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How Learning to Swim Is Like Playing the Piano

It probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise to hear that learning to swim is like learning to ride a bike, but did you know it’s also like learning to play the piano? Here’s how.

Athletes practice for a long time thinking about their form. At some point, form becomes natural—internalized. Without thinking about it, they continue to improve. When kids learn to swim, the process is very conscious for a long time, and there’s a lot to think about and a lot to feel. At some point, the knowledge starts to move into your child’s body instead of his head, just like walking or riding a bike.

If you’ve ever played a musical instrument, you’ve experienced this. You can play a piece of music you memorized years ago just by putting your hands on your instrument, but when you try to consciously remember what to play next, the ability slips away. This level of automatic proficiency comes to your child’s swimming after enough practice.

Don’t believe me? Try consciously thinking about what your body should do next the next time you go for a walk or run or ride a bike. Let me know if you can do it.

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The Four Aspects of Learning to Swim That Make It Different from Other Learning

Muscles learn by doing. Practice is important not only because your mind needs to understand what’s happening but also because your muscles turn repeated motion into reflexive action. When you’re teaching your kids to swim, focus on these four special aspects of learning to help them make the most of their time in the water.

4 Key Aspects of What Kids Learn in the Water

Learning a physical skill, including swimming, is all about listening to your body and getting a feel for the water. There are four key aspects of what your child is learning in the water.

  • How his own body moves
  • Spatial relationships
  • How much effort is required to produce different results or movements
  • The relationship of the water to all of the other things—his body, space, and effort

If you bring these four things to your child’s attention in every lesson, you’ll speed up his learning.

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Know These Five Keys to Kids’ Learning to Get a Head Start When You’re Teaching Children to Swim

If you know how kids learn, teaching them to swim becomes much easier. Here are the five keys to kids’ learning.

Kids learn by playing

When kids—and adults, for that matter—play, they explore situations beyond what they’ve actually experienced, develop problem-solving skills, and create new neural networks. When they’re creating huge towers out of blocks, they’re learning physics. When they play princess or imagine being cats, they’re learning sociology and psychology. When they play with plants or bugs, they’re learning biology. They’re also learning how to think, they’re learning about themselves and other people, and they’re creating friendships with the people they play with. Playing is a safe way for the brain to learn, because you can use your imagination without risk.

You can take advantage of this by using your imagination to create games and ways of looking at the lessons you’re teaching that turn them into play. You can make improving form a game. This is also a chance for you to play yourself and to play with your child. (If you need ideas, check out the 150+ games and activities I’ve put together to help.)

Kids learn by figuring it out themselves

Kids learn best by thinking and solving problems. When kids figure things out themselves, they remember what they learn better and longer. Help and encourage your kids to explore, and point them gently in the directions that will be more useful to them.

Kids learn in short spurts

Kids can focus intensely, but their attention spans aren’t as long as adults’ attention spans. Short and frequent lessons are better than long, occasional sessions. If you have easy access to a pool, two or three fifteen- or twenty-minute lessons a day would be ideal. (Don’t worry, three fifteen-minute lessons a week will yield progress, too. It just won’t be as fast.)

Kids need lots of practice

Practice is key. Studies have shown that complete mastery of a skill takes around ten thousand hours of practice. Most of our kids won’t achieve this level of mastery in their swimming even as adults, but each hour of practice brings them that much closer to the level of skill they need to be safe and confident in the water.

Provide as much opportunity to practice as possible, and make sure that a good chunk of that is unstructured.

Kids sometimes get stuck

Plateaus are normal. So are setbacks. Sometimes increased awareness of what’s going on can actually make performance worse for a while, but that awareness is critical. It’s part of the learning process.

Your child might get frustrated or discouraged at this point and want to stop trying. At first, he wasn’t aware of the mistakes he was making. Now that he’s got more awareness, he’s able to focus on the mistakes he was making before but just didn’t notice. Encourage him and let him know that the experience is part of getting better. It’s the perfect time to incorporate a game into practice.

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The Four Things That Contribute to How Fast Your Kids Learn to Swim

You’ll have a head start when you’re teaching your kids to swim if you understand some underlying ideas about how kids learn in general. First, consider the four things that contribute to how fast and how well your kids learn to swim.

Learning a skill has several stages. First, you have to think about it, or get the idea of what you’re learning. Next, you have to practice it until you can do it. Finally, you have to master it to the extent that you can not only do it without thinking but also adapt it to other situations. This process isn’t always smooth or sequential. Understanding each of these pieces can help you make the process effective, though.

Technique

Make sure your kids really understand what you’re teaching before they start to practice. Practicing something incorrectly is counterproductive. It pays to spend extra time on understanding how to do something right upfront, even if it means not practicing the skill. The right things done consistently and carefully are cumulative. It’s better not to practice than to drill doing the skill wrong.

Amount of practice

The more practice they get, the more quickly your kids will learn. They should practice only as long in one session as they’re able to perform the skill they’re working on correctly, as far as their physical development allows.

Consistency of practice

Frequent, short practice sessions yield better, more lasting results than infrequent marathon sessions.

Attitude

If your kids are having fun and looking forward to each lesson, they’ll learn faster and better.