Archive for the ‘Swim Training’ Category

News For

SWIM PARENTS

Pub­lished by The Amer­i­can Swim­ming Coaches Association

5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200

Fort Laud­erdale FL 33309

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One Day in The Life of an Age Group Parent

Guy Edson

(From a 2003 Newsletter)

My wife was off to a con­tin­u­ing ed class. My 12 year old daugh­ter was at swim prac­tice. I had the much needed chance to spend a cou­ple extra hours catch­ing up with some work at the office. That is, until my cell phone buzzed at 5:30. “Dad, can you come pick me up?” “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I got kicked out of swim prac­tice,” she said. I was stunned! My daugh­ter is a fairly stan­dard 12 year old, as fully capa­ble of get­ting into trou­ble as any other 12 year old – except at swim prac­tice where she is unusu­ally com­pli­ant and very coach­able. I decided we would talk about it later and said, “Well, just come home with Coach Rob like you always do and we will talk about it when you get home.” “Rob said you have to come pick me up now,” she said.

The pool is 18 miles from my office by way of the most con­gested inter­state in the whole met­ro­pol­i­tan area. The last thing I wanted to do is drive 45 min­utes out there and another 45 min­utes back. My build­ing anger focused on Coach Rob. I thought to myself, “OK, my daugh­ter screwed up but just let her swim. It’s no big deal. Besides, why do I have to pay the price? If it really is that bad he should just make her sit out and then bring her home like usual. After all, that is what I would do.”

Impor­tant note: I am also a swim­ming coach and have been for nearly 30 years. Nev­er­the­less, the par­ent side of me had taken over my thought process and I wanted to blame the coach for the incon­ve­nience I was fac­ing. “…the incon­ve­nience I was facing.”

Look­ing for a way out I asked, “What did you do?” She told me she was three min­utes late to prac­tice and he wouldn’t let her in the water. “Three min­utes? THREE min­utes?” I asked. In my mind I was curs­ing at the coach. “How could you be three min­utes late to prac­tice? You get there 45 min­utes before prac­tice time!” I said. She told me was doing home­work in the locker room and lost track of the time. “And he kicked Jackie out too,” she said. I asked, “Jackie was doing home­work also?” “No, she was chang­ing her swim suit and we came out together.”

At that point dis­tant mem­o­ries started com­ing back and with them ratio­nal think­ing crept back into my brain. In my 30 years of coach­ing, how many times did mul­ti­ples of 11 – 12 year old girls emerge from the locker rooms 3 min­utes late and how many ridicu­lous excuses had I heard? Plenty. And how many times was it the same group of kids? All the time.

“If I were to ask Coach Rob if this was the first time you were late, what would he say?” I asked. I heard a faint “what?” I repeated, “If I were to ask Coach Rob if this was the first time you were late, what would he say? Have you been late before?” “Sometimes.”

And what did I do years ago with those who became chron­i­cally late by 3 min­utes? I sent them back to the locker room, and told them to call their par­ents. This scene is all too famil­iar to me.

“OK,” I said, “I’ll be there in 40 to 45 min­utes. I’ll be think­ing of the con­se­quences along the way.” As a last ditch effort for clemency and a play on my fatherly love, I heard my daugh­ter faintly say, “I’m sorry.”

When I picked her up I was all smiles. And she lighted up right away. She might have been think­ing I was going to be cool about this. I asked her what home­work she was work­ing on in the locker room and she told me it was math. “You’re pretty good at math, aren’t you?” I asked. “Get out a piece of paper and pen­cil and solve this prob­lem: a man dri­ves a car that gets 15 miles to the gal­lon. He has to drive his car 36 miles. If gas costs $1.79 a gal­lon, how much did the trip cost him?” She loves these kinds of prob­lems and started divid­ing then mul­ti­ply­ing and proudly came up with, “Four dol­lars and twenty nine cents!” “That sounds cor­rect,” I said. That’s what it cost me to come pick you up and it’s com­ing out of your next allowance.” The rest of the trip home was on the quiet side.

