Swimming skill or sport?

I have spent so much time watching and talking to people about swimming. The act of swimming is really complex. You take a body which spends 99% of its time on land with gravity and then place it into an environment where all the rules it knows are thrown out the window. The brain of the person learning in that environment is shooting off emergency messages which would send anyone into a panic. The bonus about learning to swim is that you can train your brain to let go of the normal and live in a space where the rules are different, and the rewards are substantial. This is why swimming is a skill. Yes, you can use it for sport yet the greater reward is learning how to do it so you can enjoy this skill which removes you from the everyday world.

Techniques I use for anxiety

Legos! Legos! Legos!

Who knew those little blocks could have so much power. I started using Legos 6 years ago. Pervious to this I would move kick boards, pool toys, or sinkers. I was always on the look out for something to use to impower my swimmer as they worked through the lesson.

I know many of you have seen me with my stacks, Sometimes it is a group effort to move 10. Sometimes each kid has their own stack of 5. Sometimes the kids just want to builds towers. There are reasons for different usages of the Lego distribution, but in the long run I am giving the swimmer the control of the pace of the lesson. Each stack represents the skill at hand. The kids know that once the stack has finished they will move on to the next skill. This is sometimes exciting because they don’t care for what they are doing and sometimes nerve-racking because they want to know what is next. Either way they now where we are.

Where we are is exactly why I continue to emphasis the Legos. It is a concrete way for me to tell the swimmer to not look ahead or discuss what happened previously, but to stay focused on the task at hand.

Swim Anxiety

Water and swimming can be scary. I would never tell any swimmer that how they feel is wrong. Discouraging anyone’s feelings can lead to making them feel dismissed and that is a dangerous message to be passed especially at a young age.

My job is to teach my swimmers to have a healthy respect for the water. No matter the level of your swim, Olympian or beginner, water is a source of danger if ignored and taken lightly.

I understand these concepts. I teach people to walk through those fears while making forward progress. It is not okay to stay stalled in one spot waiting for the swimmer to be ready for the skill at hand. Letting someone sit only increases the time where they are uncomfortable and fearing the unknown.

Giving steps and helpful hints is the best way to guide anyone through a scary process. Don’t let fear stop you from growing. You never will know how wonderful water can be if you don’t try.