What it is
A 2–5 minute daily question asked during warmup to test and reinforce swimming knowledge. It sits between Position 11 work and the warmup set in the practice timeline.
Essentials
- Goldilocks Rule: the answer is one swimmers "just might know" or that sits just outside their knowledge, requiring a moment of thought to recall their training
- Prepare the question before practice; topics include swimming skills, terminology, references to prior practices, coach-specific questions, or calendar dates
- Ask everyone — present to the group or ask individuals as they arrive at the wall so each person answers independently
- Give no verbal, physical, or other hint until all answers are in; for 1:1, a thumbs up or down is enough
- Reward correct answers with a fun challenge; assign a boring swim for incorrect answers
- Hide the answer in the question wording or in the Correct/Wrong activities
Progression
- Get in and go (initial warmup)
- 2 × 25 SL + Position 11
- Question of the Day (2–5 min)
- Warmup set: 4 × 25 on 1:00
What goes wrong
- Making the question too difficult (frustrates) or too easy (bores)
- Not providing enough context in the question, leading to confusion
- Failing to use incorrect answers as teaching moments
- Giving any hint before all answers are collected
How you know it worked
Roughly half the group gets it right and half doesn't. Swimmers look forward to it and treat it as a challenge and a moment of triumph.
How you teach it
The question of the day is your low-stakes way to introduce swimming terminology without a formal lesson. "What does IM stand for?" "What's the order of an IM?" "How long is this pool?" "What is circle swimming?" You are teaching vocabulary and reinforcing prior instruction in a format that feels like a game. The framework itself never changes — same slot in the warmup, same 2–5 minutes, same reward/punish structure — so new swimmers know what to expect and the predictability is calming. What changes is the question.
Put your own flair on it. The author calls it an "entertaining and important learning moment" and encourages coaches to make it their own. The examples span rule-based questions (backstroke rolling), technique questions (breathing sides, kick names), body-position questions (head in water during a breath), and team-culture questions (what group comes after Minnows). The shark-fin example is a good model: the correct answer's activity ("swim to the flags with only a shark fin showing above water") embeds the answer ("Sharks") in the physical task, so the swimmer discovers it by doing.
There is also a dryland version, run in the 2–5 minute slot of the dryland routine, usually about a swimming skill or a dryland activity. It follows the same Goldilocks principle and reward structure.
The key constraint is knowing your swimmers. Hitting the sweet spot "requires that you know your swimmers" — the question must be calibrated to the group's current knowledge, not to a generic difficulty level.