Swimming Ideas Podast

With all of summers insane madness Are you ready to push through into fall and winter programming? That's right with all the rush, activity, intensity, and pure energy that comes with the summer months where do you find the motivation to continue working on aquatic programming and hiring.? We're gonna take a look at how to set realistic and specific goals for yourself. Celebrate your achievements and reward yourself by for hitting specific milestones that you may have set in the spring Seek feedback and support from staff that may have left already, are still in high school and remaining in town, or veterans that have made a career with you. Seek also your peers and surrounding areas and find out how things went with them. Debrief with your team and any other members of the aquatic community that use your facilities. Set goals for trying new things and to improve your own experience like new courses, new training, or new opportunities. Take vacations!

We review the swim lessons plans found at www.swimminglessonsideas.com and see how our swim instructors use them including their success and struggles.

What should you do if you are comfortable? What should you do it if you're not comfortable? Covid-19 and the coronavirus pandemic is real. We just saw this week that the president got infected and foolishly hosted events without face coverings that subsequently infected many other people at a White house event. I know. This is insane. Right? If the white house can't stay safe, how can we expect to remain safe while teaching swimming lessons? We live in a world that requires us to go to work. Aquatic professionals need to bring in revenue. We need to have people taking lessons, using the pool, and participating in our programs. How can we make ourselves feel safer? Set up a system. Wear face coverings the entire time you're coaching or teaching. Space participants apart with a good distance. Have regular airflow across the pool surface and expel it. Limit your exposure. Ask your staff what they're comfortable with. Screen your participants. Require parent involvement. Kick people out that don't follow your rules; be unapologetic about your own safety.

Today is all about the online course, Teaching Swimming, that comes with the companion PDF of the physical book available on Amazon. This training course covers the crucial skills your teachers need to begin having effective instruction. When your staff is confident, in command, and clear they can expand on having fun. We're going to review the basics of each section and give you a brief overview on how to be a better swim instructor.

Breaststroke kick is difficult to do. It is an unnatural motion for many swimmers. There will always be that small subsect of people that have learned how to do it on their own and in fact prefer it to the flutter kick motion. I believe these are people that pushed the water in the "breaststroke way" when they were learning and stuck with it because it makes them move. Spent a lot of time watching children swim. For a long time I've been a proponent of "nurture over nature" and that genes are actually an expression of nurture over a longer timeline. Swimmers experience stuff in the water, and they build on what they've felt and experienced. Their swimming is a reflection of their trial and error experiences in the water. We need to replace lots of their habits with better ones through repetition, time, and guidance. Teaching breaststroke kick to beginners is one of the worst things about teaching swimming; its difficult, its hard, its frustrating, and it is the clearest example of a boring struggle to get kids to do something they don't understand, can't feel, and don't like to do. We're going to make it easier. A segment of people have natural breaststroke kick. These are people that have learned intuitively the powerful force breaststroke kick can provide. You won’t really need to “teach” breaststroke kick to them beyond refinement and gliding after each kick. Most people struggle with breaststroke kick. This progression will make it easier. Teaching the breaststroke kick, or the whip kick, is a slog, a long press through swampy struggle that will take significant patience, repetition, and focused feedback and refinement. Do not be discouraged. We’ve made it easier. Begin with “flex.” Want to see the progression and pictures? Get the book online or join the online course: https://www.swimminglessonsideas.com/product/teaching-swimming-fun-and-effective-instruction/ Physical print book from Amazon: https://amzn.to/2XVwqQZ

What are the essential skills you should be teaching your lesson managers? You can find information at https://www.swimminglessonsideas.com/resources/ Under the Level Description guides. They details the specific needs of each "level" and what to look out for including guidance for lesson managers.  Criteria for an effective swim lesson manager:  - Understanding of level structure, essential skills, and how to teach them. ○ How do you hold a child for supported front and back glides § Why is this so important? § Need to enforce and teach others how to do it. ○ Be outgoing and not afraid to give feedback.  § Through training § Can still be an introvert and anxious. Must overcome through mentorship and direction ○ Familiar with your program's nuances.  - Confident enough in own ability to communicate your programs specifics and procedures to parents.  - Mature enough to make safe and rational decisions in a changing environment.  Ways you can train your lesson managers.  Teaching Swimming Online Course and Wordbook. https://www.swimminglessonsideas.com/courses/teaching-swimming/ Prove mastery.  Information dump and gathering.  Review the Discussion questions with an Aquatic Professional.  (found in the print version and PDF). Have a management training where the aquatic professional directs lesson managers in how to be a leader amongst their peers. - How to run an effective meeting. ○ Have one main speaker.  ○ Avoid the "chime in."  ○ Be clear with your objective. Stick to the task at hand without tangents. Teens are adults when it comes to learning.  ○ Engage as many people at the same time as possible. § Small groups with repetitive training exercises.  § Delegate leadership to trusted staff with specific tasks □ Be clear in instruction, and be clear with expected feedback and expected actions.  ® "run these scenarios, make sure everyone gets a turn, and ensure that everyone gets a chance to participate and get feedback. Focus specifically on this [one thing]. - How to give effective feedback to your instructors ○ Should you intervene in a lesson? ○ Followup before and after the swim lesson ○ Give training materials.  - How to organize swim classes ○ What criteria do you use to group like-level swimmers? ○ Consider location ○ Program specific routines - How to communicate with parents. ○ Lean on your expertise  ○ Remind manager that they are experts in this field and parents are not. They paid to send their kids to swim lessons.  ○ Talk to parents frequently. Meet them. Introduce self, and follow up during the lesson. ○ Give updates on what their specific swimmer is doing. Avoid generalities.  Mentor your managers. Guide and groom them.  Check in on them and make sure that they understand you're there to support them and get them to improve. You're both on a team, you're not there to punish them when they fail; which they will.  How do you make sure they're doing a good job?

