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How to Use an Elite Athletes’ Trick to Improve Your Kids’ Swimming

When you’re teaching your kids to swim, there are limits to what you can do. There’s only so much time you can spend in the pool. There’s only so much practice your kids can do before they get tired out. But there’s a trick that elite athletes use to break free of these limits, and you and your kids can use them, too.

Visualize Movement

Studies have shown that athletes get as much benefit from visualizing their performance in great detail as they do from physically practicing (up to a point—you’ve got to get in the water, too). Many elite athletes use visualization as part of their training. It’s safe. It’s portable. It helps build confidence and comfort. It doesn’t tire out your child’s body. It’s also a great distraction when you’re stuck in traffic or waiting in line. (Just make sure the driver isn’t doing the visualizing.)

Guide your child through a visualization of the skill you’re working on. Paint him a picture with words. Use descriptions of what he’ll be experiencing with all of his senses. Describe how the pool and the water look. Describe how the water feels. Describe the smell and the sounds of the pool. Describe how he’ll move his body and how that will feel. The more vivid the visualization, the more effective it will be.

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How Pavlov’s Dogs Can Help Your Kids in Any Tense Situation

When you’re teaching your kids to swim, there are going to be times when they’re anxious or nervous. Trying something new always takes and effort, and in this case, the cost of making a mistake could be an uncomfortable gulp or snort of water. That’s enough to make anybody nervous. There’s a way that you can help your kids to relax immediately when you’re teaching them to swim, or under any circumstances. Pavlov and his dogs are the key.

Pavlov rang a bell whenever he fed his dogs, creating an association between the sound of the bell and being fed. Eventually, the dogs developed a conditioned response: salivating at the sound of a bell. You can use the same technique to help your kids relax when you’re teaching them to swim.

Start on Dry Land

You can practice relaxation techniques on dry land. Learning to swim will be easier if your child is relaxed. Kids tend to tense up under the pressure of learning a new skill in the water. You can help your child relax by teaching him how outside the water.

  • Have him lie flat on his back.
  • Ask him to make his body tight all over. You can help him by touching his body if he’s having trouble. For example, you can touch his thigh and say, “squeeze this part of your body tight.” You can ask him to squeeze one body part at a time, working his way up from his toes to his face.
  • Have him hold his breath for a few seconds.
  • Tell him to let it all go at once, and teach him a word for this. It could just be, “Relax,” but a funny, made-up word that’s your secret is more fun.
  • After he relaxes his muscles, have him take a few deep belly breaths.

Move It into the Water

After you practice this relaxation technique regularly for a while on solid ground, you can transfer it to the pool. When you feel your child tensing up, say your secret, funny, made-up word for relax, and he’ll respond by releasing the tension from his muscles.

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How to Leverage Your Greatest Advantage over Paid Swimming Teachers—Part 1

You have a major advantage over other swimming teachers when it comes to teaching your own child. You’ve got access to him when you’re not in the pool. Although there’s no way to learn to swim without getting in the water, there are lots of ways that you can enhance the learning process on dry land. Here’s the first way to help your kids learn to swim even when they’re out of the pool.

Let Them Observe

Kids learn by watching a good example. Have your child watch lap swimmers, and point out what’s going on. “See how he turns his head to the side when he takes a breath?”

Kids learn by watching other kids. Kids often learn to use swings by themselves within days after they watch other kids pumping their legs. Have your child watch other kids swim.

Ask a friend to record a video of your child while he swims so that you can watch it together later. The post-game analysis of his lesson lets your child see what’s going right and wrong in a situation when he’s not under pressure to remain afloat. It’s a perfect way to use modern technology the way pro athletes have for a long time.

Have your child practice skills on land in front of the mirror. Your child can use you as a model and correct his body position based on what he sees. You can highlight what’s going on. “See how your head is tilted down now? How does it feel if you look up a bit? That’s it.” Suggest changes. Point out what’s working.

Ask your child for his analysis of what’s going on while he watches. How does a movement work? What parts of the body are involved? How does it feel? Does timing make a difference? Where are the parts of the body in relationship to each other and to the water?

Observation won’t replace getting in the pool and moving, but it will supplement and strengthen what you teach your kids in the pool.

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The Four Things to Do before You Get into the Pool to Keep Your Swimming Lesson Safe and Streamlined

When you’re teaching your kids to swim, time in the pool is valuable. You only have fifteen or twenty minutes of water time before your kids start to get uncomfortable or lose focus, and at that point they’re done learning. Do these four things before you get into the pool to make the most of your time in the pool.

Make sure there’s a working phone nearby.

Nothing is more important than safety when you’re teaching your kids to swim. In case of emergency, you’ll dial 9-1-1 right away.  Prepare for that by making sure there’s a working phone nearby before you get into the water. Check for a dial tone. A landline is the best option because it gives emergency responders the location of the phone automatically.

Go to the bathroom.

Kids have an uncanny ability to wait until the worst possible moment to need to go to the bathroom. You’re next in line at the store with a huge basket of groceries. You’re just about to find out whether the animated hero of the movie gets out of a sticky situation. You’re thirty seconds into your swimming lesson.

It doesn’t help that being in the water tends to encourage the need to urinate. You can’t completely eliminate the possibility that your kids will interrupt your swimming lesson just when you’re starting to teach them, but making a trip to the bathroom part of your routine every time you prepare to get into the pool gives you the best chance you’re going to get for an uninterrupted lesson.

Empty mouths and blow noses.

You shouldn’t eat before swimming anyway. (Digesting requires energy, and your kids need all of their energy to swim.) You never know when your kids will find a stray Cheerio tucked into a corner of their booster seat on the way to the pool, though. Now’s the time to make sure that your kids don’t have food or chewing gum in their mouths.

Prep your post-pool equipment.

Have towels, a warm drink—even if it’s hot out—and a snack ready to go.

Taking these steps before you get into the pool when you’re teaching your kids to swim will help make the lesson go smoothly.