SwimSkills

Established: 1868 - ONE OF THE LONGEST RUNNING SWIMMING CLUBS IN GREAT BRITAIN

Rochdale Swimming Club

SwimSkills

Following directly from the FUNdamentals programme, SwimSkills builds on the skills and techniques learnt, and focuses on improving technique and endurance. The goal is to produce the best aerobic engine in our swimmers to allow them to continue their journey in competitive swimming far into the future.

We move from 'teaching' to 'coaching' swimmers. This is a 50/50 process where swimmers are expected to start to take a more involved role in their development and to work with their coach to produce short, medium and long term goals for continued development.

The coaching team introduce new methods of coaching including:

Profiling of Swimmers - This allows us to create a baseline for each swimmer and monitor their progress. Progress is fed back, goals and targets re-assessed and the process continues in an iterative style.
Video - We use this to develop technique and record all 4 strokes, starts and turns. We then evaluate the recording with the swimmer to correct faults and improve technique.
Consistency in Swimming - Swimmers are expected to be aware of their stroke counts and times for each stroke and distance. They are expected to keep be as close as possible to these when they swim in training, unless the set they are swimming dictates differently.

We want our swimmers to be competitive, we want them to be fast but also want them to be graceful, with good stroke technique because that is how they become fast and win races.

Contained with in our programme are individual swimmers goals and targets to create a programme that not only challenges our swimmers at every point and encourages them to work hard to achieve their goals, it instils a team ethos with respect and consideration of others.