Discover your life aquatic

  The Better Way to Improve Your Swimming

Sea Hiker Swim Pods help you get to confident,

efficient and faster swimming in 6-8 weeks.                                                                                                                                         

    Coaches give you custom feedback in every class

    Share the pool with swimmers with similar goals

       so you never feel out of your depth.

    Courses and coaching that adapts to your needs,

       so you never feel left behind or ignored. 

    Getting started is easy and you can choose the

     Register for a Swim Pod today.

Sea Hiker Swim Pods help you to swim with confidence so you can achieve your swimming, triathlon and fitness goals faster and without struggle.  

Say goodbye to floundering in the water and hello to both instant and long term improvements in your swimming skills, confidence and results.

 
The next Swim Pods start:
February 28th, 2012
              and
March 5th, 2012
Sea Hiker courses offered at: 

  
  Vancouver Aquatic Centre
 
 

"At the start of my adventure to Ironman I could not float, stroke or complete a 50 meter lap and forget about this infamous catch the swim books talk about. By November 2010, I completed my Ironman Florida swim of 3.8 km in 1 hour and 25 minutes. Sea Hiker not only taught me how to swim but how to enjoy doing it and that is more valuable than anything."

- Barry Duncan, Owner of Momentum Fitness, Vancouver, BC

A Sea Hiker Swim Pod is a small coached swim course or practice with generally only one or two lanes of swimmers. The size of the class reflects the preferred coach-to-swimmer ratio that we feel is necessary for the best results.

Each type of Swim Pod has a few key goals that everyone is there to achieve. Conquering anxiety in the water, swimming a first lap, swimming efficiently, getting ready for a triathlon or preparing for a long open water swim.

The most striking feature of the Swim Pod is that your coach will take the time to show you three things:

1. Why you are not swimming the way you want to so you have a clear understanding of swimming and efficiency.

2. What 3-4 things you should do first before anything else and how to do them.

3. How to practice effectively in class and on your own so you see improvements in the short term.

Each Swim Pod comes with an online practice guide with reference videos, ten free practices, and tips on how to overcome common pitfalls.

You coaching also includes one-on-one feedback, video analysis, course summary, personalized practice advice and, of course, a practice that you will enjoy.

Swim Pods for Every Level: Quick Summary    

For New Swimmers - Swim your first 25m with ease.

Easy Laps - Make the breakthrough to multiple laps.

Long Distance - Swim 500m and learn all efficiency essentials.

Triathlon - Learn how to build speed and learn the tri mindset.

Endurance - Polish your skills and swim faster than ever.

Ultra - A training program for your fastest swim ever or an open water 5-10 km swim.

For more details, see the chart below.

  For New Swimmers

Easy Laps Swim Pod    

Struggling to relax in the water?  Wish you could swim as easily as you walk?

The Sea Hiker Swim Club for New Swimmers is devoted to helping you achieve confidence in the water and conquer your swimming demons.

In a fun and relaxed atmosphere learn how you can overcome difficulties with breathing, confidence in the water, and inefficient swimming technique.

No previous experience necessary, however, you should feel comfortable putting your face in the water for 5-10 seconds and gliding in the water for a few seconds at a time.

(Practices 400-800m)                        

 A course designed to introduce you to practices that build up your ability to swim freestyle with ease over distances of 50-200m.                       

Ideal if you have just completed the Swim Club for New Swimmers or equivalent private lessons and can swim 25-50m non-stop.

(Practices 500-1200m)     

 An introductory course for lap swimmers who want to learn how to swim more efficiently and with less effort.

You can swim at least 100m non-stop and you hope to be able to swim 500-750m with ease as a first step on your way to triathlons and longer swim practices. 

This is a lesson-based course that will show you the fundamentals of efficiency, propulsion and body awareness for swimming in triathlons or for fitness.

(Practices: 750m-2000m.)

This swim pod offers a mix of stroke instruction and structured practices to help you increase distance without losing a sense of relaxed efficiency.

Our focus will be on building body awareness around key propulsion skills.

You should be comfortable swimming 500m non-stop, as this will help you prepare for triathlons of any distance.

(Practices: 1500-2000m)

 This practice-based swim pod will help you build distance and endurance, while improving your stroke efficiency.

You should be comfortable swimming at least 2000m in a swim practice.

Our main focus will be pacing and improving body awareness during more intense swims.

(Practices: 1500-2500m)

The goal? To tackle a long distance open water swim of 5-10km or swim a personal best in a triathlon race.

This is a 4-5 month training program with supplementary swim practices. 