What can you do at your swim practice and swim lessons to promote Deliberate Practice, and how does mediation teach you to be a better swimmer. What is deliberate practice: https://jamesclear.com/beginners-guide-deliberate-practice " While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance. From <https://jamesclear.com/beginners-guide-deliberate-practice> The role of Coaching! How the challenge format promotes deliberate practice: they are specific opportunities to train the brain through stimulating "challenge" to accomplish a task using deliberate though to achieve the goal. Carryover into what we're doing. High volume coach interaction. Constant feedback during lessons Getting the format out of the way (use scaffolding or routines). Encourage self guided activities whenever possible.

How should you protect yourself and others when you're teaching swimming lessons to individuals or duos? Today we're listening to a user submitted question and answering it after a brief unrecorded phone call.  Rowenna and I spoke on the phone and we reviewed much of the same things. Her favorite games are Treasure hunt and diving games with multicolored toys labeled with numbers. I'm a huge fan of Treasure hunt too, and you can see a list of relevant swim games and challenges here:  https://www.swimminglessonsideas.com/games/ Things to consider: Remain distant if you can.  Teach from the deck or the water remaining far enough away that you're not going to get any droplets on your face or nose. Have the parent interact physically with the swimmer. Use a dummy, or doll, or practice CPR device to demonstrate how to do your supported front and back floats/glides.  Teach both the swimmer and the parent how to do your typical routines. You'll be like a music teacher talking and guiding but not moving the swimmer's fingers for them. If you can't remain distant, wear a face shield. You can wear one like this: https://amzn.to/2VuIK9U It'll stay fog free, will bead water off the outside and redirect your breath droplets down and shield you from participant's spray. Stay distant when possible and do your best to realign your swim lessons to encourage more independent movement.  This works best in shallow pools with lots of space where the swimmers can move in chest or shoulder deep water. Have them do glides and repetitive skills like streamline and kicking from two points back and forth. Intersperse your 6 x [something] activities with challenges. You can find a list here: https://www.swimminglessonsideas.com/challenges/ If you're teaching at a deeper pool see if you can use platforms or benches for younger swimmers to stand on. For more info take the Teaching Swimming online course: https://www.swimminglessonsideas.com/topic/rotation-method/  

Brief guide on Autism from American Red Cross Swimming Water Saftey book

Dr. Alan Goldberg, www.competitivedge.com Getting parents to work with, not against you. Blog post about day 1 handout. http://swimminglessonsideas.com/2017/09/17/handout-for-first-day-of-swim-lessons-for-parents-what-to-expect/ Day 2 handouts: https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/completelessondocuments/Administration/Day+2+Handouts+(1).pdf Be proactive. How to teach your parents on your swim team. Learn how to interact with your swim lesson parents in a healthy way. Be proactive, take the first step, and be bold with giving information.

Recap from Dr. Alan Goldberg and Josh Davis.

i'll be interviewing a person about how to teach swimming lessons to autistic kids. She is an expert in adaptive physical education for special needs children and will be an excellent resource. I'm hoping to connect with Nitro tash to get her take on her new swim lesson format with her pool in Perth, Australia. Look for updates to swimminglessonsideas.com and a new resource to take beginners from no program to a thriving successful one including. I understand that a lot of the material assumes an intimate knowledge of swimming lessons that not everyone has. I hope to address this in the future. Routine works. It does. i struggled with giving my swimmers too much freedom in their swim practices and it lead to chaos. now, falling back on the tested and true routine and structure we've had massive success and improvement. Think of your routine as your framework. It is the brick wall of your instruction. The format (each brick in its place) is the same, but the choice of bricks change. Like a wall, not all bricks are identical and you can sprinkle your flavor of skill, drill, and activity to match the pace and goal for the cycle, but throughout your following the same structure and framework so your pieces all align.