By Tommy Engelstad Pedersen, swim coach
Most swim coaches have tried AI by now. Some are impressed. Others are sceptical. Both reactions make sense.
AI in swim coaching is neither revolutionary nor useless — it's a tool with clear strengths and equally clear limitations. Here's an honest look at both.
What AI is genuinely good at
Structuring and improving session descriptions
You know what you want to train. You know the zones, the drills, the load. But writing it down in a way that's clear for your swimmers takes time — especially when you have three groups and six sessions a week.
AI can take a quick rough sketch and turn it into a structured session with correct target times, clear zone labels, and logical progression. AI isn't deciding the training — you are. It just saves you the writing time.
Identifying patterns in race data
A concrete example: a swimmer races 100m butterfly with a first 50m of 28.5 and a second 50m of 34.2. That's a fade of nearly 20% — and AI can identify in seconds that pacing is the primary limiter, not technique or fitness. It gives you a concrete starting point for the conversation with the swimmer afterwards, rather than sitting there calculating splits by hand.
That's exactly the kind of analysis we've focused on building in SwimForge.
Saving time on routine work
Periodised season plans, weekly summaries, reports for parents or the club board. These are necessary, but they take time away from actual coaching. AI can produce drafts you refine, rather than starting from scratch every time.
What AI cannot replace
Knowing your athletes
An AI doesn't know that Sara always performs better after an easy Monday. It doesn't know that Jonas struggles with motivation after a poor meet. It doesn't know that your group needs a bit of humour in the warm-up on Fridays.
A large part of coaching is knowing people — and AI has none of that. And it's unlikely to ever get it.
In-the-moment judgement
Should you run the planned threshold session or switch to technique work because half the squad looks exhausted? That decision gets made on the pool deck — not in a dashboard.
Responsibility for development
An AI can suggest "4x200 @2:30 Z3" based on previous data. But whether that's actually the right load for that swimmer on that day — that's on you.
What this means in practice
AI won't make you a better coach. But it can make you a more efficient one.
The best way to think about AI in swim coaching is as a very fast assistant who has read a lot about swimming and is good at text and patterns. You're still the coach. You decide the direction, the priorities, and the adjustments. AI handles parts of the job faster — so you can spend more time on what actually requires coaching experience.
A concrete test
Next time you write a session: write it the way you normally do, quickly and roughly. Send it to an AI tool and ask it to structure it with correct target times and zone labels.
See if the result is usable. Fix what's wrong.
After a few times, you'll have a feel for what AI is reliable on — and what you always need to check yourself. That's exactly where you want to be.
Describe the session you want — and we'll handle the rest. You get structure, times, and improvement suggestions automatically. Start here.