Improving Your Learn to Swim Program By John Leonard, SwimAmerica and American Swimming Coaches Association. 6/4/13 The Skills of Backstroke. Most learn to swim programs teach backstroke swimming. Here’s a few keys to doing it well. What’s different about backstroke? Well, for starters, you can’t see where you are going! Nor can you “see” what your hands/arms are doing underwater. Second, you have your mouth and nose out of the water, so access to a breath is easier. Third, for most Learn to Swim Students, the body position is “difficult”....

Congratulations to all of the latest Certified Stroke Technicians!! The Certified Stroke Technician Course - This course was developed as a result of John Leonards strong opinion that the most important person in all of American (and world) swimming is the person who first teaches a young person to blow bubbles! "Everyone in Aquatics has a great stake in doing the best possible job of teaching our learn to swim teachers to be effective in their work." John Leonard Katrina Anderson Union City CA Arthur Anthony IV Chesapeake VA Lauren...

Improving Your Learn to Swim Program. The “Circularity of Learning”. By John Leonard The Harvard Business Review is a strange place to find information pertaining to a Learn to Swim Program, but an important idea was therein recently. That idea is that learning, far from being “linear”. (learn a skill, practice it, absorb and use it perfectly) is in fact, most often “Circular”, especially in learning physical skills. This means that the child may be taught a new skill, and try it. Over a period of minutes to weeks that...

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STONES TO SUCCESS by Cynthia Stubbins · Safety · Fun · Parent satisfaction · Swimmer happiness · Coach satisfaction/retention · Swimmer progress · Teaching proper skills · Profitability · Marketing · Customer service · Positive relationship with competitive coaches · Communication with SwimAmerica coaches · Communication with parents · Efficient use of pool space

THOUGHTS ON BREATHING Bob Colyer, PED CSCAA Master Coach, Ret. “I highly recommend it,” said the coach when asked about breathing, “especially considering the alternative.” Wise-guy answers aside, this is probably one aspect that coaches and athletes take for granted. Sometimes athletes are not taught when, where, and how to breathe. The resulting “default setting” can impede performance and hinder improvement. My concerns about breathing evolved from an incident that occurred many years ago when I was a high school senior. I was winning my conference 880-Yard [yes, that many...

By John Leonard Learn to swim improvement comes typically from the most simple things. Breathing correctly, good exhalation, Correct limb timing…and critically, keeping the body “in line”. Some modern day and popular terminology calls this “creating a body line”. And if you are teaching today, you know exactly what that body line requires…core strength. And many of today’s young children, don’t get enough exercise to have Core Strength. When two people look at the same physical action, it’s almost a guarantee that they will “see” or focus on, Different Pieces....

Improving Your Learn to Swim Program By John Leonard American Swimming Coaches Association and SwimAmerica! Defining the Learn to Swim Process. One of the most common questions we all get in the learn to swim business is the most obvious…..”when will my child be able to swim?”. To answer this honestly requires some clear definitions…and many programs fall short in this regard. It immediately demands the question….”what IS “knowing how to swim”? We have all had drilled into us for decades that no one is “safe” around the water. We’re...

Improving Your Learn to Swim Program Teaching Freestyle (Flutter) Kick By John Leonard Fundamental to learning to swim, right behind the concepts of air exchange and learning buoyancy, the flutter kick is easy to teach, but not so easy to teach correctly. The essence of this short lesson is this: each leg must EXTEND fully, with the back of the knee joint flat out to 180 degrees or beyond (hyper-extended knee joint) and then kick back “upwards” to be effective. While this may seem obvious, I am constantly amazed at...

Teaching Article - Improving Your Learn to Swim Program By John Leonard – December, 2011 “Fixing that Elusive Breaststroke Kick” All Learn to Swim professional teachers and coaches of novice swimmers will tell you that one of the hardest, most persistently difficult problems to fix is that swimmer with one foot properly turned out on Breaststroke Kick and the other foot…..turned inward… While teaching an ASCA Level 2 Stroke School in New Zealand a few years ago, I got help with the awful problem…… Just as I said “I have...