Swimming Teaching

hey, this is sunny ,from china.beijing, you may ne...

2010-06-18T19:55:45.609+10:00

hey, this is sunny ,from china.beijing, you may never thought your article can travel so far, hehe, i been study your songs for awhile, a little bit hard for me ,and my american husband did not really help me any of those, as he said he forgot all of those. but it give me a lots of idea for my class. recently i am teaching baby swimming in beijing,and its really new staffs here coming. i would like to learn from your more about how to teach baby swim. here is my blog about recent class: blog.sina.com.cn/sunnynovak ,forgive me most are all in chinese. but really wish you can give me some class plan .my email:sunnyguo888@gmail.com

hey, this is sunny ,from china.beijing, you may ne...

2010-06-18T19:49:14.168+10:00

Tanya said...Re" the now fixed title: "Kick Close ...

2010-06-17T08:50:55.439+10:00

Tanya said...Re" the now fixed title: "Kick Close To The Surface - But Not Braking The Surface"

I think you mean "breaking" the surface. Braking is what a car does.

Great pick up Tanya. You gotta laugh. Maybe I was trying to "Stop" myself from using the wrong word. Clearly it didn't work.

I think you mean "breaking" the surface. Braking ...

2010-06-16T20:58:00.272+10:00

I think you mean "breaking" the surface. Braking is what a car does.

I look forward to hearing from you more Arnold.

2010-05-25T21:23:42.488+10:00

I look forward to hearing from you more Arnold.

I recently came across your blog and have been rea...

2010-05-25T00:34:31.888+10:00

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Alena

http://dataentryjob-s.com

Thanks this is great! its been a good way to add s...

2010-05-09T20:34:02.923+10:00

Thanks this is great! its been a good way to add some change to my classes because sometimes I feel my kids are getting bored with the same old songs, especially the mums from babies classes.

For the elephant song, to the same tune I use the lyrics

"The elephant goes like this and that
hes oh so big ans oh so fat
hes go not many fingers and not many toes
but goodness me, what a nose!"

SO your verse will fit in nicely
Thanks again, these are AWESOME

please if you have any other ideas would you mind emailing them to me. emmajstuart@gmail.com
THanks!

Tell me more. So how do you go about that? I can...

2010-04-28T16:03:14.065+10:00

Tell me more.

So how do you go about that? I can't imagine that you get the students to just sit in the one place and kick. Your comment raises so many other questions that I would be interested to know.

Do you get the students to practice different forms of kicking? That is do you do side kicking and front kicking and back kicking? Do you include torpedoes in the kicking exercise?

What other activities if any do you do with your kicking? Do you include flotations? If so, is that flotation on the front or the back or both? Do you use a flotation device? What sort of flotation devices do you use?

How long are your classes (1/2 Hr, 45 min)? How many students do you have in a class? What age are the students? Are your students in the water with just the teacher or are the carers also in the classes you are talking about? Do you start in shallow water and progress to deep? At what point do you introduce arms? How do you introduce arms?

Do your students begin to swim earlier in comparison to swimmers who do introduce arms at an earlier point? Do your students display advantages over other swimmers who introduce arms at an earlier point?

Lets keep the discussion going!

Wow, only a three to five minutes on kicking? I th...

2010-04-23T14:03:48.253+10:00

Wow, only a three to five minutes on kicking?
I think we spend close to half the beginning classes on establishing a productive kick, and definitely most of the pre-swimming yardage is kicking. It is great for independence when no one can breathe and swim, but also is the more reliable muscles in most of our swimmers. Everyone walks, runs, and bikes, very few do that much with their upper body, so arms are unfortunately less helpful for swimming.

G'day Helen, I would love to talk more about this...

2010-04-12T03:58:24.438+10:00

G'day Helen,

I would love to talk more about this. Please feel free to contact me at Richard_Roper@swimteaching.com

I can provide the tunes for all of the songs and m...

