Personal Blogs

How AI has greatly enhanced  the way I coach age group County, Regional and National swimmers 

If you’d asked me a few years ago what coaching swimming looked like, I’d have said: stopwatch, laptop, whiteboard, instinct, and experience. That was the craft. And it still is, at its core.

But now?  AI has fundamentally reshaped how I coach, not by replacing me, but by amplifying everything I do. It's like having the most eager, brilliant and insightful assistant coach at my side. 

From Seasonal Guesswork to Precision Planning

One of the biggest shifts has been in annual and macro planning.

I now map out the season with far greater clarity, aligning training blocks to competition demands, physiological development, and athlete readiness. Using structured calendars and planning tools, I can see exactly how a swimmer progresses from 

September aerobic work to a championship taper.

That long-term structure used to live partly in my head. Now it’s explicit, dynamic, and constantly refined with eqse. I can connect a Tuesday night session in October directly to a race in May—and justify every metre in between.

Even something as detailed as training zones is no longer just theoretical knowledge. I actively apply models of aerobic capacity, threshold, and lactate tolerance to ensure sessions hit the intended physiological targets. And I do this with charts using 

Designing Better Sessions, Faster

Session planning has become sharper and more purposeful.

Take a typical P2 session: I’m designing sets that deliberately target A2 aerobic development, pacing discipline, and skills under fatigue—not just “a hard set,” but a clearly defined outcome.

AI helps me:

• Generate variations of sets aligned to specific energy systems

• Check progression across a week or cycle

• Balance volume, intensity, and skill focus

What used to take hours of manual thought, I can now iterate quickly—and more importantly, improve. I’m not starting from scratch each time; I’m refining a system.

Individualisation at a Completely New Level

Where technology has really transformed my coaching is in individual athlete work.

I can now build detailed profiles of swimmers that go far beyond times. Using structured frameworks like the Person → Athlete → Performer model, I’m looking at:

• Behaviour and mindset

• Physical and technical development

• Race execution under pressure 

For example, when analysing a swimmer who is a National Qualifier, I’m not just noting that they have strong IM and butterfly. I’m identifying:

• Aerobic gaps in distance freestyle

• Opportunities to convert near-miss qualifying times

• Behavioural patterns like consistency and training habits 

AI helps me synthesise all of that into clear, actionable priorities.

It’s like having an assistant coach who can process everything instantly—yet the decisions remain mine.

Solving Problems More Effectively

Coaching is constant problem-solving.

Why is a swimmer plateauing?

Why are they dropping stroke length under fatigue?

Why are they missing race execution?

Previously, those answers relied solely on experience and reflection. Now, I can interrogate those problems more deeply:

• Compare training data against expected adaptations

• Generate hypotheses quickly

• Explore alternative approaches

Even reflections—like when a session doesn’t quite land—become more useful. I can analyse what happened, adjust communication, or redesign sets with more clarity.

Race Planning and Performance Detail

Race planning has also evolved massively.

Instead of vague instructions like “go out strong” or “build the back end,” I now create detailed race models:

• Split targets

• Stroke-specific cues

• Tactical intentions

For a swimmer, that might look like:

• Controlled fly → build back → precision breast → aggressive free

• Exact split expectations across each 50

This level of detail transforms how swimmers understand performance—and how consistently they can execute it.

Supporting Younger Swimmers More Effectively

Technology hasn’t just helped with top swimmers—it’s arguably even more impactful with younger athletes.

For 10–12-year-olds, I can design structured progression plans where:

• Every session has a clear objective

• Skills are reinforced consistently

• Confidence is deliberately built

For example, an 18-session gala preparation plan ensures that every swimmer understands starts, turns, and race skills—not just fitness.

That level of consistency is hard to maintain without support. AI helps me stay disciplined in my own coaching.

Becoming a Better Learner Myself

Perhaps the most important change is how technology has affected me as a coach.

I’m no longer limited to what I already know.

Alongside formal learning through the Institute of Swimming, I’m constantly:

• Exploring new coaching ideas

• Testing different physiological models

• Reflecting on my own behaviours and decisions

The expectation now is continuous development. The Optimal Coach Development Framework reinforces that coaches must be students of the sport, always evolving and refining.

AI accelerates that process. It challenges my thinking, fills gaps, and sharpens my approach.

The Balance: Technology + Coaching Instinct

Despite all this, one thing hasn’t changed.

Coaching is still about people.

It’s about:

• Reading a swimmer on the poolside

• Knowing when to push and when to hold back

• Building trust and belief

Technology doesn’t replace that. It enhances it.

The best way I can describe it is this:

AI gives me better questions, better structures, and better options. I learn on the fly; just in time, at the point of need. 

But the coaching—the judgement, the relationships, the environment—that’s still human.

And always will be.

I sign up to things. I'm a serial committer to learning. I'm up for a 'book study' kind of course, or one involving tasks and experiments. For now though I want to celebrate the achievements of the Zoe Blood Sugar/Fats study, and Couch to 5K from the NHS. I happen to be doing both.

We all know, surely, of the Zoe App and Dr Tim Spector from Covid Days. And surely, you've got wind of the 10,000 people in the US and UK who have now signed up to Zoe. I'm through the three days of formal testing and am on day 3 of the 10 day optional 'challenges'. 

'The Five Stages of Elearning' by Gilly Salmon comes to mind: 

Though these days where these stages and how the interaction occur has become seamless. Rather than a series of staging pools, or steps, the micro-learning of Zoe, for example, makes it far more intuitive. 

Zoe learning comes in a number of forms: the box of kit and explanatory leaflets (not quite perfect), the App and the controlled steps and gates of Zoe 101, Zoe 102 and Zoe 103 which manages what materials are made available to you. The App includes BBC bitesize 'cards', dollops that are a phrase, or short paragraph followed by a prompt to answer a multi-choice question or to 'submit'. These an element here that triggers a timer, or calendar and prompt which has twice caught me out because the 'submit' implies you have begun a phase at that moment (twice I was reading ahead of myself by a day).

My appetite for further knowledge is only partially satisfied. This is not an academic course, articles in reputable journals are mentioned, but not cited: I'm not going to get a full reference or a link to that journal - which is just as well, as I love vanishing down distracting intellectual rabbit holes. This is something that has to be managed, common sense, the audience, the purpose and look and feel of the learning can all be upset with an abundance of footnotes and links.