Yes the title for this post is brutal, but so are the stroke correction and swimming lesson bills you'll be needing to pay if you don't get your floating RIGHT.

A lot of beginner swimmers and adult swimmers, particularly males, suffer from their legs sinking when they swim. But, a straight line (pun intended) can be drawn right back to learn to swim when it comes to the dastardly issue of poor body position when you swim.

The idea for this post has been floating around in my head for some time now (yep another pun); ever since another swim instructor on a social media channel commented saying 'some adults cannot float and you're best not to waste your time trying to teach them to float! '

I won't comment further on our incursion of digressing thoughts, except that I was unimpressed and hoped my Year 12 student daughter does not have a Math or English teacher who uses the same school of thought.

And; swimming teachers are not the only ones to point the finger at.

Parents, I am calling you out too! Learning to float takes time and patience. Unfortunately, many parents find floating to be a waste of their child's swim lesson time, thinking swimming is all about moving the arms and legs as soon as possible with the hope their kids will stop floundering one day and magically start gliding through the water. The fact is, they won't.

If I build a house on sand, instead of a solid concrete slab, you are going to have problems later down the track.

Foundations matter, and they matter when it comes to swimming too. Floating is a foundational skill of swimming. It needs to be taught correctly and practiced consistently. Otherwise, you end up with kids swimming vertically through the water and triathletes dragging their legs across the bottom of the pool.

How do I teach a good float? Shallow water. Don't move to deeper water until you can lay in 20cm deep water - relaxed, ears under listening to your breath, feet under the surface with hips tilted upwards. Think taut not tense. You or your swim students should be able to move through a range of different floats over a 20 second period. This demonstrates the learner swimmer has good balance, co-ordination, a feel for the water, muscle activation and buoyancy control. It also means the swimmer is ready to move onto the next skill of their swimming repertoire.

The Australian Way method incorporates cues and a teaching technique different to anything else you'll find on the swimming market. You see, we know swimming, we know how kids swim it and we know not all teachers can teach it. That's why I wrote the books. Floating does not have to be hard to learn and nobody deserves not to learn it correctly.

Pick up a copy from our website or head on over and grab one from Amazon or check out our Learning To Float - Color In & Learn To Swim Activity Book. Available as an Instant Download (click to view) from Gumroad or Paperback Copy from Amazon (click to view).

Skimp on your floating and you will pay for it later; $ cha-ching $

www.BornToSwim.com.au

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