Teach your child how to Swim- Floating Techniques

Teaching your child how to swim Floating techniques

If you haven’t read the first page of this series access it HERE!

FLOATING TECHNIQUES

The second step of teaching your child to swim is floating techniques, if you haven’t read the first step in teaching your child how to swim read beginner games HERE!

Floating techniques are another way to make sure your child is comfortable in the water before advancing to strokes. You would rather your child be concentrating on his/her arm and leg movements than just being able to float in the water.

Floating on stomach

Floating on Stomach will be very important in swimming strokes such as freestyle and breaststroke. The child has to be able to feel comfortable letting go of you and confident he/she will float in the water.

Keep your forearms under your child’s stomach and tell your child to take a deep breath with his/her arms extended out in front of him/her. So, your child should be lying on his/her stomach at the top of the surface of the pool and his/her legs and arms should be extended. Now slowly release arms until you feel confident that your child is floating in the water, it might take a while for your child too feel comfortable with the release, but keep trying until your child is successfully floating in the water without help.

Floating on back.

Floating on Back will be very important in the Backstroke swimming stroke, it’s also a great way to teach your child to stay afloat if he/she ever falls in the water and can’t swim. Same as before, let your child lay on his back (like he was going to sleep) while you keep your forearms on his back. Tell him to take a deep breath and hold. Slowly release your hold, and make sure you don’t drop your child into the water.

After they can float on their back and front well you can start doing drills that involve floating.

Glide on stomach with and without kickboard, after your child is in a floating position practice kicking off the wall with his/her arms extended and gliding as far as possible. Kids usually have fun with this drill and will be the first step in most swimming strokes. If your child is using a Kickboard tell him/her to hold it out in front of their head with their arms extended.

Glide on stomach and kick, after they can perform a glide on stomach, add the freestyle kick into the drill and keep getting on your child if he/she forgets to kick. You want kicking to be second nature to your child every time he/she gets into the water.

Back Kicking, Same as Glide on stomach and back, you want to train your child to be able to kick on his/her back. Using a kickboard for this exercise is very useful; tell them to hug the kickboard and kick.