2010-04-02T23:37:03.945+11:00

I can provide the tunes for all of the songs and more, Richard. Great to hear they have been helpful for so many. Helen Sonnleitner

I have an alteration I use of teddy bear teddy bea...

2010-03-18T16:43:35.959+11:00

I have an alteration I use of teddy bear teddy bear. Generally I do this with the older children (24months plus) so that they can do the actions. You have them all standing on the wall facing their parents and the actions are pretty obvious...

teddy bear teddy bear turn around
teddy bear teddy bear touch the ground
teddy bear teddy bear reach up high
teddy bear teddy bear take a dive/learn to fly (this is where the kids hop into the water)

Hi. We follow your blog and we would like you to c...

2010-02-11T08:45:42.566+11:00

Hi. We follow your blog and we would like you to consider joining our Swim Coach Finder Facebook Group.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=152521521114

This is a wonderful series to teach flip turns! W...

2010-01-23T19:26:22.570+11:00

This is a wonderful series to teach flip turns! Would love to share this with other aquatics professionals. Would also like to chat with you in general. Please contact me at either mauitechgirl@mauitechgirl.com or valleyisleaquatics@valleyisleaquatics.com
Kelly

Great Suggestion Katlin, I might do a post on the...

2010-01-08T23:19:35.925+11:00

Great Suggestion Katlin,

I might do a post on the issue of splashing. I occurs to me that we teachers spend a lot of time talking about splashing and yet non of the pros and cons.

oh! another i wanted to mention but forgot! have ...

2010-01-03T05:04:18.218+11:00

oh! another i wanted to mention but forgot!

have each child standing on the wall with their parents in front holding a noodle (or some sort of similar floating device)

jack be nimble, jack be quick
jack jump over the candle stick
1...2...3!

another, which i cleverly started singing along with some of my regulars on sundays

the steering wheel on the boat goes round and round
round and round, round and round
the steering wheel on the boat goes round and round
all through our pool!!!

the wipers on the boat go swish, swish, swish...
the horn on the boat goes beep, beep, beep...
the waves (or water) make the boat go up and down...
the swimmers in the boat all jump in for a swim, jump in for a swim, jump in for a swim...
the children on the boat wave bye, bye, bye...

those are all wonderful songs, thats a great list....

2010-01-03T04:58:15.262+11:00

those are all wonderful songs, thats a great list. ive been teaching for years and i really enjoy the parent/child program and some of those songs i had never even thought of.

a thought i had to offer was when you sing ring around the rosie try this:

ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies
splashes, splashes we all blow bubbles!
(move in a circle to the left)

ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies
splashes, splashes we all jump up!
(move in a circle to the right)

ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies
splashes, splashes we all fall down!
(move in a circle to the left)

ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies
splashes, splashes lets all run away!
(move in a circle to the right, but run away back to the wall or wherever you intend to start your next activity)

G'day gizzmo, I published your reply and then I t...

2009-11-28T14:58:45.891+11:00

G'day gizzmo,

I published your reply and then I thought better of it as you had your email address attached. In any case it is a better post. You can find it, along with my reply at: http://www.swimteaching.com/2009/11/freestyle-breathing-learning-to-float.html

I normally 'swish' the child backwards and forward...

2009-09-17T20:11:50.841+10:00

I normally 'swish' the child backwards and forwards to the count of three and say bubbles. It doesn't take this children long to work out what to expect. If the child is scared of going under the water - ie a brand new child, I will put their cheek in the water, until I know they are comfortable.

G'day gizzmo, I actually don't mind helping out bu...

2009-08-19T14:55:15.475+10:00

G'day gizzmo,
I actually don't mind helping out but it's going to be a bit hard without and email address. If anybody sends me and email address I don't publish it but I do store it for future direct communication.

What I will do however is take you concerns and try and address them over a few blog posts. I think that would be educational for all of us.

However please understand that it is quite difficult to pinpoint problems in swimming activity unless I am there, so there will be some assumptions that I have to make. Hopefully you will understand what I mean when I try to explain and you can feed back to me.

