Sheppard Swim School

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Latest news and offers

Private lesson client Joe Lipworth has been working with Gary Vandermeulen for 3 years. Joe has been now offered a full scholarship from George Washington University for his swimming successes. Another private lesson client Katherine Johnstone, and sister of our Tulliallan instructor Jenni Johnstone, swam at the Commonwealth Games in India this past month. At the Games Katherine swam in the 50m breaststroke final and also was a member of the 4x100m Medley relay for Scotland who came 5th. And, Harris Academy in Dundee will be starting its new programme on 23 October and will run until 18 December.

Register for more information

For more information on swimming lessons please send in a registration form and we will be able to contact you via email. Pleaes give as much detail as possible to allow us to give you the most detailed information.

Swim Camps

Our swim camps run at Easter, Summer and October break. We also have regular Sunday training at Glenalmond College with Olympic Coach Gary Vandermeulen. We have training weekends this season on Oct 23/24, Feb 5/6 and May 28/29

Racing events

Our racing events are for pre-competitive swimmers and any swim team not affiliated with SASA can join in the race events. These events are for fun and are held in a non-intimidating environment. We take time to allow swimmers to learn how to race before they are encouraged to join a swim club and then race in registered competitions. These events take an hour or up to two hours in total.

Club visitations

a visit from Gary Vandermeulen can stimulate your swimming groups to understand balancing in the water and 'holding water' much better. This will also give the coaches a new platform from which they can build their drills programme from.

Competitive training opportunities

each Sunday morning you can visit Olympic Coach Gary Vandermeulen either as a coach on the poolside or as a swimmer. Each training sessions from 7:15-9:15 consists of 60 minutes of drills, 45 min of aerobic training on the drills from the first hour and 15minutes on diving exercises.

Private lessons

Gary Vandermeulen can look at the timing and balance of your technique and work out the exact drills which will help you to correct any techical faults.

SHEPPARD SWIM SCHOOL has a full spectrum of swimming lessons and swim coaching. We provide for swimming lessons, private lessons, coach education opportunities and swim camps. We believe that you can be taught world class principles in a safe and fun way! We dare to Dream!

SWIM LESSONS: We teach children from 3yrs of age in our 'Nemo' groups where we invite parents to join in to assist with the transition into group lessons. After Nemo our swimmers begin our own swim lesson programme designed by Gary Vandermeulen and updated regularly with improvements from our instructors. Our swimming programme introduces breaststroke kick earlier and dolphin kick earlier than other lesson programmes because these movements are very natural for young swimmers. Our levels 1-6 gradually take children through the learning process of all swimming strokes: Frontcrawl, Backcrawl, Breaststroke and Butterfly. In levels 7 & 8 our lesson time increases to 40minutes (from 30minutes) and we begin to fine tune swimming strokes.

PRE-COMPETITIVE LESSONS: These lessons take the level 8 swimmers and start teaching in areas that prepares a child for competitive swimming. They learn dives from starting blocks, tumble turns (and all stroke turns) and are introduced to using swimming to improve their fitness. These lessons are kept fun and interesting! Our Phoenix Aquatics team also teaches pre-competitive levels.

AQUATICS: After levels 1-8 a child can also take our rookie lifeguarding class, our water polo class or our synchronised swimming class. These are new!

Sheppard Swim School is jointly owned and directed by Scotland's most successful female swimmer; five time Olympian Alison Sheppard MBE and her husband, Olympic coach Gary Vandermeulen. The Sheppard Swim School provides swimming lessons for children and adults of all abilities, also provides coach education opportunities and swim camps for competitive and pre-competitive swimmers. We teach lessons in multiple locations: Perth, Dundee, St Andrews, Auchterarder, Stirling, Kincardine and als in Dollar as part of our upper levels in our new swim club; Phoenix Aquatics.

The newly formed Phoenix Aquatics swimming club is the upper portion of the Sheppard Swim School. At Phoenix Aquatics we have pre-competitive swimming, competitive swimming, masters swimming, synchronised swimming and soon we will have Water Polo.

We provide high quality swimming lessons in the Tayside/Fife.

Perth area Glenalmond College pool (PH1 3RY);

St Andrews Fife St Leonards School (KY16 9QJ); or also click here for a detailed map of pool area & parking.

Stirling area at Bannockburn High School (FK7 0HQ).

Kincardine at Tulliallan Police College near Alloa (FK10 4BE).

Auchterarder area Castlebrae Police Treatment Centre pool -Auchterarder (PH3 IAG);

Dundee area Harris Academy pool- Dundee (DD2 1NL).

In Dollar we also have our pre-competitive swimmers at Dollar Academy (FK14 7DU) as part of the Phoenix Aquatics. (Other venues are soon to be added.)