Teach your child how to swim-Freestyle

Teaching your child how to swim(Freestyle)

If you haven’t read page one of this hub series you can find it HERE!

Page one discusses beginning steps a parent should take and will help you find which article you should be concentrating on depending on how experienced your child is.

SWIMMING STROKE( Beginning FREESTYLE)

The first stroke you should teach your child is the easiest to learn and most popular Freestyle stroke. Before thinking of teaching your child this stroke, your child must have mastered the exercises that were learned on this PAGE and this PAGE.

Important things to correct in this lesson

• · Make sure your child is always kicking his/her feet
• · Make sure your child has his/her head in the water when performing drills
• · While performing the freestyle stroke they should be staring at the bottom of the pool, tell them to stare at the lap lane line if you have one.

Equipment Used in this Lesson Includes

• · Boogey Board
• · Goggles

Important things to perfect with your child’s breathing techniques.

• · Only take a breath on every third stroke
• · When taking a breath the only ear that should come out of the water should be the same side of the arm that is reaching.
• · Breathing should be a fluid motion that is combined with the third stroke.

Important things to perfect with your child’s arm motions.

• · Each arm should have a Reach, Grab, Pull motion while the other arm is extended past your child’s head.
• · Reach- The arm comes out of the water and reaches for the water(scoop of icecream)
• · Grab- The hand grabs the surface with a cupped hand
• · Pull- the child scoops the ice underneath his/her body and pushes it behind them, so they can switch hands and grab another scoop.
• · I understanding the whole ice cream thing is corny, feel free to change it to anything that would get your child to associate the movements with something fun.

THE LESSON

1. At the beginning of the lesson you are going to want to have your child extend his/her arms with the bottom of the boogey board in their hands and just use their feet to paddle from one side of the pool to the next. We first introduced this drill and the drills working up to it here!
2. After your child swims back and forth from each side of the pool for about five minutes you are going to take the boogey board away and tell him/her to perform the same drill without the boogey board, but keeping their arms extended above their head.
3. After five minutes of the above drill, you are going to bring your child to the side and explain that you are now going to learn a drill called scoops. Take your Childs hand and turn it into a cup-like position, tell your child that their hand is now an ice cream scoop and you need to use that scoop to scoop the water while you are swimming. Now bring back the boogey board back and tell them to extend their arms and kick with their feet, however this time when performing the drill, tell your child to have one hand on the boogey board and the other arm/hand should be constantly scooping the water in front of him/her. Be sure to make sure your child performs the drill with both hands.
4. It might take a few lessons for your child to really master the above drill, but when they do they are ready to move on. I can’t stress enough how important it is to make sure they do not stop kicking, kicking should be becoming second nature at this point.
5. Now that they have mastered the one hand scoops on either side they need to start learning how to switch sides and breathe. Tell them to stare at the bottom of the pool (lap lane line) and perform three strokes and take a breath WITH the third stroke (read up for exact directions). If an ear in the water breath is performed correctly your Childs head will not come fully out of the water, but just enough so that the child can inhale and return to swimming. If your child does develop a habit of not keeping an ear in the water while they turn to breathe, make it a game and say playfully, “keep that ear out of the water”.
6. If the child can perfect this drill with a breath every three strokes, than you may take away the boogey and practice freestyle. It should look as fluid as they have been doing it with the kick board so you can work on these five simple things until they perfect it.

• · They should always keep kicking
• · They should always be looking at the bottom of the pool with their face in the water unless they need to take a breath
• · Their arms should stick to a reach, scoop, and pull motion.
• · They should only breathe on every third stroke and always keep their left or right ear in the pool while breathing from the opposite direction.

After your child has finally perfected what you consider enough of a Freestyle you can move on to

BREAST STROKE HERE(Coming Soon)

Or

BACKSTROKE HERE

Please do not confuse your children with all three of the strokes at once.

Thank you for reading this Hub series, I hope it results in saving money and lives.