Face in and eyes open under the water

The first two steps in the Learn to Swim process involves your child being able to hold their breath, put their head under the water and open their eyes under the water. The biggest challenge for the swimming teacher is to make this fun. Children who have a shower and are used to water going over their heads don’t seem to have a problem with these first two steps. Nor do children who have … read more

Care for your child's ears

With the weather warming up and the swimming season well under way I need to bring to your attention the need for some preventative measures in relation to “Otitis Externa”, which is the clinical name for “outer ear infection”. During the warmer months, especially if your child is in the water, the weather is humid and they start to perspire the outer ear canal may have d… read more

Tips on learning breathing techniques

NOTE: This article is an extract from part of our in-house training program. Basic Breathing As a swimming teacher I found that I spent the majority of my time trying to teach pupils how to get a breath. This was especially true towards the end of the swimming season. Teaching someone to get a breath certainly presents a great variety of challenges, which range from a toddler struggling to get… read more

Watch your kids

For several years I have been of the opinion that mobile phone, tablets and laptop computers are contributing too, and will increasingly contribute too, deaths by drowning or near death by drowing in toddlers and young children and have been trying to get that message out into the community. If you agree with this article then please share it and ask your friends to share it because it may just sa… read more

Swimming through winter

The advantages of swimming lessons during the cooler months: Being confident in the water; because you have the skills to be able to control your movement through the water and to be able to get your mouth out of the water to take a breath; requires a high degree of skill. This skill is a bit like a jig saw puzzle in that you put the skill in place piece by piece and you have to stick with it to f… read more

First time at a swimming lesson

Try and remember what it was like the first day you went to high school or tried anything new. See if you can recall the strangeness of it all. The feelings of insecurity and uncertainty. Going to swimming lessons for the first time can be a very emotional time for your child, especially if they have had a bad experience in the water. The term water also means the bath or the shower. Quite a lot… read more

The importance of swimming without goggles

Let me relate an experience that happened to me in 1998. It was during an after school class and I notice a new pupil was coming into my next class. I noticed from the date of birth of the child that this boy 4 ½ years old, which meant that he was not at school yet, and there was a note beside his name telling me that he could swim but had had a bad experience in the water. I invited the … read more

Follow the recipe

Be patient and be aware of time frames Teaching someone to swim is a bit like baking a cake; there is a set formula you follow. If you don’t follow that formula the cake will be a disaster e.g if I put the flour and sugar into the oven and baked it, then took the ingredients out of the oven and added the milk and eggs, the cake would be terrible and I would have wasted all the time and eff… read more

When do I finish swimming lessons?

This is a question that I have dealt with over the years and I guess there is no definitive answer to this, because it depends on what level of swimming the parent wishes their child to achieve. Swimming is such a technical sport that there is always something to learn. One reason we teach other strokes before the pupil has perfected crawl stroke (freestyle) is: the process of learning other strok… read more