So I joined Coast Aquatics, the club team I swam with in middle and high school, but this time as part of their coaching staff. So I started my coaching career early on with the younger swimmers, which we call the novice group. The novice group is based solely on learning to swim AND kick all 4 strokes.

For the rookie group, it is the most developed group of the entire team. It is where all athletes learn the basic technique for each shot. As I mentioned earlier, the kick is a huge emphasis on the pack. Why might you ask?

Well kicking in swimming is an essential component used at all levels of swimming, it is the foundation of all strokes and a determining factor for any swimmer’s potential. Some swimmers are natural kickers, but a lot of it has to do with ankle flexibility and hip flexibility. Both of these things can be farmed to help a swimmer later in their career, increasing the height of their ceiling to improve. For that reason, beginner swim practice consists primarily of kicks and drills to improve the basic fundamentals of all four strokes. This helps shape and form good practice clothing. When the swimmer starts to stand out and is well above his group, we will move him to the next group. This is usually a very remarkable and easy decision to make. The second group of development that is a bit more advanced is the group that I mainly train and it is called the “age group” group. In this training group, the trainings are a bit more focused on different training levels and we split them into four days mainly because those are the only four days that we offer practice. But of course it can be opened on a larger scale depending on practice times.

Our weekly practices consist mostly of aerobic freestyle in the first practice of the week transitioning to threshold I’m working on the second practice of the week moving into a practice that we like to call rainbow practice because it has little parts of each component of the week of training. Finally on our fourth and last day of practice we do what is called quality. Quality swimming practice almost always consists of extremely fast swims at maximum effort. There are tons of rest between each of these swims to almost completely simulate a real swimming competition. We do this to give kids a chance to get up and go fast. accustomed to the routine of racing.

The age group kick is also a huge component of your success as a swimmer. The age group is still an extremely important developmental block for the athlete as they are still learning great fundamental habits for all four strokes and still improving technique. Technique and very fast kicks are the key focal point for the age group swimmer. In theory, the stronger the foundation you have at the beginning, the easier it will be to move forward. I hope now you have an idea of ​​what competitive swimming looks like in the developmental stages!