The next day, Coach Rob reported to me that she was on the deck 15 min­utes early and ready to go.

News For

SWIM PARENTS

Pub­lished by The Amer­i­can Swim­ming Coaches Association

5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200

Fort Laud­erdale FL 33309

___________________________________________________________________

Help­ing Your Young Child Set Goals

Goal set­ting for young swim­mers is an impor­tant process that requires inter­ac­tion of the par­ent, coach, and ath­lete. It is impor­tant to remem­ber that for young swim­mers the goal of goal set­ting is to learn how to set goals. The pro­gres­sion for learn­ing how to set goals is based upon the age and com­pet­i­tive expe­ri­ence of the swim­mer. In this issue we will look at one approach for intro­duc­ing goals to 8 through 10 year olds.

There are many approaches to goal set­ting for younger swim­mers. The fol­low­ing approach is pre­sented because it is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from the “nor­mal” rou­tine of coach‑swimmer inter­ac­tion and one that I per­son­ally find more reward­ing for the parent‑coach‑athlete relationship.

With younger, inex­pe­ri­enced swim­mers, gen­er­ally ages 8 ‑ 10, goal set­ting needs to be care­fully guided by adults. The pur­pose of goal set­ting with this age is for the young swim­mer to learn what a goal is, that to achieve a goal a series of steps toward the goal must be taken, and that some amount of prepa­ra­tion and work is required to meet the goal. These are very pow­er­ful life­long skills.

I think it is very impor­tant that chil­dren are suc­cess­ful in achiev­ing goals at this stage. For this rea­son, the coach, who best knows the abil­ity of the swim­mer, should sug­gest goals to the par­ents who, in turn, guide their young swim­mer to set goals well within the pos­si­bil­i­ties described by the coach. Goals should be objec­tive and based upon time stan­dards or per­for­mance stan­dards. In addi­tion, goals need to be short term goals aim­ing at com­ple­tion in 4 to 6 weeks. A long term goal is a dif­fi­cult con­cept for 8 ‑ 10 year olds.

Billy is a 9 year old who has been on the swim team for 18 months. He has all “B” times except for the 100 IM which he has an unof­fi­cial “C” time. He has been dis­qual­i­fied in his three 100 IM races because he has an ille­gal breast­stroke kick. His best friend, neigh­bor, and swim­ming rival, John, began swim­ming at the same time as Billy but has achieved “A” times in the breast­stroke and freestyle, sev­eral “B” times, and was recently moved to a more advanced group. Billy’s ambi­tion is to swim in the same work­out group with John. Billy’s dad and John’s dad are friends and week­end golf rivals. Coin­ci­den­tally, John’s dad reg­u­larly beats Billy’s dad. Billy’s dad’s goal is to see Billy beat John.

What should Billy’s goals be and who should set them? Billy’s goals must not be based upon John. At this point in time John is a more accom­plished swim­mer. Per­haps he will always be more accom­plished for a vari­ety of rea­sons which will frus­trate Billy if Billy’s goal is always to beat John. On the other hand, maybe John is tem­porar­ily big­ger and stronger than Billy. As the boys reach and pass puberty Billy may become the big­ger and stronger and more skilled of the two and beat­ing John may not present an ade­quate challenge.

The coach should sug­gest sev­eral goals for Billy to Billy’s par­ents. These goals are based upon the coaches’ assess­ment of Billy’s abil­ity to improve in the next two months. One sug­gested goal might be for Billy to make an “A” time in the 50 free. Cur­rently, Billy is only 4 tenths of a sec­ond from an “A” time. A sec­ond goal might be to swim a legal 100 yard IM. The coach has been work­ing on Billy’s breast­stroke kick sev­eral times each week and is con­fi­dent that Billy will have a legal kick in time for the next swim meet.

Why sug­gest these goals to the par­ents? Two rea­sons: 1) It is a good way for the par­ents and coach to com­mu­ni­cate on the progress and future expec­ta­tions for the young swim­mer, and 2) the most impor­tant and most influ­en­tial peo­ple in the young swimmer’s life are Mom and Dad. What bet­ter source is there in guid­ing the young swim­mer towards set­ting goals?

