Why Two Swimmers Should Never Follow the Same Plan

On paper, it makes sense. Two swimmers, same distance, same sets, same sessions. Same plan. In reality, it almost never works.

Same Plan ≠ Same Outcome

Two swimmers can follow the exact same programme and end up in completely different places.

One improves steadily. The other plateaus, struggles, or burns out.

Why?

Because training stress is not the workout — it’s how your body responds to it.

And that response is highly individual.

Even swimmers with similar times can differ massively in:

A “moderate” week for one swimmer can be overload for another.

Static plans ignore this completely.

Swimming hides fatigue well.

You can often hold pace while:

From the outside, everything looks fine — until suddenly it isn’t.

This is why generic plans are especially risky in swimming compared to running or cycling.

Squad-style plans work despite this problem, not because it’s solved.

In a good squad:

PDFs and shared plans don’t have that safety net.

They assume identical adaptation — and that assumption is wrong.

Personalised training doesn’t mean:

It means one simple thing: Your next week reflects how your last week went.

SWIMMA does this by adjusting training training based on metrics related to:

Two swimmers can start on the same baseline — and quickly diverge to where they should be.

That’s not fragmentation. That’s accuracy.

If two swimmers follow the same plan, one of them is almost certainly training sub-optimally.

Progress comes from the right dose, not the same dose.

The sooner training reflects the swimmer — not the spreadsheet — the faster, calmer, and more sustainable improvement becomes.