3 Go-To Swim Workouts for Endurance, Speed & Technique

I've been coaching club swimmers for years now, and one question comes up constantly from both swimmers and parents: "What should I actually be doing in training?"

It's a fair question. Most swimmers I see turn up wanting to get faster, maybe to keep up in training, make a final, or chase a new PB, but if you don't know why you're doing certain sets, it's easy for sessions to start feeling repetitive, confusing, or just plain exhausting.

Something I tell my squad again and again: not every session should feel the same, and not every session is meant to do the same job. If you go flat out every time you swim, you'll end up burnt out or injured. On the other hand, sticking to the same comfortable pace every session might feel like you're working, but advancement slows. The real breakthroughs come from mixing things up with purpose, tailoring training to your stroke, your events, and where you are in the season.

Most weeks with my squad, training includes a balance of endurance work, speed or race-pace work, and technique-focused sessions. Exactly how those sessions are built, the strokes used, the distances, the drills, and the intensity are always set by the coach and adjusted to the swimmer. An IM (Individual Medley) swimmer, for example, will often place more emphasis on endurance and technical steadiness among all four strokes, while stroke specialists may train very differently again.

The sessions below break down what each type of swim training is actually meant to develop, how they usually fit into a week, and why I use them with my squad. Things like stroke choice, drills, volume, and rest are always tweaked based on the swimmer. And what happens in the pool is only part of the picture; nutrition, recovery, and land training all contribute to how effective a session really is.

In my experience, getting faster in the pool and seeing those PBs drop comes from a mix of building aerobic fitness, developing speed and power, sharpening technique so you're not fighting the water, and really nailing your turns and transitions. I've seen plenty of swimmers who are the quickest in the lane but lose out because of sloppy tumble turns, slow touches, or weak underwater work. Those little details can cost you tenths, or even whole seconds, in a race.

Whether you're a junior swimmer training several times a week, an adult fitting sessions around work and family, or a parent trying to understand what training is building towards, the aim here is simple: to give you a clearer context around why swim training looks the way it does, and how all those pieces add up over time.

For most of my swimmers, endurance work is all about building the aerobic fitness you need to hold your pace, recover between repeats, and finish races strongly. These sessions usually mean longer repeats, controlled intensity, and not much rest, definitely not all-out efforts.

That said, what endurance work looks like really depends on your stroke, your event, and where you are in the season. An endurance session for a distance freestyler is a different beast to one for a breaststroker or an IM swimmer. I always adjust things like volume, rest, and stroke choice based on age, training history, and how endurance fits with the rest of the week's work.

A typical endurance session might include:

A longer warm-up with mixed strokes or drills relevant to your main stroke

Repeats in the 100–400m range (or time-based equivalents), swum at a sustainable pace

Limited rest to challenge aerobic capacity while continuing to have good technique

Here's what I tell my swimmers: the main goal isn't to swim as fast as you can, but to keep your form and pacing as you get tired. If technique falls apart, it's no longer endurance work; it's simply surviving swimming, and I try to avoid that.

For IM swimmers, endurance and technical control across all four strokes often deliver more benefit than pure speed work for much of the season. For stroke specialists, endurance sets are usually tailored to the demands of that stroke, including varying rest needs and an emphasis on technique.

Endurance sessions never happen in a vacuum. How tough they feel and how much you get out of them depends on things like what you've eaten, how well you've recovered, and any land training you've done that week. If you turn up under-fuelled or tired from the gym, the session changes completely. That's why I almost never treat endurance work as a fixed formula.

Speed work is where swimmers learn to move fast while maintaining control. It's about building power, getting a feel for race pace, and learning to swim quickly without letting your technique fall apart, not just thrashing up and down the pool.

For my club swimmers, good speed sessions usually mean shorter, high-quality efforts with more rest than you'd get in endurance work. That extra rest is on purpose; it lets you hit the right speed every repeat, keep your mechanics sharp, and actually train fast swimming instead of just swimming tired.

What speed work looks like depends a lot on your stroke and your events. Sprint freestylers, breaststrokers, and IM swimmers all use speed in different ways, so I always tweak the session to fit.

A speed-focused session might include:

A thorough warm-up that builds gradually and includes stroke-specific preparation

Short repeats (often 15–50 metres) at high intensity

Plenty of rest to keep each effort sharp

A clear technical emphasis, such as stroke timing, kick connection, or underwater work

Speed sessions are also where turns and transitions really matter. Swimming fast between the walls only leads to PBs if your push-offs, underwater work, tumble turns, and finishes are done with intent. At club level, where races can be decided by tenths, those small gains at the wall often make the difference.

In speed work, quality always beats quantity. If strokes get sloppy or swimmers can't repeat the same speed with control, the session has lost its purpose.

I'll frequently modify speed work on the fly, maybe by adding rest, shortening repeats, or changing the focus, so swimmers are still training fast, more than simply getting through the set tired.

