The length of the season, defined by school or conference rules, may dictate a specific first and a last day of season. There may also be rules regarding number of allowable practice hours per week, which could limit swimmer development. An overcrowded school might have a split schedule system, making it more difficult to assemble all athletes for a group practice at the same time.
Other limits can include the available workout equipment, and the condition of that equipment. If materials need to be replaced, but there are not enough funds to acquire new items, then the team or school budget becomes a planning limitation.
The presence of non-school swimming and diving teams in the area, from which swimmers can gain additional in- or out-of-season experience, can have a large influence on the success of a swimming team. Swimmers that practice year-round should have higher experience and skill levels than those swimmers that only take part in swimming during the high school season. This should result in those more experienced athletes achieving a relatively higher level of success as individuals and as a team. The lack of a year-round program can limit the level of success for the team. In some cases, a year-round team could compete for an athlete’s time, forcing them to make a choice between taking part in high school swimming or skipping the high school season to stay with the year-round team.
A single-season training plan for a high school swim team requires pre-planning work to insure the planning process uses past and current data. The planning process begins immediately following the conclusion of the previous plan, and should be essentially completed before the season begins. There will be on-going modifications to the plan based on its effects on the athletes as the season unfolds as revealed through objective measures and subjective observations.
A plan of this nature should include at least four training phases:
It should also have methods integrated into the plan to develop skills and conditioning specific to swimming. Besides the essential strokes, starts, and turns, the plan should include sport psychology, team building, and academic elements.
A plan for a high school season is not simply laying out a series of time blocks; those periods must be filled with work to develop the athlete. The balance between physical development and technique refinement is not solidly predetermined, but is modified if needed through a season. If athletes in a race are at the same level of fitness, the results of a race could be changed dramatically if skill elements such as starts and turns are changed between swimmers. While physical conditioning and technique improvement are important, training plans are incomplete if they do not consider aspects beyond physical conditioning.
