If you’ve incorporated the last few posts into your lessons, you’ve taught your kids almost all of the basics of the front crawl. One more thing that will transform your child’s stroke into something more hydrodynamic is how he approaches arm recovery.
At this stage of learning to do the freestyle or front crawl, your child’s arms will be stretched out straight in the water throughout the stroke, both when he’s pulling his arm backwards and when he’s returning it to streamline position. During the part of the stroke when your arm is moving forward, you’re not helping to propel yourself forward. (Remember push back to go forward.) You have to get your arm ahead of you again, though. For the forward movement, there’s less resistance moving your arm through the air than through the water. Have your child focus on lifting his arm out of the water to return to streamline position.
Eventually, he’ll bend at the elbow to return his arm to the forward position as quickly as possible. At this stage, though, just keeping his arm out of the water is a big accomplishment.
Now, you can start working on teaching him to turning his head to breathe instead of doing popup breathing.
Have fun in the pool!