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How to Teach Your Kids the Backstroke: The First Stage

If the front crawl is the get-there-quick swimming stroke, the backstroke is the stop-and-smell-the-roses stroke. It’s fun and relaxing, and teaching your kids the backstroke is fun and relaxing, too. Breathing is easy. Because you don’t have to concentrate much on breathing, it’s easy to focus on the rest of the body. Although the body position is the same, the backstroke is actually easier to do than back floating, because the movement helps to keep the body in position.

The First Stage of Teaching the Backstroke

By this point, your child has the advantage of having learned to float on his back, to kick, and to streamline his body position. All of this is the foundation for starting to learn the backstroke. (If you haven’t already taught your kids, these swimming skills, now’s the time! Teaching the backstroke without these foundation skills is pointless.)

Floating on his back has prepared your child to keep his body horizontal and his head in line with the rest of his body. This is the necessary starting point for the backstroke.

Step 1: Nothing But Kick

To start to learn the backstroke, ask your child to put his arms in streamline position while he floats on his back and kicks. Have him practice this for a while to get a feel for moving while he’s on his back. Be sure to track his position in the pool for him and give him plenty of feedback about where he is in relation to the sides or end of the pool. Later he’ll learn to do this himself.

Step 2: One Arm at a Time

Have your child pull one of his arms from streamline position through the water to his thigh. Have him lift his arm to return it to streamline position and then try the same thing with his other arm. Have him practice alternating his arms this way for several lengths of the swimming pool until he feels comfortable with it.

As with the front crawl, have your child visualize reaching for something in the swimming pool just beyond his grasp above his head and to look up. This will help to counteract the tendency to bend at the waist.

Step 3: Put It All Together

At first, your child might have to concentrate so hard on moving his arms that he forgets to keep kicking. Don’t worry about this. After he’s gotten some experience moving his arms, gently remind him to kick. Work on this until your child is comfortable stroking with his arms and kicking continuously. Then, it’s time to move on to the next stage of teaching the backstroke.

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Time to Play! Front Crawl

Kids learn by playing. The more you can make learning to swim fun for your kids, the more they’ll like it, the quicker they’ll learn, and the more fun you’ll have teaching them. This game is about stealth and imagination. You can use it to help your kids learn to be aware of their bodies while they’re working on their swimming skills, all while they’re having fun.

Ask your child to imagine having his body move through the smallest possible hole in the water. How small can he make the hole? Can he be like a spear or an arrow moving through the water? Can he be like a needle moving through the water? Can he be silent and move without a splash? What body positions can help him do this?

P.S. My seven-year-old son would like you to know that today he found a crab at the beach that was as big as his fist!

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8 Tips for Taking Your Kids’ Swimming Skills to the Next Level

The basics you’ve been teaching your kids so far will put them in the top ten percent of understanding of all swimmers. I’m all about making it fun and promoting water safety, but if you’d like to help your kids learn even more, you can focus on sophisticated refinements of swimming skills. Here are 8 tips to help your kids take their swimming to the next level.

  • Use leverage. When he pulls his arm through the water, have your child bend at the elbow. A bent arm applies more force given the same amount of effort. Try this on land. Have your child pick up something with a bent arm and again with a straight arm. The bent arm makes it easier to move the same weight.
  • Bend at the elbow. Have your child bend his arm at the elbow during the recovery phase of the stroke, the part of the stroke when his arm is returning to streamline position. Have him aim to have his arm enter the water just above his ear, instead of extended straight in front of him.
  • Slice the water. Have your child try slicing into the water with his hand, with the thumb entering the water first.
  • Rock and roll. Have your child try rolling onto his side as his hand enters the water. This rolling motion of the torso provides power. The sideways position of the water presents a smaller surface area to the water so that there’s less resistance. The angle of the shoulder when his body is on its side allows for greater range of motion. This is complex. It takes many hours of practice to master.
  • Alternate legs. In addition to alternating with the arms, your child can practice alternating with his legs. When his right arm enters the water, have him try to kick first with his left leg.
  • Play with timing. Have your child play with the timing of the rolling motion, of the arm recovery, of the movement of the arm into the water.
  • Experiment with breath. Have your child experiment with the number of strokes he takes between breaths.
  • Quality, not quantity. Have your child count the number of strokes it takes for him to swim the length of the pool. Can he focus on making each stroke better so that he can swim the length of the pool in fewer strokes?

If you’re a good-but-not-great swimmer, try some of these tips yourself. Not only will you get the fun of becoming a better swimmer, but also you’ll increase the empathy you have for your kids while they’re working on learning something new.

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Teaching Arm Recovery

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!