Technique sessions focus on how efficiently you move through the water. They're regarding reducing drag, improving body position, and sharpening the key parts of your stroke that really affect speed and consistency. I like to break down the stroke and work on specific elements, rather than just swimming easy lengths and hoping things improve.

For my club swimmers, technique work goes hand in hand with endurance and speed training—not instead of it. These sessions aren't a day off, but the physical load is usually lighter so swimmers can really focus on how they're moving in the water.

A technique-focused session might include:

A longer, relaxed warm-up that allows swimmers to feel their stroke

Drill and swim combinations chosen specifically for the swimmer's main stroke, or for IM swimmers working across all four strokes

Controlled swimming at moderate intensity, where form can be maintained

Short skills-focused work, such as body position, timing, or underwater control

Technique work isn't just for technique sessions; it matters just as much in endurance and speed sets. A better body position makes endurance work feel easier. Cleaner mechanics let swimmers produce speed without having to force it. For IM swimmers especially, being consistent across all four strokes usually makes more difference than just chasing raw speed.

These are drills I use regularly in club training to target common technical priorities within each swimming stroke. How and when I use them will always depend on the swimmer and what I'm seeing in the water.

Front crawl – Catch-up drill I use this to reinforce front-end extension and stroke timing, especially when I notice swimmers rushing the catch and losing length per stroke.

Backstroke – 6-kick switch. This one's brilliant for developing rotation and timing between kick, hips, and arm stroke. I'll bring this in when swimmers are struggling with balance and control through the stroke cycle.

Breaststroke – 2 kicks, 1 pull. Helps isolate kick timing and balance. I use it to reinforce connection through the stroke cycle, particularly when swimmers rush their pulls and lose power.

Butterfly – 3–3–3 Breaks the stroke down to improve rhythm and coordination before bringing it back together under control. This is one of my go-to drills for swimmers who are fighting the stroke rather than working with it.

The key to technique sessions is intent. Swimming without focus doesn't change anything. The aim is to swim well, notice what's happening in the water, and then carry those improvements into the tougher sessions and into racing.

For most of my club swimmers, three or four sessions a week is about right. That's enough to build fitness and keep your feel for the water, without overloading your body or your schedule. If you're racing a lot, you might go up to five or six sessions a week. Fitness swimmers can still make good progress with two or three solid sessions.

What matters more than the exact number is how those sessions are balanced. Swimming the same way every time, same pace, same distances, same focus leads to stagnation pretty quickly. Mixing endurance, speed, and technique throughout the week gives swimmers a chance to develop different skills rather than cramming everything into every session.

Here's how I see it: training doesn't need to be rigid. But having a rough idea of what each session is meant to achieve helps you avoid just swimming lengths at a comfortable pace and calling it training.

Swimming faster and seeing PBs come down comes from bringing together aerobic fitness, speed, power, and good technique. In my experience, these three elements support each other, and progress usually comes from developing all of them rather than focusing on just one.

Endurance gives you the base to hold pace, recover between efforts, and finish races strongly. Speed work teaches you how to actually move fast when it counts. Technique makes both endurance and speed more effective by reducing resistance and helping you work with the water rather than against it. On top of that, turns and transitions play a huge role in dropping time, especially at the club level, where races are often decided by tenths.

Where swimmers put their focus changes over time. Swimmers who are new to structured training usually get the most out of building endurance first, so they can finish sessions without falling apart. The swimmers I've coached who feel stuck, even though they're training regularly, often find that technique is the missing piece—small tweaks in body position, timing, or control can unlock speed without adding more work.

The thing that ties all of this together is consistency. Showing up week after week and training with intent always beats short bursts of hard work followed by burnout or injury. Progress in swimming is gradual, and the swimmers who improve most are usually the ones who just keep turning up.

A well-balanced training week varies the focus of each session, so swimmers aren't trying to work on endurance, speed, and technique all at once, every time they get in.

How that balance looks in practice depends on the swimmer, the coach, and what's coming up in the season. The aim is to give each session a clear purpose rather than cramming everything into a single messy workout.

As training volume increases, varying the focus of sessions becomes even more important to manage fatigue and maintain high quality. I try to avoid stacking tough sessions back-to-back if I can; it gives the body time to recover and helps swimmers get more out of the key sets.

If a swimmer turns up feeling flat, heavy, or technically off, swapping a hard session for technique work or a lighter aerobic swim is usually the smarter move. Training smart and adjusting when needed almost always gets better results than forcing sessions to stick to a plan.

Something I've seen over the years: the swimmers who show up in a kit that fits and works tend to stick with swimming longer. If you're sorting out your gear and want something built for club swimmers, Maru is worth checking out. Their kit is made for week-in, week-out training.

Over time, those small, useful details from how your sessions are set up to how comfortable you feel turning up to train make a big difference in whether swimmers stick with the sport and keep improving.