judging effort. So the coach needs to always consider subjective effort carefully.

Lactate responses can differ significantly between swimmers even when they appear to be working at a similar effort level. They can vary a lot depending on the physiological profile of the athlete.

This is why the art of coaching never disappears.

No amount of physiological information completely replaces observation, communication, experience, and judgement on poolside. The coach still has to interpret what they are seeing in front of them and decide whether the training stimulus being delivered is actually the stimulus that was intended.

What a more polarised and considered approach does provide is a better opportunity to align intention with reality.

In simple terms, it gives you a better chance of ensuring what you wanted the swimmer to do is actually what the swimmer ended up doing.

Looking Ahead to Part 2

So far, we’ve explored what a polarised approach is and how many programmes gradually drift towards that threshold (plus) space without even realising it.

We’ve looked at physiology, intensity distribution, coaching tools and the challenge of aligning training intention with training reality.

But that’s only part of the conversation.

In Part 2, I want to move beyond the physiology and into the coaching realities.

We’ll look at how we translate physiology into something swimmers can actually understand; why clarity may be one of the biggest gains a polarised approach offers; and why some of the hardest programmes in our sport have still produced exceptional athletes.

We’ll also explore a question I’ve found myself thinking about more and more over the years:

If a ‘hard’ programme works, who does it work for, how long does it work for, and what does it cost?

Because ultimately, polarisation isn’t about avoiding hard work. It’s about understanding where hard work fits, what it’s trying to achieve, and how it affects the long-term development of the athlete.

That’s where we’ll go next.

Part 2 will be available to paid subscribers.

I’ve spent the past week in Munich as Head Coach of the Aquatics GB European Junior Championship team.

Normally these notes revolve around physiology, training prescription, periodisation, and the challenge of trying to help athletes physically prepare for performance. But this week I’ve found myself reflecting on how I communicated with both the swimmer…

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The objective was quite simple. Following a meso-cycle that included anaerobic work and racing, I wanted to spend a short block of time restoring some physiological balance before moving into the final preparation period, where training becomes much more quality-focused and specific to competition performance.

The objective I wanted to achieve was challenging aerobic work that would create adaptation without pushing athletes into significant levels of fatigue or overreaching.

Both of these sessions would sit within what I classify as AEC3 training. Essentially, the challenge comes from the combination of three or more aerobic pacing zones (and sometimes race pace) that create a strong aerobic stimulus.

In both examples, there is a significant amount of lactate 1 [La1] swimming included throughout the set. This softer aerobic work is a really important part of the design because it gives the swimmer an opportunity to reset between the more challenging aerobic efforts.

The intensity gradually progresses from La1 through to La1.5, La2, La3, La4 and, at times, La5.

One of the things you’ll notice is that there is never an excessive amount of higher lactate work stacked back-to-back. Instead, there are short blocks of increased aerobic intensity interspersed with periods of La1 swimming.

This allows the swimmer to step into the harder aerobic work and then step back out again before accumulating excessive fatigue.

The first session is slightly softer than the second. As the aerobic intensity increases throughout the set, the repeat distances become shorter. That naturally makes the work a little more manageable and helps the swimmer maintain quality as the effort level rises.

The second session uses a different approach. Here I chose to use a series of 400m repeats that increase in intensity from La2 through to La5 across five successive 400s. Between each of these efforts sits an increasing amount of La1 swimming, allowing the athlete time to reset before moving into the next stage of the progression.

This design was undoubtedly more challenging for the swimmers. A 400 at La4 or La5 or faster [Aerobic Power - AEP] requires substantial effort and concentration if completed correctly.

However, because those harder efforts were not performed continuously, and because there were often 300-400 metres of La1 work between them, the swimmers were still able to complete the session effectively without carrying significant fatigue afterwards.

During the session they were certainly working hard. The effort was obvious. But because the harder repetitions weren’t simply stacked one after another, I didn’t see the sort of lingering fatigue that can sometimes appear over the following days after a more intensely constructed aerobic power set.

Both of these sessions were completed within the same week, approximately 48 hours apart, and I felt they achieved exactly what I wanted at this stage of the season.

They strengthened aerobic capacity during a relatively short endurance-focused block whilst still preserving the athletes’ ability to swim with quality.

Something else you’ll notice is that prior to these aerobic sets I continued to include small amounts of race pace work.

