Quick Dip: What Should My Swimming Goals Be?

A short read for the car journey

Category: Goals | Read time: Under 2 minutes

Your swimming goals should give you something to aim for and something useful to work on. At Bluefins, we link three types of goal: Outcome, Performance and Process.

Outcome: What do you want to achieve?

This might be qualifying for Counties or making a final. Choose something that matters to you. It gives your swimming direction, although you cannot decide how other swimmers perform.

Performance: What improvement are you aiming for?

Make it measurable. For a swimmer working towards Counties, this could mean improving their 100m freestyle time by one second. Your target should reflect where you are now and give you a challenge to work towards.

Process: What will you practise to help you improve?

These are the actions you focus on in training. For that 100m swimmer, it might mean maintaining stroke length as they tire or practising controlled pacing through the middle of the swim.

Use your recent feedback to choose a relevant focus. A swimmer who starts too fast needs a different priority from one who loses speed through the turns.

Together, these goals connect the result you want with the improvement you need and the practice that supports it.

Keep your daily focus manageable. One or two clear actions are easier to remember and repeat during a session.

Write your goals: Visit Bluefins Goal Setting for examples and the downloadable worksheet.

Created by Basingstoke Bluefins Coaching Team