Professional appearance, but the “Freestyle Basics” online course lacked substance for me
I subscribed to the SwimGym online membership for €14.99 per month mainly because I was interested in the “Freestyle Basics” course. My expectation was that this course would teach freestyle/front crawl swimming systematically from the ground up. I already had some basic experience, but I wanted to rebuild my technique in a structured way.
Unfortunately, I was disappointed with the online course. The website itself looks clean and professional, but the course content felt much less thorough than I expected.
The course is structured over ten weeks. In my experience, each week mostly includes only one or two very short videos showing individual drills or exercises. What I missed were detailed explanations of what to focus on technically, common mistakes to avoid, and how the different parts of freestyle swimming are supposed to build on each other.
One concrete example: Week 1 starts with the freestyle kick. However, I did not find a proper explanation of how the kick should actually be performed, what beginners should pay attention to, or which mistakes are common. At the same time, the course quickly starts to assume quite a lot. In the second workout of Week 1, the freestyle kick is practiced again, but then the plan already includes 600 meters of full freestyle swimming. This is with a snorkel as a training aid, but at that point I had not yet seen sufficient explanation of what the rest of the body should be doing: body position, arm movement, rotation, coordination, or breathing.
For that reason, the course did not feel to me like a systematic beginner-friendly foundations course. It felt more like a training plan with a few short video instructions. Across the ten weeks, the topics do seem to be introduced gradually, but I found the course lacking in structure, depth, and truly beginner-oriented technical explanation.
I can imagine that in-person training at SwimGym with real coaches may be much stronger. However, the “Freestyle Basics” online course did not meet my expectations.
I was also disappointed with how my refund request was handled. I cancelled my membership shortly (a few hours) after reviewing the content because I realized the course was not what I was looking for. However, my refund request for the €14.99 payment was declined, with the explanation that I had already used the content and that this was against their terms.