The Parts of a Practice
Every practice for an 11-12 or 13-14 group should have five parts. The names don't matter as much as the sequence — each part prepares the body and brain for the next.
- Warm-up (15-20 minutes, 800-1200 yards): easy aerobic swimming, mixed strokes, building toward main-set effort. This is not a throwaway. It's where you check strokes, starts, and streamlines before fatigue sets in.
- Pre-set / drill work (10-15 minutes, 400-600 yards): technique focus tied to the day's stroke or skill. Kick sets, drill-swim-drill, or short IM work belongs here.
- Main set (30-45 minutes, 1500-2500 yards): the purpose of the practice. One energy system, one technical theme, done at a volume the group can sustain with correct form.
- Sprint or skill work (10-15 minutes, 200-400 yards): starts, turns, underwaters, or short all-out swims. Kids are fresher for this earlier in practice than most coaches think — consider putting it before the main set on sprint-focused days.
- Warm-down (5-10 minutes, 200-300 yards): easy swimming, heart rate down, no stopwatch.
For a 90-minute practice, aim for 2000-3200 yards total for 11-12s and 2800-4000 for 13-14s. A 120-minute practice can push toward 3500-5000 for the older group, but only if the group has the aerobic base to hold technique that long. Yardage is a byproduct of good sets, not a goal in itself.
Pick One Focus
A practice with three focuses has none. Before you write a single set, decide: is today about aerobic endurance, freestyle technique, race-pace work, or IM transitions? Everything in the main set should serve that one focus. Drill work in the pre-set should feed it too — if the main set is freestyle threshold work, don't spend the pre-set drilling backstroke.
Write the focus at the top of your workout card. If you can't explain it to an assistant coach in one sentence, it's not clear enough yet.
Weekly Structure
Across a training week of four to six practices, rotate the energy systems and strokes so kids aren't hammering the same system every day.
- Monday: aerobic endurance, freestyle-heavy
- Tuesday: technique and drill, stroke of the week (back or breast)
- Wednesday: threshold or moderate aerobic, IM focus
- Thursday: race-pace / VO2 work, shorter rest
- Friday: technique, starts and turns, lower volume
- Saturday: longer aerobic set or mock-meet format
This rotation keeps one hard day, one moderate day, and one technique day close together rather than stacking three tough aerobic sets in a row.
Balancing Strokes and IM
At this age, freestyle should not be the only stroke that gets attention. Give each of the other three strokes a dedicated pre-set or main-set slot at least once a week, and build IM into main sets regularly — even short IM (25s or 50s) keeps transitions and weaker strokes from atrophying. A 13-14 group that only trains freestyle will show it at every meet outside the free events.
Keep It Age-Appropriate
For 11-12s, technique and enjoyment outrank yardage every time. Short rest intervals with clean form beat long grinding sets with breakdown. Watch for elbows dropping, heads lifting, and kids counting strokes instead of feeling the water — those are signs to shorten the set, not push through it.
For 13-14s, you can extend interval length and introduce more structured threshold and VO2 work, but technique still comes first. A 13-year-old swimming ugly 500s at a fast time is building habits you'll spend the next two years undoing.
Build in fun without losing purpose: relays, medley challenges, or a race-format set at the end of a technical day. Kids who enjoy practice show up for the sets that matter.
Adjusting on the Fly
Lanes get crowded. Kids show up flat. Have a default adjustment ready before you're standing on deck improvising.
- Too many swimmers per lane: shift to broken sets with more swimmers per interval leaving on :05 offsets, or split the group into two shorter sets running in different lanes.
- Group looks flat: cut total volume by 20-25%, keep the technical focus, and shorten rest slightly to keep intensity honest without asking for more than they have.
- Set is going long: drop the last round of the main set rather than rushing warm-down. Warm-down is not optional — it's part of recovery and part of teaching kids how to close a practice.
Example Practice — 13-14 Group, 100 Minutes, Freestyle Aerobic Focus
Warm-up (1000 yards): 400 free easy, 4x50 kick, 4x50 drill/swim by 25
Pre-set (400 yards): 8x50 free build on :50, descend each set of 4
Main set (2400 yards): 3 rounds of 400 free on 5:30 (moderate aerobic), 4x100 free on 1:25 (threshold), 200 easy between rounds
Skill work (300 yards): 6x50 push-off streamline plus 3 strokes underwater, on :55
Warm-down (200 yards): easy choice
Total: 4300 yards in roughly 100 minutes, one clear focus, all four strokes touched, technique checked at both ends of the practice.
Writing workouts by hand or from memory works until you're running six groups a week and need to check whether Tuesday's set actually hit threshold pace or drifted into junk mileage. SwimIQ takes a spoken, photographed, or typed workout and turns it into a structured plan with the time and yardage splits and training-zone breakdown already worked out, so you can see at a glance whether the practice matches the focus you set out to write.