Swim Fit Pilot Program

Renata from Dalhousie University was a student intern at Metro Central YMCA (YMCA of Greater Toronto) from Jan to April 2011. One of her responsibilities was to coach the Masters swim program.

Renata prepared the following swim workouts (2 workouts per week), which can be downloaded for use by all swimmers.

Week One freestyle (front crawl) and backstroke work, timed 200 free (optional), breaststroke and butterfly assessment

Week Two Various drills for specific stroke improvement (using stroke counts, pace times, etc), Mini-Sets for each stroke

Week Three Choice of freestyle/ IM heart rate sets, test sets

Week Four Sprint week, kick work

Week Five Swimming tips for success, all stroke drills, distance sets

Week Six Timed 200 Free (optional), IM/Kick Set

Week Seven Make pace times, it is okay to change the pace times to suit your abilities or fit the day better but set it so that you make all the pace times in each set, work on endurance

Challenging Pace times to follow, kicking endurance

Week Eight Freestyle Endurance

IM stroke work, great stroke combination for boosting the heart rate, work on strokes through drilling

Week Nine Pull with good arm pull technique, continual work on endurance, freestyle stroke work

Good flip-turns and technique in warm-up as it will be needed for the big main set, transfer drill work into set

Week Ten Speeding up the pace times this week, working on a variety of skills in one practice

Incorporate other activities into swimming, HR work

Week Eleven Controlling swim speed between easy/moderate and fast swimming, review of last week incorporating activities into swimming

Learn the difference in practicing a longer warm-down, variety of skills

Week Twelve Stroke technique, distance and endurance work, HR 140

Variety of Skills, working on stroke best non freestyle to encourage swimming in various strokes more often

Week Thirteen pace work, stroke count work, good stroke technique, IM work

Long and Strong Warm up, Sprinting focus tonight

Week Fourteen Endurance, Working on Building from a steady pace and holding the pace, sprint work in Set 2 going as fast as possible, Easy stroke correction in warm-down

Strong and Steady swimming, heavy emphasis on kicking, mix of different strokes and speeds