Swim lessons overall are pretty easy. Put your face in and move your arms and legs to make you move. We help, as swim instructors, in guiding our students to the quickest most efficient way of doing that. One of my favorite things about swim lessons as a teacher, is the immediate feedback that we …
Download the PDF handout and guide here:[button link=”https://swimminglessonsideas.com/wp-content/uploads/Swim-Instructor-In-service-Module-Going-Underwater.pdf”]Training: Going Underwater[/button] Training: Going Underwater Key Points: Offer excessively multiple opportunities to go underwater Instructor must go underwater first and often. No dry heads. Push the next step of the underwater progression, not 2 steps ahead. Incremental Underwater Progression; all 7 steps. Set up your training Start …
This brilliant swim lesson hack, tip, and guide comes from swim instructor Teresa from Arizona. She has been teaching swimming for 10 years and has a wonderful swimming lesson tactic for teaching treading water. I found her description to be excellent; brief, concise, and so obviously awesome it needed to be shared. If you’ve taught …
Swimming lessons start with being able to go underwater. If you don’t go underwater, then you cannot proceed with learning how to move well through the water. Sometimes it can be difficult to train new staff what to do in their level 1 lessons. In level 1 we focus on going underwater independently. Usually …
Surrounded by indifference? I am so thankful for your attention. I know you have a busy life, especially during the summer when swimming seems to be much more in the forefront of our minds. Thank you for both opening this email, and for your interest in www.swimminglessonsideas.com. I want swim lessons in general to be …
How do you create “fun” in your lessons? This is the second in a series about how to teach swimming effectively. You can use these emails to run your swim lesson program, or to go about creating your staff training. Our first email last week was about two key points: Fill your practices/lessons with …
The language we use as swim coaches and swim instructors is important. Even subtle language has a profound impact on our participants. I make an effort with every sentence to speak exactly with instruction as literally as possible. Yoda had it right when he says in Star Wars, “Do, or do not. There is no …
Learn how to use exciting words to teach swimming well This is another sample of the SLI Swim Instructor Training Workbook section 2. In it we review why you need to use imagery to create exciting and useful words when you teach swimming. There are multiple memory, learning, and brain studies on how people incorporate new …
Learn how to teach swimming by earning the trust of your participants through repeated honesty When you follow through with your commands and are honest with what your intentions are, your students will listen and attempt new things. When you trick them or force your participants into doing things they are afraid of or simply …
Drop this word at the end of your sentences to teach better. When you remove ‘okay’ from the end of your sentences you empower your language to produce results. Do you want to teach a better class? Would you like to be heard, listened to, and have your instructions followed? There is a simple trick …
I created this short, 10 minute training video to supplement the SLI Swim Instructor Training Workbook. This goes along with the first section, Going Underwater. When you teach swimming, sometimes you need a guide to teach going underwater. This is an introductory explanation of the Underwater Progression we use in the SLI swim lesson world. …
Keep your staff on task with these key training topics 1. Never Turn your back on a swimmer During swim lessons or when you’re in the chair lifeguarding you should never turn your back to a participant. At all times you should have those swimmers in your care within your field of view. I understand …
Have your swimmers get used to jumping in from the side. If you’re attempting to teach diving from the blocks for racing starts, have them jump off the blocks first. Being comfortable leaping from the side into the water is the first step to diving. If the swimmers are not comfortable going deep underwater they …
How to Dunk a Child | Create infographics For more guides and lesson plans, check out our Premium Swim Lesson Plans Here! To get games and toys to go with them, check out this post: Swim Toys and the Games to Play
Back glides are one of the core essential skills in teaching swimming lessons. The first is going underwater, the second is doing a front glide with your face in the water, and the third, you guessed it, is doing a back glide. We will go over each of the specific phrases you should use to …
You can teach Front Glide in a variety of different ways. It is a skill you can use in Parent Tot, Level One, and Level Two. How you teach it changes in each level, and the focus changes based on the ability of the swimmers. We will break down each ability level for you and …
The toys to buy for your swimming lesson program:
These are the best swimming lesson toys that you can get for your swim lessons or swim lesson program. If you use American Red Cross, Starfish Aquatics, or Swim America, you’ll benefit from any or all of these swim lesson toys. Every game, song, or activity is possible, or made better by using these toys.
Think of a lesson plan for swimming as the roadmap for your instructors to follow. Lesson plans are the guideposts along the path to a successful swim lesson. They help with the class’s flow and skill transitions. With a well written lesson plan you’ll naturally flow from one swimming skill into the next. You’ll gracefully move from underwater activities to glides to arm strokes
Getting in the water can often be overlooked by most lesson plans and teaching programs. It is generally the first contact that the teacher has with their potentially hesitant participants. We recommend having an established routine. At our pool we have the students come in and go right to their teacher who is waiting on …
Assumptions We’ll start with a few assumptions: Level One swimmers do not willingly go underwater on their own. They know nothing about freestyle, backstroke, or swimming. They see you move through the water like it is magic, and may not believe that they can do the same thing too. Let’s assume that level one …