Senior Swimming Time Standards and Championship Meet Prep: The 6-Week Plan

This plan sits beside your coach’s program and never replaces it. Show it to them first. Everything here builds toward one swim on one day, and a coach or lifeguard is on deck for every session.

Twelve push-offs in streamline with dolphin kicks, counting kicks, not seconds. Start at four kicks and surface, then six, then eight, and stop adding when the streamline loosens or the breakout gets sloppy. Never hold past the count to see how far you can go; the count is the drill. Find the number of kicks that gets you to or past the flags with a clean breakout and write it down. That number is your race number for the next five weeks.

Ten turns in your first event’s stroke: swim in from the flags at race speed, turn, push off, your kick count, breakout, three fast strokes, stop. Then ten in your second event’s stroke. Feel the wall push you. On breaststroke, the pullout ends with the head up before the arms turn in. On backstroke, one pull on the front and then the flip, no lingering. On fly and breast, two hands, shoulders level.

Your first event, broken into quarters with ten seconds of rest at each wall, swum at the pace you plan to race. Twice through with full rest between. Write the quarter times down and look at the pattern, not the total: the goal is four even pieces, not a fast first one. Then one broken swim of your second event.

Three sets of twelve band rows, twelve pull-aparts, ten external rotations each arm with the elbow pinned to your side, then a 45-second plank and fifteen slow squats. Shoulder load builds gradually and nothing here is pressed overhead with weight. If the front of the shoulder pinches, stop and tell the coach.

Six repeats of half your race distance on a send-off with twenty seconds of rest, each one faster than the last, the final one at race pace with your full kick count on every wall. Talk test between repeats: one sentence, not a song, and by the last two repeats you should not be able to say much. Aerobic base is already there from the season; this set teaches the back half.

Right after the descending set, eight push-offs with your race kick count and a three-stroke breakout, full rest. Tired breakouts are the ones that decide the last 50 of a race, and the only way to practice them is to be tired.

Warm up exactly as you will at the meet: an easy 400, some pace 50s, a few starts if the coach has blocks open, then out of the water for twenty minutes. Then one swim of your first event, full effort, with your written race plan (kick count, breathing pattern, where you build). Rest an hour if the session allows, or come back the next day, and swim it again. Two swims of one race in one day is what a championship meet asks.

Sit down with a parent and read the meet packet start to finish: the time standards for your events and course, the qualifying window, the entry deadline, warmup assignments, and the timeline for prelims and finals. Write the entry deadline somewhere both of you will see it. Confirm with the coach which events are entered and which times were used.

Only what the coach writes. If they leave this to you: four fast 25s from a push with full kick count and full rest, then four fast 50s at race pace, long rest, then easy swimming. Volume drops, speed stays, walls stay sharp. The urge to add more this week is the thing that ruins tapers.

Write your race plan for each event in five lines: the start, the kick count off each wall, the breathing pattern, where the build begins, the finish. Read it before each remaining session and once the night before each swim. A race plan on paper survives nerves better than one in your head.

Pack two suits (training and tech), two goggles, two caps, towels, water, snacks, and any credentials or entry confirmations. Walk through the meet day by the timeline: warmup lane and time, event and heat, where to check in, what to eat between prelims and finals. Nothing at the meet should be new.

Warm up as rehearsed. Read the five lines. Behind the block, only the first wall matters. Swim the plan, count the walls, finish with the legal touch. Then, whatever the board says, find the coach before finding the results.

Run the plan beside the coach’s, then after the qualifying swim, tell us how the walls held on the back half and what the coach said first. That is where the next plan starts.