The Midseason Check: What to Look at Before December Meets

A midseason check compares what you planned with what your swimmers actually did. Early November is a good time to do one. Most programs are eight to ten weeks in and midseason meets are a few weeks away, so there is still time to change things.

Most coaches judge this point by feel. You can see when a group looks tired or a swimmer is flat, but feel doesn't tell you why.

Feel is useful, but it needs numbers behind it. Most of what you need is already in the data you collect each week.

Here are five things worth checking before you plan the next block.

The plan you wrote in August and the season you actually ran are rarely the same. Pool time gets cut, groups get moved, and sets get shortened when a session runs late.

Compare what you planned to what your swimmers actually did. If the gap is big, your December taper is built on numbers that are not real. In MakoSets, every workout you write is tracked for volume and load automatically, so this comparison is already there in Mako360.

Total metres don't tell you what kind of work was done. Two groups can swim the same distance and get very different training.

Look at how the work is split across your energy zones. Has the aerobic base actually been built? Has race pace work started too early? Check this per group, not just for the whole squad.

Team attendance can look fine while a few swimmers miss a lot of sessions, and those swimmers are often the ones who struggle at midseason.

Pull attendance per athlete for the last eight weeks. Anyone well below the group needs a different plan going into December, not the same taper as everyone else.

One bad check-in means very little. A swimmer reporting poor sleep or soreness for two weeks straight means a lot.

If your athletes log daily wellness, look at the trend for each one. In Mako, athletes check in from the athlete app and Mako360 shows you who needs attention in the coach app. A trend like this is worth a conversation with the swimmer.

If you ran a test set in September, run it again now. Of the five, it's the most direct check.

With MakoBoards, results are saved per athlete and ranked, so you can see who has improved and who has not. If a swimmer hasn't moved, points 1 to 4 are where to look for the reason.

Good season management doesn't mean rewriting the plan. Most of the time the fix is small.

The hard part is getting the information together. If your sets are in one swim app, attendance is in a spreadsheet and wellness is in a group chat, you have to pull it together by hand before you can compare anything. When it all sits in one system, the comparison is already there.

That's why we built Mako, a swim app that puts season management in one place. It was built by coaches and athletes who lived the problem. Sets, attendance, wellness and test sets all sit together, so the full picture is clear when you need it.

Start your free trial at app.makoswim.io/signup or book a demo and we'll walk you through it.

Season management is planning and tracking a swim season from the first week to the final taper. It covers training volume and intensity, attendance, athlete wellness and test results, and how they change over the season.

The workouts you write, the volume and energy zones they add up to, attendance per swimmer, wellness check-ins and test set results. The value comes from seeing them together, not in five separate places.

About eight to ten weeks into the season, a few weeks before midseason meets. That leaves enough time to change the next training block.

Both. Coaches use the coach app to write sets and manage the season. Athletes get the athlete app included with the coach's plan and use it to log daily wellness.