Southwold Swimming Club

The Club provides the opportunity to access a structured competition and training programme designed to develop each swimmer and encourage them to maximise their individual potential. This requires committment from swimmers and parents to adopt the Club progamme. This includes training as recommended by the coaches and competiting in the planned meets and galas.

Below is the detailed competition programme for the Club where individual swimmers are expected to submit entries based on their standard and training group;  Team Galas are in addition to this competition programme and swimmers are expected to swim if selected. The full list of club activities including all team galas can be found on the Club Calendar. It is difficult to plan too far in advance as some meets are unknown so the detailed programme will be expanded on a rolling basis. There are links to more competition information on the menu on the right of this page.

The training programme is planned annually and broken into Cycles. The Swimming year runs from September to the end of July with breaks of varying amounts for Summer(Main break 4 weeks - Rest, recovery and regeneration), Christmas(2 Weeks-very light training) & Easter (Minor Break). That gives 3 main blocks in which to plan training in more detail. Each block is then periodised to link in with the competition programme.  The club training plan is based on the strongest swimmers and adjusted across the groups to individualise as much as possible in line with the Long Term Athlete Development Principles. The less developed swimmers have a higher percentage of technique training and the various training windows are exploited.

Competing is a key part of development and the meets are selected to fit in with the periodised training programme. There are a range of meets selected to cover all abilities in the club. Against each meet is an indication of the swimmers or groups that are expected to enter these meets. Entries from swimmers outside these groups will only be submitted by the Club with agreement of the Head Coach.

Meets are generally Licenced by the ASA against set criteria to target certain groups and standards of competitors. The Meet levels and criteria information  are published on the ASA Website. The Table on page 3 gives an indication of the standard targeted.