(Practices: 2500-5000m with coach)

"Sea Hiker is fantastic. I learned more in the first half hour with Peter than I did in months of trying to learn on my own. Within a very short time, I've been able to feel my stroke becoming smoother, easier and much more enjoyable." - Heather Wardle, Vancouver

"It has been a remarkable year and I would not have been able to do any of it without your help!   When I started your freestyle class in March 2009 (only 18 months ago), I could not swim 25 metres! 

I managed a pretty decent swim at Ironman Canada in August, finishing 10th in my age group, in 1 hour and 10 minutes, which qualified me for the World Championship in Kona, Hawaii. Pretty crazy, huh?"   - Richele Frank

Questions and Answers

Why should I try a Sea Hiker Swim Pod? 

Our specialty is helping people feel more confidence in the water, regardless of their goals and swimming level. Our coaches know what it is like to struggle and get frustrated with swimmer. So we really look at the underlying causes for struggling with swimming and how to shorten the learning curve and make it enjoyable.  

Swimming is our passion and our priority is to use the best tools for teaching and get the best results.  

Above all, we want the process of learning swimming skills to be low-stress, fun and productive, so that you enjoy your swim practices and stick to your training so that you can acheive your goals.

Swimming is amazing and we want to share that with you.

If you are motivated to discover where swimming can take you, you're in the right place.

What happens in a Swim Pod? How does it work?

A Swim Pod is a small class with a coach who will use proven approaches to help you improve and also their own creativity to connect with you in a way that accelerates your progress. 

In a typical Swim Pod, we spend 7-9 weeks building a solid base of body awareness, so you can take away your knowledge and apply it to your swimming with success. We do this through a focus on fundamentals, discovery drills, experimental swims, exercises, games and play, time trials, benchmarks, measurements, video analysis, one-on-one feedback and group coaching.

There's never a dull class!

Here are a few key differences:

We get in the water to show you how to learn skills, demonstrating both how things can go wrong and how to fix them.

We focus most of our attention on how exactly to feel what it is you're supposed to do in the water.

We send you video clips so you can track your progress and understand how to improve.

We give you an online practice guide and free practices to do after the Swim Pod is finished.

And, of course, our free tech support, afterwards.

We care about swimming and helping people feel confident in the water.

What isn't covered in a Swim Pod?

 Our main focus is on improving the skill of swimming - so you won't see long sets on the board
and strict intervals. You probably won't see a board with the workout at all. 

Our specialty is improving efficiency in a short period of time and for most swimmers, especially if 
have been struggling to get better, this means changing the way you swim either a little or a lot, 
depending on your current skill level. 

It means slowing things down so you can understand two things:

1. Why what you're doing now isn't working and
2. What to do about it and how to start doing it now.

If you are used to a clockwork swim workout, this can be weird and frustrating at first. But if you 
are interested in swimming with less effort and going faster, then you'll see the results soon enough. 

However, some swimmers are happy with their skill level and efficiency - and just want a hour-long
workout for their morning before work, lunch break or an evening swim before dinner. 

That's fine, but that's not what we are interested in helping people with. 

Our practices are hands on and require our coaches to lead you through each set,
indicating was is important and what is not. We give you feedback in every practice. We keep
track of how you are doing and know what your main focus for the day should be. 

We expect that you are interested in learning how you can change the way you move through
the water and improve your swimming habits. So we work on being better at cutting through
the symptoms of inefficient swimming to see the causes with clarity. 

We feel and have proven that you can always get faster with the right balance of
skill improvement, drill practice and swim sets with a specific focus - and of course
a challenging set now and then. 

Our range of Swim Pods prepares swimmers for longer and more intense workouts, without
sacrificing the hard-won body awareness and skills for efficiency and solid speed. 

Even with our focus on technique and body awareness, most Swim Pod swimmers
are surprised by the distance we usually cover by the mid-way point of any Swim Pod. 

But if you are looking for a rigorous workout with very little coach feedback and 
hard interval sets, kicking sets and so on, you should consider other programs.  

How do I get started with Sea Hiker?

Pick a Swim Pod that's being offered and click on the course page to check the pre-requisites and
the full description. 
Check our FAQ before registering or contact us first, we'd love to hear from you. 

We stand by our Swim Pods - and offer a satisfaction guarantee. If you are not satisfied with
you Swim Pod experience or Sea Hiker coaching, we will make it right. 

We're celebrating our fifth anniversay in business in 2012 and we've grown primarily on the
basis of word-of-mouth and repeat business. We love our customers and enjoy coaching swimmers.
Join a Swim Pod and we'll see you in the water! 

"Thank you for helping me achieve my first half ironman. Being my first ever swim in Oliver, my 47 minute swim (2km) was a great success for me." - Dean Flahr, Vancouver, BC.

Swim Pods Start February 28th - Choose a Course and Register Below