THE PROGRAM

The Dragons Swimming Programme 2024 - 2025

The key to maximising performance is to make sure that at all stages of the swimmers development they are consistently working on perfecting their competitive skills and technique. In addition the young swimmer needs to develop a ‘process driven/marginal gains’ outlook to their swimming and not be ‘outcome driven’ and governed by short term glories. The Dragons swim program aims to produce resilient, self reliant swimmers capable of ‘maturely’ handling the stress of training and competition and therefore effectively managing their own swimming career to fullfill their potential.

The Long Term Athlete Development Plan (LTAD)

Essentially we have split each squad into their corresponding ‘LTAD National Framework’ guideline groups and renamed them. For example within Gold group we have formed two separate distinct squads based on age and ability called ‘Junior Performance’ and ‘Senior performance’. The ‘Junior Performance’ Squad correspond with the LTAD ‘Training to Train’ guidelines “During the Training to Train stage, there should be an emphasis on maintaining high skill levels whilst developing aerobic (endurance) capacity.” Whilst the ‘Senior Performance’ squad adhere to the ‘Training to Compete’ framework “During the Training to Compete stage there should be a continued emphasis on maintaining high skill levels whilst focusing on maintaining high volume workloads but with increasing intensity.”

What is the LTAD?

The Long Term Athlete Development framework initiative is a cross sport teaching and coaching worldwide model and seeks to achieve optimal training throughout an athlete’s career with particular reference to the early years of development.

British Swimming has adopted the framework and this has in turn filtered down to Swim Schemes, Swim Schools and Clubs. The LTAD Model along with the Swim 21 Quality Mark has started to make a really positive impact upon the sport. The LTAD Formalises the overall structure of an young swimmers development and if a teacher or coach is in any doubt of what sort of teaching/coaching they should be providing to a particular child/young adult – they have only to reference the Extensive LTAD National framework.

THE LTAD Framework Overview:

Stage 1 – FUNdamental

AGE: Female 5 to 8 years; Male 6 to 9 years.

The FUNdamental stage should be structured and fun! The emphasis is on developing basic movement literacy and fundamental movement skills across a range of activities. The skills to be developed are the ABCs (Agility, Balance, Coordination, Speed), RJT (Running, Jumping, Throwing), KGBs (Kinesthetics, Gliding, Buoyancy, Striking with the body) and CPKs (Catching, Passing, Kicking, Striking with an implement). In order to develop basic movement literacy successfully, participation should be encouraged across as many different activities as possible. Speed, power and endurance should be developed using FUN and games. In addition, children should be introduced to the simple rules and ethics of sports. There should be well-structured programmes with proper progressions that are monitored regularly.

Stage 2 – SwimSkills: Building technique!

AGE: Female: 8 to 11 years; Male: 9 to 12 years.

During this stage young people should develop the skills of specific sports and learn how to train in a structured environment. There should be participation in complementary sports i.e. those sports, which use similar energy systems and movement patterns.

Stage 3 – Training To Train: Building the engine!

AGE: Female: 11 to 14 years; Male: 12 to 15 years.

During the Training to Train stage, there should be an emphasis on maintaining high skill levels whilst developing aerobic (endurance) capacity. This is the stage where there is greater individualisation of fitness and technical training. The focus should still be on training rather than competition and this training should be predominantly about maintaining high skills levels whilst undertaking high volume, low intensity workloads.

Stage 4 – Training To Compete: Optimising the engine!

AGE: Female: 14 to 16 years; Male: 15 to 18 years.

During the Training to Compete stage there should be a continued emphasis on maintaining high skill levels whilst focusing on maintaining high volume workloads but with increasing intensity. The number of competitions should be similar to the end of the previous stage but the emphasis should be on developing individual strengths and weaknesses through modelling and nurturing technical and tactical skills based around specific strokes or distances, but not both.

Stage 5 – Training To Win: Maximising the engine!

AGE: Female: 16+ years; Male: 18+ years.

This is the final stage of athletic preparation. The emphasis should be on specialisation and performance enhancement. All of the athletes’ physical, technical, tactical, mental, and ancillary capacities should now be fully established with the focus shifting to the optimisation of performance.