By Wayne Goldsmith

One of the most confusing parts of learning about swimming coaching is training zones.

When you attend your first ever swimming coaching course or when you open a swimming coaching textbook for the first time, you’ll see a table full of words like “alactic” and “aerobic” and “anaerobic” and percentages, sample heart rates and effort ratings.

Often there will be six, seven or even more different training zones listed on those tables and the course presenter will tell you that it’s important you learn the training zones and apply them in your training programs precisely to help your swimmers develop specific physiological adaptations like speed, endurance, VO2 max etc.

The current models of training zones are impractical, overly complex and most importantly not workable for the majority of age group coaching programs where one or two coaches are coaching 10, 20, 30 or more swimmers at any one time.

Coaches - it is unrealistic - bordering on impossible - that you, me or any coach - can know for certain what training zone 30 kids are working in at any one time with any degree of accuracy or precision.

When I teach training zones to swimming coaches, I start with big, simple, easy to coach zones e.g.

* EASY, RELAXED, WARM UP PACE

* AEROBIC PACE

* RACE PACE

* SPEED DEVELOPMENT / MAX SPEED PACE

I then encourage coaches to “play” with the precision of the zones and add training zones if / where they need to make the training paces and workloads more accurate.

In this video - a must watch for all swimming coaches - I suggest an alternate way of applying a common sense approach to training zones in your coaching programs.

Wayne Goldsmith

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