How should par­ents dis­cuss goals with young swim­mers? I think the best way is to ask the young swim­mer a series of ques­tions designed to bring him to the goals sug­gested by the coach. A con­ver­sa­tion may go some­thing like this:

Par­ent: “Billy, our team is host­ing a meet in six weeks. Do you have any goals for our meet?”

Billy: “What’s a goal?”

Par­ent: “A goal is some­thing you want to do that you have never done before.”

Billy: [with­out hes­i­ta­tion] “I want to swim in John’s group!”

Par­ent: “Some­day I think you will. What does it take to move up to that group?”

Billy: “Coach says I need an A time.”

Par­ent: “Do you know what your best time is?”

Billy: “No”

Par­ent: “Coach says you have 32.2 and that’s only 4 tenths of a sec­ond from an “A” time which is a 31.8. Would you like to make an “A” time?

Billy: “YEA!”

Par­ent: “Do you know how short 4 tenths of a sec­ond is?” [Demon­strates with stop watch.] “Coach says you can knock off those 4 tenths of a sec­ond just by stream­lin­ing bet­ter off the start and turn and by fin­ish­ing with a long arm and strong kick. What are you going to work on in prac­tice to help you make your goal?”

Billy: “I’m going to work on stream­lin­ing and fin­ish­ing with a long arm and strong kick.”

Par­ent: “Great! I KNOW you’re going to make your goal! There is a dual meet with Fair­port in three weeks. What do you think you would like to do in the 50 free in that meet?”

Billy: “An “A” time?”

Par­ent: “Right! Now let’s write down your goal.”

The next step is for Billy to write down his goal(s) on two pieces of paper. He should write his cur­rent best time, his goal, tar­get date, and things he needs to work on in order to accom­plish his goal.

His goal state­ment may look like this:

My Goal: 31.8 “A” time in the 50 free

When: Feb­ru­ary 17 home meet

Best Time: 32.2

Every day in prac­tice: stream­lin­ing and good finishes

Billy should keep one at home in his room where he can look at it every day. Mom and Dad should ask Billy once every week or so how he is doing on his goal. The sec­ond copy he takes to swim prac­tice to review with the coach. Then he can keep it in his locker or swim bag and look at it every day before practice.

Of course, it’s a won­der­ful thing if a young swim­mer is aware enough of times, both his own and qual­i­fy­ing times, to set his own valid goals in addi­tion to those sug­gested by the coach. If a swim­mer sets a reach­able goal it should be accepted by coach and par­ents. Most young swim­mers how­ever need the expert guid­ance of coach and par­ents to set obtain­able goals. Remem­ber, at this age it is vitally impor­tant that swim­mers are able to accom­plish their goals.

News For

SWIM PARENTS

Pub­lished by The Amer­i­can Swim­ming Coaches Association

5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200

Fort Laud­erdale FL 33309

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Train­ing Aids:

Legit­i­mate Tools Or Friv­o­lous Fads?

If you talk to par­ents of swim­mers from other teams, if you read swim pub­li­ca­tions, or if you watch swim­mers dur­ing warm ups at swim meets, you will notice a vari­ety of train­ing aids that swim­mers lug around. Let’s see, there are kick boards in every size and shape imag­in­able; there are tire tubes; there are pad­dles — boy are there pad­dles!, round ones, rec­tan­gu­lar ones, con­toured ones, ones with holes, incred­i­bly large ones, ones that cover the fore­arms, ones that inflate around the whole lower arm, etc, etc.; there are webbed gloves made out of lycra or latex rub­ber; there are fins — stan­dard depart­ment store types, expen­sive scuba shop types, short stubby ones, monofins, and fins cut in a vari­ety of shapes; there are ankle weights, wrist weights, and even head weights; there are fiber­glass rods vel­croed to the legs; there are suits with pock­ets in them; there are plain old sneak­ers used on kick sets; there are plain old t-shirts; there are plain old, really old, swim suits — two or three or four worn at the same time; there is tub­ing; there are stretch cords; there are short pull buoys, long pull buoys, and pull buoys that can be filled with water; and on and on and on.

