19 Nov 2023

Swimmers require tailor-made training programme, which outlines their goals as that will help them get the desired results.

This was said by South Africa’s swimming coach, Eugene da Ponte during Botswana Swimming Sport Association’s three-day World Aquatics coaches’ course level 1 on Saturday.

da Ponte said purposeful sequencing of training into specific cycle was vital, as it would guide the coaches when to increase the swimmers’ work load to avoid overwhelming them.

He further said swimmers’ physiological adaptation was important given that it would allow them to swim at a faster speed so that their bodies could get used to maintaining a certain speed.

Also, he stressed the importance of adding variety to a swim workout saying doing different workouts was recommended to avoid injuries.

He said, for instance, swimmers should not train butterfly six-days a week.

In addition, he said rest and recovery for swimmers was inevitable adding that swimming sport was all about pushing the body to its limits in terms of fitness.

He further encouraged coaches to ensure that swimmers took a lot of water saying most of them tend to forget consuming water as they spend most of their time in water. ENDS