How Should Youth Swimmers Train? Olympic Gold Medalist Explains

If you were building a swim program from age 8 all the way to pro, how much volume would you give young swimmers? Katie Hoff Anderson puts that question to Cam McEvoy, the Olympic champion and world record holder in the 50 freestyle, and his answer challenges how much volume the sport asks of kids.

Cam believes swimming has done physiology well for a long time but has overestimated how long and how much volume it takes to get a swimmer from A to B. Between 8 and the teenage years, he would hammer the fundamentals: technique, strength, mobility and what he calls body movement intelligence, with general exposure to speed, middle distance and distance without maxing out any one of them. He also makes the case against specializing early in either direction. The argument that young swimmers should not specialize in sprinting, he says, applies just as much to specializing in distance and volume.

He explains why speed and strength only work when swimmers are given real space for them instead of having them piled on top of the usual volume, why gym work for a 14-year-old does not have to mean weights, and why he thinks this approach would keep more kids in the sport. He knows the alternative firsthand. From 11 until 18, he says, "if you're only doing 40 to 80 kilometers a week, then it kind of, kind of sucks after a little bit." His answer is detours: three months in a year for pure speed and three months for pure gym while everything else is on maintenance.

For coaches, swim parents and age group swimmers, this is how the fastest 50 freestyler in history would build a swimmer from the ground up. The full conversation with Cam is on the Unfiltered Waters channel and wherever you listen to podcasts.

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