Session plans that survive cover and coach changes

A session plan survives cover when another coach can pick it up at 6am and run it without phoning the person who wrote it. That means writing down what usually stays in the coach's head: the purpose, the intervals, the lane splits and anything the cover coach needs to know about the group. Kept in a shared library rather than a personal notebook, those plans also become the club's record of what it has coached over a season.

Why plans get lost

Most session plans live in a notebook, a Word document on a laptop, or the coach's head. That works until the coach is ill, on holiday or leaves. The cover coach improvises, the squad loses a session's worth of progression, and nobody can say afterwards what was swum. When a parent asks why their child has done three weeks of the same stroke, the committee has nothing to show.

What a plan another coach can run includes

• The squad and the purpose: who it is for and what the session is meant to achieve, such as aerobic base, race pace or technique.
• Where it sits in the cycle: the week of the training block, so the cover coach does not turn a recovery week into a hard one.
• The sets: warm-up, main set and cool-down, each with distances, repeats, intervals and stroke.
• Intensity: how hard each set should feel, in words or on a simple 1 to 10 effort scale.
• The lane plan: how the squad splits across lanes and who leads each lane.
• Equipment: fins, paddles, kick boards, pull buoys.
• Notes for cover: anything a stranger to the group needs to know to run it well.
• Total distance, so load across the week is visible.

A simple template

Squad: Development 2        Week 3 of 6 (aerobic block)

Purpose: aerobic base, freestyle technique

Warm-up: 400 mixed, 4 x 50 drill on 1:10

Main set: 8 x 100 freestyle on 1:50, steady (effort 6/10)

          4 x 50 kick with board on 1:15

Cool-down: 200 easy choice

Total: 1,800m

Lanes: 1 and 2 faster group, 3 developing group

Equipment: kick boards, pull buoys

Notes for cover: lane 3 needs 10 seconds extra on the main set

The interval notation means each repeat starts on that clock time. "8 x 100 on 1:50" means a new 100 starts every minute and fifty seconds, so the faster the swim, the longer the rest. Our UK swimming glossary explains the other terms.

Build a club library

One plan is useful. A library of them is a club asset.

• Name plans consistently, with squad, block and focus in the title, so they are easy to find.
• Save the good ones. A session that worked is worth keeping and adjusting next season.
• Share across the team. Assistant coaches learn from senior coaches' plans, and plans outlive any one coach.
• Review at the end of a block. Look back at what was actually swum, not what was intended.

Handing a session over for cover

When you know you need cover, attach the plan to the session before you raise the request. The cover coach should see it at the same moment they see the request, not in a message the night before. Read about coach rota and cover.

How Olympus Swim helps

Olympus Swim's session builder lays out warm-up, main set and cool-down blocks. Save a session to the club library, find it again by searching, adjust it and load it onto any date in the timetable. Existing plans can be imported from a PDF or Word document, checked and saved. At the poolside, open the session as set cards on a phone, one set per card, or print it to A4. When a cover coach picks up the session, the plan is already there. Read about coaching tools.

Common questions

What should a swimming session plan include? The squad and purpose, where it sits in the training block, the warm-up, main set and cool-down with distances and intervals, intensity, lane plan, equipment, notes for cover and the total distance.

How do I make sure a cover coach runs my session properly? Write down what normally stays in your head, especially purpose, intensity and lane splits, and make the plan available with the cover request rather than separately.

What does "on 1:30" mean in a swimming set? Each repeat starts every 1 minute 30 seconds. The time includes both the swim and the rest.

Written by Joel Knight, swimming coach and founder of Olympus Swim (about).