Padlie study — original data
How swim coaches really structure their workouts
The literature says how you should train. Here is what coaches actually program: 6,269 workouts created in Padlie by 487 coaches between October 2017 and July 2026, anonymously aggregated. Volume, intensity zones, strokes, structure, seasonality — every figure is citable with a link back to this page.
6,269
workouts analyzed
487
coaches
29,631 km
programmed
8 years
of data (2017-2026)
4,300 m: the median workout
Half of all workouts fall between 2,800 and 6,100 m. The median session is 4,300 m — far from the 6-8 km elite-group sessions that dominate online discussions: everyday club training is 4 to 5 km.
2 800 m
25% of workouts are under
4 300 m
Median workout
6 100 m
25% of workouts exceed
63% of volume at low intensity — not 80%
Z2 dwarfs everything: 53% of programmed volume. Together with Z1, low intensity accounts for 63% of volume — well below the ~80% of the polarized model popularized by Seiler. Real-world coaching leans heavily on threshold work (Z3, 19%), exactly the zone the 80/20 model says to minimize.
Share of programmed volume per zone (of the volume where a zone is set).
Field practice vs the 80/20 model
The polarized model recommends ~80% of volume at low intensity with minimal moderate work. Club coaches are far from it: the real distribution is much heavier on threshold.
80/20 benchmark: ~80%
70% freestyle
Freestyle massively dominates programmed volume. Breaststroke, a full Olympic stroke, accounts for just 1% of prescribed group-training volume.
5 blocks per workout
The typical session is built in 5 blocks (warm-up, drills, main set, speed, cool-down), with 2 sets per block on average. Half of all workouts run between 3 and 8 blocks.
Equipment: paddles first
10.6% of sets prescribe paddles, closely followed by the pull buoy. The kickboard, king of the pool deck, shows up in only 2% of sets.
October carries 18× more volume than August
The club season is written in the data: volume peaks in October (13.5% of yearly volume) and all but vanishes in August (0.7%). The September-November back-to-training stretch alone concentrates a third of yearly volume.
Methodology
- Source: workouts created in Padlie between October 2017 and July 2026 by 487 coaches (485 organizations), primarily in France.
- 7,694 workouts created in total; 6,269 kept after quality filters (excluding 1,323 unpublished drafts and 102 empty sessions).
- Workout volume = sum of sets (repetitions × distance × block repeats).
- Zone and stroke percentages are computed over the volume where the coach set that field.
- Anonymous aggregates only: no individual swimmer or club data is published, and no segment below 10 organizations (k-anonymity).
- Known biases: the sample is users of a planning tool (rather structured clubs); zones reflect the coach's prescription, not the intensity actually swum.
Cite this study
These figures are free to reuse (articles, theses, coaching courses, social media) with a link to this page as the source.
Source: Padlie — Study “How swim coaches structure their workouts”, 2017-2026.
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