Edinburgh Leisure has teamed up with Scottish Swimming to offer recreational swimmers a more structured workout in the pool.

Scottish Swimming has devised a new fitness product, SwimGym, to support the thousands of people who swim to keep fit, but feel they could get more from their time in the pool.

The scheme has been funded by £40,000 from the Scottish Executive’s Healthy Living initiative.

The programme includes 10 progressive swimming schedules for beginners, intermediate and advanced swimmers.

Scottish Swimming is the national governing body for swimming and its related disciplines in Scotland. The funding package secured from the Scottish Executive’s Healthy Living initiative is the first of its kind awarded to Scottish Swimming.

Scottish Swimming’s chief executive Ashley Howard welcomed the support: “This is our first step into the recreational market and is an important stage in the development of our activity as a governing body.”

Scottish Swimming has teamed up with Edinburgh Leisure, a not-for-profit organisation which manages sports and leisure facilities for the City of Edinburgh Council, to allow customers to buy SwimGym direct from the pools. It will also be approaching other local authorities and swimming providers to give customers access to the product. It is also available to the general public.

The launch follows recent research by MORI (MORI Sports Tracker 1996 - 2005), which rated swimming as the number one participation sport in the UK. The research found that swimming is especially popular with women – almost two-thirds of women who take part in any sport, chose to swim.