Editorial policy

The rules this site is written under. They exist so you can tell how much weight to put on any given sentence.

Sourcing

• Every number gets a source, and the source gets a link. Training formulas cite the paper. Records and standards cite the federation. Nothing is quoted from another blog’s summary when the original document is public.
• Primary sources beat secondary ones. World Aquatics for records and rules; USA Swimming and U.S. Masters Swimming for standards and results; peer-reviewed journals for physiology.
• Where evidence runs out, the text says so. A lot of swimming practice is coaching consensus rather than tested science. That is not a problem as long as it is labelled, and here it is.
• Where sources disagree, both are shown. Course conversion is the clearest example: there is no single official answer, so the site gives two methods and explains what separates them rather than picking one.

Review dates

Every guide carries a visible review date, and it means what it says: a person opened the page, re-checked the figures against their sources and confirmed they still hold. It is not a timestamp bumped by a script to look fresh.

Pages that depend on data which changes — records, published standards — are re-checked when that data changes. Technique pages are reviewed at least once a year.

How AI is used

Drafting and research assistance, with a human deciding what gets published. That distinction matters, so here is the specific version: an AI assistant is used to gather sources, draft prose and check internal consistency. It does not choose what the site publishes, and no page goes up without a person checking the numbers against the linked sources.

Any figure that cannot be traced to a named, linkable source does not get published, regardless of how confident the draft sounded. That gate exists because the failure mode of AI-drafted content is not bad writing — it is confident, plausible, invented numbers.

Corrections

Errors get fixed on the page where they appeared, and where the correction changes the meaning of something, the change is noted rather than quietly overwritten. Write to us via the contact page; a correction with a source attached gets acted on quickly.

Advertising and independence

The site is funded by advertising. Advertisers have no input into content, do not see pages before publication, and cannot buy a recommendation. If a page ever carries an affiliate link, it will be disclosed on that page.

What we are not

Not a swim school, not a coaching service, not a governing body, and not a source of medical advice. Training guidance here is general information for healthy adults. If you have a shoulder injury, a heart condition, or any difficulty breathing in the water, the right next step is a professional who can see you, not a web page.