A Practical Guide to Training Like an S13 Paralympic Swimmer
Allison Van Diepen is a Canadian Paralympic swimmer who competes in the S13 classification. She won two gold medals at the 2016 Rio Paralympics in the 50m and 100m freestyle S13 events, and added more medals at Tokyo 2020. If you are looking to train with the same structure she uses, the first thing you need to understand is that her program is built around high-intensity interval work mixed with technique-focused drill sets. It is not a beginner's program. It is also not something you can fully replicate without access to a competition-grade pool and a coach who understands para-swimming classifications. Her approach centres on threshold training and race-pace repeats. In practice, that means sets like 8 x 100m freestyle at race pace with 20 seconds rest, or 6 x 50m sprints off a 55-second interval. The volume is lower than what able-bodied Olympic swimmers do, but the intensity is brutal because each rep is near-maximal effort. She also prioritises dryland work — core stability, shoulder prehab, and explosive power training on land — which makes up about 30 percent of her weekly workload outside the water. I ran into a specific problem when I tried to adapt her split sets for a club team I coached. Her rest intervals are extremely short, and when I gave them to a group of age-group swimmers, half the set was done at below-60 percent effort because the kids were gassed by rep three. The fix was simple: I extended the rest by 10 seconds and cut the set to six reps instead of eight. The output quality stayed high, and nobody collapsed. That is the reality of copying high-level sets without adjusting for the athlete's actual fitness base.
Setting Up a Weekly Schedule Based on Her Method
A typical week looks like six days in the pool with one full rest day. Here is the breakdown: Monday: Aerobic base set — 3000m continuous with pickups every 200m. Target heart rate around 140 bpm. This is where most of the volume sits. Tuesday: Technique and drill work — 2000m total with 100m of single-arm freestyle, 100m of catch-up drill, and 100m of fingertip drag per side repeated. Paired with 3 x 50m sprints at the end.
Wednesday: Threshold day — 4 x 400m at threshold pace with 30 seconds rest. This is the hardest set of the week. Threshold pace is roughly 90 percent of your max effort, the kind of pace you can hold for about 30 minutes in a row. Thursday: Recovery swim — 1500m easy. No structured intervals. Just smooth strokes and breathing control. Friday: Race-pace repeats — 10 x 50m at goal race speed off a 1-minute interval. This is where you nail the starts and turns you will use in competition.
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Saturday: Mixed distance set — 2500m with variable intervals. 200m fast, 200m steady, 200m sprint. Repeat the pattern five times. Sunday: Rest or light cross-training. Swimming is not the only component. She incorporates cycling and resistance band work on her rest days to keep the shoulders conditioned without the impact of water.
The Equipment and Facility Requirements You Actually Need
You do not need a 50-meter Olympic pool to follow this. A 25-meter short-course pool works fine, but you will need to double your lap count and adjust the interval times slightly because turns add time to each rep. If you are using a 25-yard pool, the distances translate differently — a 50m race-pace repeat becomes two 25-yard lengths, and your rest interval needs to account for the extra turn time. For timing, a basic waterproof stopwatch is enough. I found that using a metronome app set to your interval pace helps more than any expensive timing system. When the beep hits, you go. No debate. That was the difference between a set that produced results and one that produced exhaustion without speed gains. For dryland, you need a pull-up bar, resistance bands with varying tension levels, a medicine ball (2 to 4 kg), and a rowing machine if possible. The rowing machine is important because it mimics the pull pattern of freestyle without the joint impact. Allisone Van Diepen uses this daily. It is not optional if you are serious about the dryland component.
Common Mistakes That Will Derail Your Progress
The biggest mistake I see people make is copying the intensity without copying the recovery. Allison's sets look doable on paper, but they assume you have built up months of aerobic base first. If you jump straight into 10 x 50m at race pace after a month of casual swimming, you will either burn out or injure your shoulder. The shoulder is the weak point in para-swimming at the S13 level because the classification includes athletes with mild visual impairment but no limb difference, so the stroke mechanics are close to able-bodied freestyle but the training load is managed differently to account for pacing errors that can come from limited depth perception. Another issue is neglecting the starts. Allison's gold medals were partly won on reaction time and breakout speed out of the wall. If you are only practicing continuous swimming without diving in and working your first five strokes, you are missing a critical component. Set aside at least 20 minutes per session for start and turn work. Use a block if you have access to one. If you only have a shallow end with a ledge, practice your entry and breakout from the wall repeatedly. There is also a limitation with this approach that nobody talks about much. The S13 classification allows athletes with visual acuity up to 6/7.5 and a visual field of less than 40 degrees. If you are a sighted swimmer adapting this training, you have an advantage in turn awareness and wall identification that Allison manages with a reporter or coach tapping the wall. Do not assume your training translates perfectly because you can see the black line on the bottom of the pool. Your turns may be less precise than hers under race conditions, and that is something to account for in your practice.
How to Measure Whether This Is Working
Track your 50m and 100m times every two weeks under the same conditions. Same pool, same time of day, same warm-up routine. Write the numbers down. If your times are not dropping after four weeks of consistent training, the set is not the problem — your base fitness is. Go back to Monday's aerobic set and increase the volume by 500m before adding more intensity back in. Also monitor your resting heart rate in the morning. If it climbs by more than five beats over your normal baseline for three consecutive days, you are overtraining. Cut the volume in half for that week. This happened to me once when I was pushing too hard through the threshold day. My times got slower, not faster, and I had no idea why until I checked the number. A simple log book prevented a two-week setback. If you want more detail on Allison Van Diepen's actual competition splits and race breakdowns, you can find those through Paralympic.org and the IPC swimming results archive. The training structure I described is adapted from publicly available interviews and coaching resources, not from her private programme files. No one outside her team has access to the full original plan.
