Swimming Ideas Podast

Lots of talk about breath; on land, in the water, in small groups, and over short distances.  

Most effective initially with short distances, and constant discussion about it. Some level of attenuation.  

Lean what we do in dryland, and in our small groups to progressively move through breathing on land to maintaining the breath in the water. 

Struggle how to keep it relevant and enforce it: how to make it habit? 

How to tell if doing it? Enforcement.  

Variations on Standard Techniques for better swimming:  

https://swimminglessonsideas.com/2018/01/09/variations-on-standard-techniques-for-better-swimming/ 

SIP 069: Foundational Breathing Method for swimming: 

https://swimminglessonsideas.com/2018/04/01/sip-069-foundational-breathing-method-for-swimming/ 

Get ready to experience the next supplemental guide for better swim lessons!

We've been refining the general format of our swim lessons. Ever forward, and ever working on refinement we've been teaching lessons using this new take on an old favorite.

For a long time we've incorporated the "learn something, learn something, play a game format." you can see it in the lesson plans that you can buy on the website.

The last two weeks I distributed the first version of the General lesson plan guide for Level 2 and Level 3.

I've  been writing these lesson plans out for the last year on white boards for my veteran staff that might not want to think too hard at lessons and are more comfortable being told what to do. They might know the way to do it, and how to give feedback, but lack the experience and confidence to come up with a solid progression of skills to get the best results.

These lesson plans accomplish that. Here is an example of level 3 general guide.

Look a the picture. It gives instructors an easy visual cue how to set up their lanes and run their lessons.

The left side is the meat and potatoes. It has a range of activities drawing from the most important and should serve as a building block to iterate off of.

The Challenges are likewise level specific, but should serves as a general guide for lessons. You can read off the script, or make small changes to create you own personal challenges specific to your group and your pool.

The bottom has the level criteria. When in doubt, make it a quick reference for the teacher so they know what they should be working towards.

Finally in the middle are the specific language the instructor should use for that level. Take note this isn't the scripts for glides and backfloat, but more careful specific words to use in order to get the best results quickly.

"Start immediately in SL" means that you don't push off in 11, or like a wild person head first then do the streamline. It is deliberately crafted words to indicate that while the child is pushing off the wall it should be in streamline with no space between wall and water without it.

The instructor tips aim at general reminders for teachers of that level. It is like having the manager give those gentle reminders on the paper; like a whisper in the ear.

Get the basics for your new swim program. If you're already established, take these ideas and see if you're already doing them.

Question from John from the UK. He asked me very generally what he could do to get started. He had bought the swimming ideas lesson plans which you can get here: https://swimminglessonsideas.com/store/ 

But he was uncertain in how to start teaching swimming lessons. It made me think about what the key things someone would need to begin. Like what if you'd never taught swim lessons before!  

I've always assumed that someone that was going to start teaching their own program had done what I did: work at their local pool as a teenager and over time and apprenticeship learn how to be a good teacher.  Most of the content on Swimminglessonsideas.com is driving at how to run your swim lessons as either a private instructor who wants to hire some new staff, or as an Aquatic Professional that knows how to teach already and is looking to manage a large staff  like a park district.  

I intitially wanted to direct john to the SLI Swim Instructor Training workbook; on Amazon. It is awesome. It takes you through the 15 essential swim skills which we build off of for our lesson plans. But it isn't comprehensive for a beginner. I think it needs to be.  

I'm working on that. 

Then I figured that there was a ton of content in the blog section of swimminglessonsideas.com that he could read, but it was more designed around people that already know swimming; it is guides to help those already established.  

There are plenty of articles under the Swim Lesson Guide category: https://swimminglessonsideas.com/category/swim-lessons-guide/ 

More in the Lesson plans: https://swimminglessonsideas.com/category/swim-lesson-plan/ 

And the most distilled in the resources: https://swimminglessonsideas.com/category/resource/ 

But that wasn't enough. I'm working on a walkthrough for total beginners to get you moving on your swim lessons. This episode is for the starter who has not taught swim lessons before, and has nto been in a large program but knows how to swim. 

Essentials to teaching swim lessons. 

Before you start: 

• Pool or water to teach out of 
• Liability insurance 
• Bank account 
• Website with a way to register or a

Dominic Latella from theswimbox.com stops by to talk about his online course about breathing and to follow up on his sensational comments.

We talk about a lot of different things regarding swimming.

Dominic lets us know some details about his most recent training trip to the Bahamas, and who makes the best eggs in his family. I believe that my eggs are awesome in my house. :)

I get a chance to ask Dominic to explain some of the parts of the Foundational Breathing Method for swimming. I've gone through this course, I've put it into practice, we use it in our developmental swim program and you can too.

Take a look with me at the 3 year old class I've been teaching for the last 6 weeks. Look at the games we play and how I've been successful getting them in the water when half the class was crying and terrified the first few lessons.