This may take a while however.

Richard

Mr. Roper, first thank you very much for the wond...

2009-08-11T15:20:42.974+10:00

Mr. Roper,

first thank you very much for the wonderful blog, there are a number of meticulously written articles here.

I have a couple of questions and would like to know if you have any suggestions since I would like to put in more productive hours at the pool. I will try to be as succinct as possible:

1. Floating face down: my legs sink as I try to float and I am on an incline on the pool; doesn't matter if I just go face down or kick off. I am told its just because I am all muscle (5' 8" 145lb), but I somehow cannot fathom no buoyancy in legs at all. I would like to be able to get a feel of this and would appreciate any suggestions on this and if any drills could improve this. Does this have any affect on kicking?

2. I don't know if this is related to above, but I run out of breath really soon while kicking.

a)If I start kicking only keeping a streamline, things are fine till the first exhale, once I do that I somehow lose composure and then I have to stand up gasping for air. I am an athlete and am used to taking quick exhale inhale breaths during sprinting. Is that a factor here?

b) Even if I am using a kickboard, things are ok till the first breath and then after that no matter how hard I kick I am at the same place. I have to stand up, push off and kick again.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated since I love being at the pool (took me 20 years to step into a pool :) and I would hate to walk away from it since I cannot swim a stretch without gasping (literally, no exageration here) for air every 5-10 seconds.

I also understand that this is not a personal help blog, so if this takes too much of your time, I apologize; but any comments will be greatly greatly appreciated.

thanks a bunch again,

best regards,
-jack

Hi Richard, I found these videos on-line but I co...

2009-08-11T05:00:58.252+10:00

Hi Richard,

I found these videos on-line but I couldn't quite get the hang of the noodle turn. Then I saw another swimmer in my master's class practicing using the two swim bouys. I asked what she was doing, and she demonstrated the "weightless hands" technique of flip turns. After **twenty-two years** of fitness lap swimming, I finally was able to do a somersault in the water! In just one weekend, I've been able to get the basic gist of flip turns, something I was convinced I could never do. Watching these videos has given me a great sense of what I'm doing right and wrong, so I can fine-tune the technique. Thank you SO MUCH for posting links to these videos!

Even better, when I was working on the technique, two other swimmers stopped me to ask me what I was doing and if I could teach them also, so this amazingly simple wisdom is being passed along. It's never too late to learn something new!

G'day Elvin, My first response would be for you to...

2009-06-23T15:14:41.014+10:00

G'day Elvin,

My first response would be for you to see your doctor. It sounds like you have an eye infection.

Next I would ditch your goggles. It's more than probable they are harboring your infection. At the very least disinfect them. But for the price of goggles compared to the health of your eyes personally I'd throw them away and buy a new pair.

Chlorine is a disinfectant and whilst, depending on the bug, it will kill most water borne nasties, it won't fix the underlying problem that caused the infection in your eye. You need to see your doctor for that. If fact like all disinfectants if it is not used correctly for any particular infection it can make that infection worse.

Hi, recently I have similar experience too but I a...

2009-06-23T13:17:10.143+10:00

Hi, recently I have similar experience too but I am not sure mine is conjungivitis or just normal irritated sore eyes as I have discharge in my eyes and the tissue surrounding the eyes is red and swollen. My eyes lids would stick the next morning when I woke up.

I have been swimming regularly about 40 laps a time in an olympic size pool and never had such experience but recently when I increase my exercise regime to 100 laps a time, I started to have this problem.

I think I can rule out the chlorine water and the rubbing eyes causes. I am wondering whether it has anything to do with wearing my goggle for a long period of time of about 1 hour 45 minutes during my 100 laps swim where the eyes are not getting enough oxygen from being enclosed within the goggle? Elvin

Great to hear from you Toni! Do another post with ...

2009-06-04T14:35:57.529+10:00

Great to hear from you Toni!
Do another post with you email. I won't publish it. Everything is moderated before it goes on the site. I think we have lots to talk about.

Richard