Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Side Breathing with Front Crawl

One of the harder skills to teach is side breathing while doing the front crawl because it requires more coordination and practice. This article I found especially helpful as a guide to teaching the basics of side breathing. Some of the related articles at the bottom of the article were also good, but meant for more fine - tuning.

View the comments below to see what our teachers have to say.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Resources for Teaching a Parent 'n Me

A lot of teachers are familar with teaching from toddlers on up. Teaching parents how to teach their infants, however, is a little different. This post is a compilation of resources that I have found helpful in teaching a Parent 'n Me class.

This article is from a blog that Jim Reiser, M.S, wrote about how to teach infants how to do a back float. He calls himself the Swim Professor and has had a lot of success with his techniques. These are some of the main points that I find helpful from his article.
  • "Don't force it." If your swimmer is communicating that they are uncomfortable respect it.
  • Even though your swimmer is "skill ready" or capable of doing the skill, sometimes they are not mentally ready.
  • Make sure swimming is a positive experience. If someone makes them do something they may learn to dislike the skills they're taught.
This video clip has really good footage of a Parent 'n Me class that is successful and a pleasant experience for the swimmers. I like the songs and activities they use to teach them skills and also to make it a positive experience in the water.

What techniques, resources, strategies, games, tips, etc. do you find successful in your own Parent 'n Me classes?