Throughout this endurance phase it was important to me that athletes remained connected to speed, rhythm, race skills and high-quality technique. The race pace exposure was relatively brief, but it ensured that the swimmers never drifted too far away from the technical and neurological demands of racing.

As we move closer towards competition, that balance naturally begins to reverse. The endurance work becomes less of a priority, while the higher-intensity race-specific preparation takes centre stage.

I hope you’ve enjoyed Session Bank 14 and perhaps found a few ideas that you can apply within your own programme.

As always, if you’re coaching younger swimmers, remember to DIAL IT BACK…. as I’ve tried to demonstrate in Session Banks 12 and 13.

The sessions above were designed for high-level senior athletes. When working with age group or junior swimmers, always consider how the design can be softened through volume, intensity, recovery or structure. Resist the temptation to copy and paste sessions directly.

The question I always come back to is:

How can I reshape this session so it’s appropriate for the swimmer in front of me?

Thanks for reading Beyond the Blocks!

I discussed my discomfort when sometimes the physiological data pushes me in a differe…

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It repeatedly asks the swimmer to move into intense blocks of individual stroke work, and if I’m honest, it probably sits beyond what I would use in my own session design. That said, in the right context, with the right swimmer - a world class senior who is physically robust and well-conditioned - you could make a case for it.

Aerobic Power

On first look, you can see exactly what it’s trying to do.

There’s a clear intention around developing aerobic power through IM work. You’ve got 50s that build pressure through a descend, followed by 100s that are essentially best effort. Everything sits in 300 blocks, broken up with freestyle active recovery, and it rotates through the strokes.

Structurally, it’s well written. However, it’s extremely demanding.

The Main Set

It’s a 7k session. That in itself isn’t unusual depending on the group.

But the key detail is that 4.8k of that sits in the main set.

The main set is fairly continuous. It’s a long, uninterrupted piece of work where the swimmer never really gets a full reset, because the turnarounds are tight and the recovery, therefore, needs to move at a moderate pace.

So even before we discuss the intensity, there’s already a significant demand there just from the way the work is structured.

Intensity

Across the set, you’re looking at around 2400 metres of hard intensity. That’s a lot. Even for world class senior swimmers that specialise in endurance, that’s a high dose of hard work. The way the intensity is delivered is very challenging:

• descending paired 50s

• consecutive 100s at 100%

• short rest, active recovery

• and then straight back into the next block without any real reset

Repeat Length

The bit that really pushes this set up a level is the transition from the 50s into the 100s. You can manage yourself more easily over a hard 50. You can’t so much once you complete 100 reps.

The physiological demand shifts very quickly, and when you’re repeatedly making that jump - off tight rest - the set starts to feel very different. It becomes much more aggressive than it might first appear.

AEC3 or AEP

On paper, this could easily be labelled as a very strong aerobic capacity set -something like an AEC3. But the more I looked at it, the more it drifts to more intense categorisation. It feels closer to aerobic power (AEP).

Not just because of the intensity of the 100s, but because of how little opportunity there is to properly reset between the blocks.

The swimmer is constantly being pulled forward into the next block of intensity while still carrying a lot of what came before. That’s what makes it tough.

And that’s also why it’s not something I would just drop straight into a youth or age group environment.

Dial it Back!

So the exercise here is the same as before. Take the hardest version… and start to dial it back. To make it more appropriate for the swimmer in front of you - particularly those who aren’t as physiologically developed yet.

You just need to start asking - how much load is appropriate?

Consider volume, intensity and rest. Then how these variables work together to create a challenging but considered training session.

In this article I move from 7k to 6k to 5k and finally to 4k.

Dial It Back! Version 2 - 6k

The first dial back is actually quite subtle - which in some ways is why this version is still very hard.

We bring the session down to 6k, soften the warm-up slightly and take about 400m out of it. From the main set, you’re only really losing around 600m of hard intensity.

So on paper, not a huge shift. But the real changes sit inside the blocks.

The 6×50 becomes 5×50, and instead of asking for two 50s at full effort, it’s now just the final one that really goes to 100%. The 3×100 also becomes 2×100 - and that’s probably the most significant change in this version of the set.

Individually, those adjustments look small. But when you layer them into the session, they start to change the feel of it quite a lot. There’s just a bit more space around the hard work. A bit more control in how the swimmer moves through the blocks.

