SQUAD STRUCTURE

Cumbernauld Swimming Club structure has been devised to allow every swimmer in the club the opportunity to develop the skill set required to become a champion swimmer, and to ensure that at each level of development the young swimmers are exposed to an appropriate level of training, in line with British and Scottish Swimming’s long term athlete development guidelines.

The club structure comprises three main programmes – The Improvers Programme, the Competitive Development Programme and the Competitive Performance Programme.

Improvers Programme:

This is the entry and foundation level of the club. This is the most important programme as it is where vital development skills, technique and character building are taught for swimmers to use throughout the swimming pathway. The Improver programme is made up of two groups:

Improvers 1: This is the entry lrevel for the club. Swimmers entering this group are usually aged 7 or 8 and have reached the minimum standard required for the Pre-Club level of the local authority swimming lesson programme. They have a basic understanding of all four strokes. This squad trains twice a week at the following times:

Improvers 2: This is the second stage of a swimmers development that builds on the skills developed in Improvers 1 and looks to add legal start and turn techniques. It also adds additional training time. The training times for this squad are as follows:

Competitive Development Programme:

The second tier of the club’s squads, is where the young swimmers learn to develop the training habits required to succeed as a competitive swimmer. Emphasis is primarily placed on stroke technique, while new training aims are introduced and previously learned skills enhanced.
Swimmers should be consistently performing legal competitive skills, starts and turns. While the emphasis will remain on skill development, this programme will further continue the development of basic swimming endurance, through the introduction of longer distance training. They will also be introduced to wider aspects of training such as nutrition, goal setting and taking responsibility for knowing their own Personal Best Times. Additionally swimmers will learn about sportsmanship and behaviour as a team member.

Swimmers would be expected to be qualifying for and competing at District and Graded Meet level on a regular basis.

Age Group Graded:

This is the first level of this programme. Emphasis is on consolidating and building on the skills learned at the previous level whilst improving endurance by increased training volume. The swimmers are expected to be competing regularly at Graded Meet Level and achieving times for Distict level competition and Regional squad entry criteria.

The training times for this squad are:

Junior District :

This is the second level of this programme. Again the main aim of this level is to condolidate and build on the skills developed previously whils introducing higher intensity levels both in the amount and quality of training. Swimmers at this level should be looking to qualify for competitions at District level on a regular basis and possibly even at National Age Group level.

The training times for this squad are:

Competitive Performance Programme