Tips for Parents

Tips for Parents

We have recieved so many request from parents to help with with tips on contnuing their childs swimming progression, and so we decided to dedicate a whole page to it! The enthusiasm from both the children and parents was just incredible, and we really hope by givnig you some tips, that the love for the water and confidence for swimming can continue.

We believe that water confidence is the most important part of swimming, and will benfit every child. Below are a few ideas of how to build water cofidence with your child:

  • Jumping over the waves in the sea whilst paddling
  • Blowing bubbles with their faces in the water
  • Bean game (Ask them to be jumping beans, running beans, jelly beans, chilly beans, star beans etc, and you can do it together)
  • Practice diving underwater and touching the bottom in shallow water to get them used to their eyes being wet
  • If you do have access to a pool, then jumping in off the side is a really great way for children to get used to the water

We were trained by STA (https://www.sta.co.uk/) and so follow their way of teaching, which is in the format of BLABT (Body position, Legs, Arms, Breathing and Timing).

You must follow the order that these letters appear in. For example, a child needs a corrct body position before you can work on their legs, they then need to have the correct legs before you can move onto their arms and so on. Below is a brief description of how you can help with this. 

Body Position 

A child needs to be straight and long like a pencil, they can practice this by gliding either off of a wall in the pool, or from your knees in the sea. They need to use their ‘Rocket Arms’ and put their hands straight out in front of them, one on top of the other, and push off really hard with their face in the water, keeping that long shape ‘like a pencil’ for as long as they can.

Legs

When kicking their legs, they need to be really close together, so that both their knees and their feet are touching when they kick. If they splash too much, they won’t move anywhere so they need just the right amount of kick to work. You can tell them to pretend that they are kicking off some socks.

Arms

We have been teaching two types of arms. Our younger children or slightly weaker swimmers will have learnt ‘Scoopy arms’, and our older or more confident children will have learnt ‘Rainbow arms’. ‘Scoopy arms’ are made from putting your hands on your cheeks, and moulding them into curved hands. You then stretch your arms out in front of you, one at a time, and pull them backwards undereneath the water. The ‘Rainbow arms’ come out of the water behind the child, over the top like a rainbow, and into the water to pull it backwards.

Breathing

When teaching breathing, we count ‘1,2,3, Breathe. The child puts their face in the water for 3 seconds and blows bubbles, they then come up (no too far out of the water, with chin still touching), and take a breath. Once they have mastered this, they can count 3 arms instead of second.

Timing

Timing is a combination of putting everything together. So they would push off in a glide and move into kiciking their legs, with their choice of arms, coming up to breath on every third arm.