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By Bill McKeon

The stage is made of one tenth concrete and nine tenths blue-green water. Red and yellow kickboards are stacked by the edge of the pool, the only visible props as the curtain rises. The arriving swimmers fix their eyes on the giant poolside pace clock. When the red hand points straight up, the show begins.

Lined up in lanes by level of skill - arranged by speed within lanes - swimmers launch off at five second intervals, taking their place in columns of churning water. Each swimmer flips at the far end wall, then pushes off and glides. Then breaking the surface, one by one, the swimmers form a new line, a line that charges ahead like an angry serpent.

The practice builds from start to end from slow to fast to faster. Strokes and formations change from lane to lane. Swimmers pass in bursts of speed in elegant precision. There’s a place for everyone and everyone knows their place.

A practice that appears to run itself is a well run practice indeed. But sophisticated movement patterns never take shape on their own, it’s the coach who designs and directs an orderly practice.

“Training sessions should be well organized to avoid wasting pool space or workout time,” advises Cecil Colwin, in his book: “An Introduction to Swimming Coaching.” This former national technical director of Canadian swimming suggests making practice sessions more productive by optimizing the use of space and time.

Such a philosophy leads to the concept of the “choreographed practice,” where every aspect of the training session is planned out in advance. A choreographed practice takes advantage of every cubit of space and every unit of time. This efficient use of resources enables the coach to accommodate swimmers of varying abilities, strokes and distance pursuits in the same practice pool.

Harnessing Practice Time
“I recommend you to take care of the minutes,” said Lord Chesterfield, the 18th century English statesman, “for hours will take care of themselves.” Most swimming coaches would agree that harnessing time is a minute by minute affair. In the blink of an eye the clock can get ahead of the plan.

The coach’s ability to take control of time can make or break a practice. And if a practice fails to start on the stroke of the pre-planned minute, the coach is already beginning to lose control. Minutes lost in getting started can never be recovered, and the coach ends up in a no-win race with the clock. This produces a disjointed practice, one that is likely to miss its intended mark. A timely start allows a practice to flow according to plan, with swimmers receiving proper doses of training.

Caught up in the struggle to keep pace with time, the coach can become an unwilling slave to the clock. If time restraints are allowed to affect the structure of the workout, the intended purpose of the practice will be altered. For example: If the coach shortens the rest intervals between repeat swims, to squeeze the practice into a tighter time frame, the training emphasis gets shifted toward the aerobic. This compromises the integrity of the workout.

The best way to harness time is to follow the well known adage: Plan your work and work your plan. The plan can always be adjusted as time sensitive factors change. These adjustments will be easier to make if plan B options are included in plan A. For instance: The coach can assign a priority rating to each workout element, based on its importance to that day’s training. If practice time is unavoidably cut short, the coach can use this priority scheme to quickly devise an abbreviated practice.

Using Pool Space Effectively
Equally as important as controlling time, is controlling how pool space is used. Overcrowded lanes and lanes full of mismatched swimmers must be avoided. Congested swimming space slows swimmers down, and swimmers swimming different strokes can get in each others way.

When team members arrive at the pool, they should not have to guess where to go or what to do. To ensure the most effective use of the pool, lane assignments must be clear and regular swimming patterns must be in place. Nothing devalues a practice more than confusion. In the words of Coach Colwin, “A well organized practice is the hallmark of a good team.”

There are many proven training formations that make good use of pool space, but the makeup of the team and the layout of the pool will ultimately determine the best distribution of swimmers. Once determined, this information gets written into the detailed practice plan.

Assigning swimmers to practice lanes should not be taken for granted. The placement of swimmers has much to do with what gets done at practice. For example: It is very efficient for seven swimmers to train in a single lane. But confined to one lane, a group this size will be forced to swim in circles, possibly fostering faulty swimming techniques.

Very often efficient methods aren’t the most effective. Before allocating pool space, the coach should know how the plan will impact swimmers. Even when faced with facility limitations, the coach must strive to find swimming formations that enhance the effectiveness of training.

Coordinating Space and Time
Few things are as challenging as coordinating space and time. Both of these entities have a mind of their own. This is why coaches turn to choreography. Coordination requires a master plan.

In a typical set of climb-out swims, swimmers start from a dive. They emerge after every one-length swim and scurry back to the start. When a swimmer doesn’t make it back to the starting point on time, the space in the pool where the swimmer belonged goes unfilled. Seconds later, two swimmers vie for a place to swim. The problem here is not lack of space or insufficient time, but the failure to make these elements work together.

When selecting swimming sets, coordinating space and time is important. A set of 5 X 125 Free on 1:40 may look like the perfect fit for an open time slot. But was it the coach’s intention to have the swimmers finish the set at the opposite end of the pool from where they began? If not, the coach has allowed the clock to determine the physical location of the team. In this situation, time was considered, but spatial concerns were somehow overlooked.

Transitions between swimming sets should always be planned in advance, especially when swimmers are changing lanes. This is when the door is open for trouble. If the swimmers in lane two move into lane three before the swimmers in lane three have stopped swimming, the coach has failed to coordinate space and time. If the swimmers in lanes two and four switch places by crossing the active swimming lane between them, time and space are once again out of sync. If swimmers move, but needed equipment stays behind, choreography was incomplete.

The elements of space and time always work together. The simplest change to one can have a dramatic effect on the other. For instance: Rearranging lane lines during practice is intended to reshape space, but it also eats up lots of practice time. Moving lanes around during practice is usually a bad idea, unless the new setup is of greater value than the time lost in transition.

Synchronizing Dissimilar Activities
When it comes to synchronizing several swimming groups engaged in different activities, nothing is more effective than the pace clock. According to coach Dick Hannula, author of “Coaching Swimming Successfully”: “Pace clocks serve as assistant coaches and must be in place at every practice.” The pace clock can regulate the starting, stopping, and pacing of any number of simultaneous activities. This frees the coach to concentrate on coaching.

But the pace clock can only regulate what the coach sets in motion. A quality workout structure must be in place. If the plan is for swimmers from three different groups to start and finish together, the swimming set might be arranged like this:

Group A 15 X 100 free on 1:20 - 1,500 yds (total time 20 mins)
Group B 12 X 100 free on 1:40 - 1,200 yds (total time 20 mins)
Group C 10 X 100 free on 2:00 - 1,000 yds (total time 20 mins)

Throughout the 20 minute swim, swimmers control their own pacing and monitor their own send-off times. A high degree of complexity can be built into a practice, if the pace clock is used to synchronize the action.

Creating Coaching Opportunities
The primary purpose of the choreographed practice is to guarantee time and space for essential activities. This is why pre-planned coaching opportunities should be built into every practice. For instance: During a set of 8 X 100 breaststroke drill, the coach can identify swimmers who are having problems. This group can then be moved to an outside lane for several minutes of individual coaching, while the rest of the team goes through the drill again. Opportunities to reinforce skills are easy to create, if time and space are set aside in advance.

Any old workout will get swimmers wet and occupy their time. A choreographed practice organizes training so more gets done at each session. “The eventual result,” says Cecil Colwin, “will be swimmers with ever-growing confidence, technical skill and physical ability.” In other words, swimmers will require less time to travel a preset distance through liquid space.

*** Bill McKeon has coached high school, college and club swimming in Florida and New York.

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