The Deck of Cards Practice

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

Try this one for a little variety. Instead of writing specific sets, have swimmers draw playing cards from a deck to determine what stroke, distance (with instructions), and number of repeats to do. One swimmers draws the three cards, then the group does the set.  Repeat as long as you wish.

The first picture below is the layout for the conditions of the card picking.  The second picture explains the sets that we ended up doing in about an 80 minute practice.

The likelihood of getting 3 aces is about .018%, or 1 in 5,555.  But there is still a chance.

8 thoughts on “The Deck of Cards Practice

    1. Deep practice is whole stroke swimming (as opposed to drill) where we focus on one particular aspect of the stroke. For breast, this might be “fast hands” or hitting a straight body line in each glide, or keeping the head forward… any technical aspect you want to over-emphasize.

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  1. I’ve done the deck of cards fun workout for years but much more simplified. As a great addition: each lab swim for each lanes earns an M&M. They are kept in a paper cup on the starting block. A “10” earned 10 M&M. At the end of practice all swimmers eat their M&Ms

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