Slough Dolphin Swimming Club has a squad structure that has been designed by our coaching team, with the aim of providing every athlete in the club the opportunity to swim at an appropriate level, whilst developing the skill sets required to become the best they can be. We adopt this approach to ensure that our swimmers are exposed to an appropriate level of training in line with Swim England’s long term athlete development guidelines.

As we are primarily a competitive swimming club our members are expected to fully support and meet the squad criteria, whilst we provide a structure that allows flexibility for our long standing swimmers who may be coming towards the end of their desire to continue competing, all new members are expected "to give it their best shot" and wholeheartedly train towards competing at the highest level. 

The starting point for the majority of our new swimmers who have progressed from a learn to swim scheme would be to train for up to 1 hour a week. Thereafter the commitment level increases fairly rapidly to between 2 and 5 hours a week spread over several days. If successful in progressing through our Junior Section, commitment levels increase further, currently up to 11 hours a week for most of our performance swimmers with plans to expand this to circa 14 hours a week during 2026.

Competition entry would initially be at a local level and can increase to a regional or national level as swimmers progress.

We also offer overseas warm weather training for our performance swimmers.