Yes! It is okay to play games with 3 year olds, and I would even say that you should be playing mostly games and singing songs with your youngest participants. When they're comfortable enough to trust you with going underwater, smiling, and having more fun than the wide eyed scared hesitation you can start layering in front glides, back glides, and other horizontal progress skills.

This is an overview of the last six weeks of swim lessons I've taught with a group of 3 year olds and the transition we've seen from crying on the side of the pool crawling into their parent's arms, to smiling and laughing as an active participant in the water.

*I recorded this episode on Friday, and on Saturday before posting taught the last class. Only one of the initial crying kids cried again this final lesson, but a few minutes later she was smiling and laughing in the water with the rest of the kids playing games and doing front and back glides with ease.

Of note, the girl got splashed by an overzealous participant and cried. I wiped her face with her, told her she was okay, had the girl apologize to her, and then when she persisted, I said in a stern voice, "Sally, no more crying. You're fine." She stopped immediately. I was so shocked I couldn't believe it worked! Sometimes the youngest participants need a firm reminder that their reaction is over and it is time to move on.

Get 1 of each, and sit on the side of the pool. Put your feet on the floating toy and hold it underwater.

Put your sinking toy on top of your floating toy. Use kicks to push it away from you without letting the sinking toy fall off.

My favorite game obviously. Let them choose what to do you to, Bucket shoulder, or bucket head. They only rule is they have to say, "bucketshoulder" or "buckethead" when pouring the water on you.

You then give them the choice which one they want, BucketShoulder or bucket head. Then you do it to them. If they choose head, st

Update for 2018! Wow. We have a lot of new material and action ready for you in the next year.

http://www.excelwithgrace.ca/

http://www.excelwithgrace.ca/jeff-grace.html

Check out his online videos here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYfIfs2Fz5G6W_to2PAUS9Q

I really enjoyed talking with Jeff from Excel with Grace. I loved how he gave specific examples and connections to the more ethereal mind and attention to specific swimming techniques and learning. One of my first questions to him is how we can connect the mind, and attention to the physical expression of swimming. Jeff answers this question so well and his mastery of this concept comes out clear in how he frames his responses.

How do we connect mindful to physical. Jeff talks about how people always think that yoga is about clearing the mind of thoughts, but that isn't true. It is about recognizing your deviant thoughts and then finding an anchor for your attention. Allow those thoughts to happen, but notice them, and then move away from your mind using your breath as a focus point, or anchor for your attention.

In swimming, we want to achieve this same goal with our beginner and elite athletes. We want them to focus on a specific skill and improve it while they're swimming. We know as coaches and instructors that people will not be able to do a physical skill perfectly immediately, or every time. So we use tactics like Dominic Latella's Redemption Game to aim that attention for short spurts of time. We want to focus that attention on our intended skill, and meditation is a way to flex that attention muscle.

Jeff talks about easy speed, and how meditation allows you to achieve that 100% speed at 95% effort where you remove the tension of forced swimming at maximum effort.

Shivasssana Game: teach a few poses, have everyone do it for a few seconds, then yell, "Shivassana!" and everyone has to lay down and pay attention to three of their breaths. Jeff then gets everyone up and has them pretend like they're trees. While some people are acting like trees, then others are acting like bees and breathing like bee's while moving around the trees.

Golden nugget of quality swim instructors: diverse range of experience and pairing it to the audience. Interesting, fun, and challenging while maintaining a specific goal.

Advice for Developmental coaches:

• Teach listening
• Teach Streamline
• Make them want to come to swimming.

Madness time at the flags and act as rowdy as possible within reason, but then Jeff would yell, "Listening position" and time how long they got back to paying attention.

When you're starting your own yoga for swimming a good place to start is in table top pose; hands and knees on ground, raise left hand, and lift right leg straight. Then slowly build on it.

Progressive posture and pose, like all swim lessons is to gradually step by step increase in difficulty.

What is it about Yoga that makes it so good for swimming?

Jeff says he could go on for another hour about this one thing, but he distills it down nicely into "Balance."

You have the ability to give the athlete an opportunity to train the body overall and the mind to physically and mentally improve. Yoga provides power, strength, flexibility, increased range of motion, reduce anxiety for poor meet performance, and better body awareness.

His answer is excellent and I highly encourage you to make sure you listen to this portion near the end of our conversation.

And how it has been fun and full of healthy improvement.

Preface: I run safe and encouraging practices. I get along well with my swimmers and their parents. I can't think of a time I was upset with a parent that knew me or has watched a practice.  We fill our time building up our swimmers by giving them regular feedback. They experience more than 10 interactions per practice of one of the coaches saying something they did well, and something they need to improve upon. We take particular effort in praising effort as followup to previous instruction.

We've been doing "Fail" practices inspired by episode #061 with the Swim Box and Dominic Latella.

Here's what we've done, and why you can do it too.

The basic premise:

• Give a chance to do something well.
• Give specific feedback with a "success" or a "fail" thumb up or down.
• Have a reward, and a consequence.
• Do multiple rounds that build on themselves (introduce easy first, and get harder)
• Make rewards fun, make punishments learning related.
• Be kind in your delivery.