And most importantly, a better chance of holding shape and intent - rather than drifting too far into that anaerobic, survival-type effort that the original could easily move towards.

It doesn’t make it easy. It just makes it slightly more manageable.

Up to this point, we’ve just softened the edges.
The next step is where the session really starts to change - and where it becomes far more usable for most programmes.

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Mapping, Science, and the Tension Between the Two

Intro

This week, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about planning.

I’ve had to pivot with a couple of swimmers following some physiological information I’ve received back following testing. And if I’m honest, I haven’t felt entirely comfortable with some of the tweaks I’ve needed to make to the periodisation.

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I’ve been looking at some of the more challenging sets doing the rounds recently, and I thought a useful exercise - for myself as much as anything - was to do a mini-series taking the hardest versions and dialling them back.

Simply asking the question, how would I reshape this set so it’s more appropriate for the swimmer in front of me.

Because I do think there’s some danger in seeing a session on social media and just it being copied and pasted straight into a programme - especially with younger swimmers.

I’ve never really been comfortable with that approach. But equally, I don’t think the answer is to ignore those sessions completely. With a bit of thought, a coach can take something that looks extreme and turn it into something really useful.

This season, one example really stood out to me.

There was a large set of 200s being done by age group and youth swimmers on a training camp. From what I could see, they were turning around the reps off 2:30–2:40.

That immediately raised an eyebrow.

I’ve got a really clear reference point from our Performance Centre swimmers. I know what it takes for some of our best athletes to hold those sort of turnarounds - and for many of them, you’re already brushing up against threshold, maybe somewhere around that 3–4 mmol range.

So when I saw not just the turnaround times, but the volume layered on top - 20, 25, even 30 repetitions - that’s where it genuinely made me pause.

For a younger swimmer, that’s not really a threshold set anymore. It’s something far beyond that.

That’s what prompted this exercise.

Rather than just react to it, I tried to work through:
how would I progressively bring this back to something more appropriate?

So I took a version of the set - essentially 24x200 off 2:30–2:40 - and started dialling it back.

8k down to 7k.
7k to 6k.
6k to 5k.
Then down to 4k.

Each time, making small decisions around:

• how much volume actually needs to be there

• how hard the main set really needs to be

• and how much rest the swimmer is given to execute it properly

I ended up rewriting the set four times, almost like moving anti-clockwise around the page, just gradually softening the demand without losing the intention.

When I look at the original set, there are two things that stand out straight away.

The first is simply the size of it.

It’s a huge amount of work, especially when you consider the age of the swimmer. There’s a point where more metres do not add value - it just adds load.

The second is the rest.

At that sort of send-off, for that length of repetition, you’re asking young swimmers to operate beyond what is sustainable and considered threshold work.

And again, for a senior, well-developed athlete, maybe that has a place at certain points. But for age group and youth swimmers, I think it can very quickly becomes something else.

So the adjustments I’ve made are fairly simple in principle, but quite important in practice.

I’ve reduced the overall volume of the session.

I’ve taken some intensity out of the main set, so the swimmer has a chance of actually holding something consistent and technically sound.

And I’ve given them a bit more rest - enough that the set still challenges them, but doesn’t just grind them down.

It’s probably worth saying as well - even the versions I’ve ended up with here are still aimed at very able young swimmers. The type that already have a decent training base and some experience behind them.

If you’re working with developing swimmers, you’d need to be even more considered again. Shorter, simpler, more controlled.

This mini-series is not about criticising.

It’s more about recognising context.

Who is the set for?
Where is the swimmer in their development?
What is the set actually trying to achieve?

Because once those things are clear, the set is almost written better - and very often, it ends up looking quite different from what you started with.

I know the way I’ve presented it is a bit rough - more of a working page than something polished - but hopefully it gives a bit of insight into the process.

Not just what to change, but how to think about changing it.

At the end of the day, it’s just about protecting intent whilst reducing unnecessary risk.

And especially with younger swimmers, that balance really matters.

Let’s look after them 👍

INTRODUCTION

This week’s Coaching Notes are slightly different.

They’ve come from a meeting that myself and my assistant coach, decided to run after collecting a number of training sets shared on social media. It sparked a conversation between us that felt worth exploring a little deeper.

At Loughborough Performance Centre, we pride ourselves on taking an …

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