When you notice a 10 year old star swim­mer from another team lug­ging around a train­ing bag with sur­gi­cal tub­ing explod­ing from the torn end of the bag, you ask, “Could this be the rea­son she always wins?” Do you want to go out and buy sur­gi­cal tub­ing for your young swimmer?

Or, between long course and short course sea­son you are con­tem­plat­ing your child’s swim­ming suc­cesses and short com­ings of the past sea­son while you read an ad about a “rev­o­lu­tion­ary new” buoy­ancy device. Do you want to equip your child with it in time for the start of the season?

Who invents these things? What things really work and what things are com­mer­cial con­trivances of ques­tion­able value? Can some of these devices do more harm than good? Should your child use some of these devices?

Most train­ing aids are invented by coaches. There are hun­dreds, maybe thou­sands of train­ing aids invented by coaches but only a few make it to com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion. Most coaches do not invent a train­ing aid for the profit poten­tial but rather they are invented for the sake of improv­ing an individual’s or team’s strength, speed, endurance, and/or technique.

Many coaches would add that train­ing aids can do more than improve strength, endurance, and/or tech­nique. They also add vari­ety to a work­out and help moti­vate swimmers.

What things really work? There are very few pub­lished inde­pen­dent stud­ies done on

spe­cific train­ing aids to test their effec­tive­ness in speed, strength, endurance, or tech­nique enhanc­ing qual­i­ties. (Actu­ally, I could not find any pub­lished inde­pen­dent stud­ies — but there might be some out there.)

But good coaches do not need stud­ies to know that some things really do work. Most coaches use kick­boards. Most coaches use pull buoys. Many coaches, but I’m not sure most coaches, use pad­dles. Same for fins. Fewer coaches use sur­gi­cal tub­ing. Almost all coaches try nearly every train­ing aid at least once but almost no one uses all the train­ing aids all the time.

So what things really work? The answer is: most train­ing aids, whether com­mer­cially pro­duced or coach/home made, are effec­tive to some degree when the coach and swim­mer prop­erly use them with respect to the devel­op­men­tal age of the swim­mer, the psy­cho­log­i­cal needs of the swim­mer, the appro­pri­ate time dur­ing work­out, and the appro­pri­ate time dur­ing the sea­son. The answer also is: no train­ing aid will work if not used properly.

Can some of these devices do more harm than good? The answer is a def­i­nite yes. No train­ing aid is safe when improp­erly used. Most train­ing aids are designed to increase resis­tance or to increase train­ing speed. Exces­sive work­loads with train­ing aids can lead to overuse syn­dromes and injuries espe­cially in younger chil­dren not phys­i­cally mature.

Should your child use some of these devices? Who decides IF they should use train­ing aids and if so, which aids to use? Ques­tions like these are the rea­sons you and your Board of Direc­tors hire a qual­i­fied pro­fes­sional coach. The coach makes these deci­sions based upon his or her expe­ri­ence and coach­ing edu­ca­tion. If your coach is hav­ing your child use a train­ing aid and you are con­cerned that use of that train­ing aid may cause an injury, then speak directly to the coach about the extent and inten­sity of use for that train­ing aid. If your coach is not using var­i­ous train­ing aids that you’ve seen or heard about and you are curi­ous about, then once again speak with the coach.

When speak­ing with the coach keep these things in mind:

1. Approach the coach after prac­tice or dur­ing office hours qui­etly and sin­cerely with an atti­tude of “Could you help me under­stand…”. Many of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion prob­lems between coach and par­ent arise from abrupt chal­lenges to coaches judg­ment calls.

2. Coaches have selected favorite train­ing aids and don’t like to be told they should be using addi­tional or dif­fer­ent meth­ods. There is more than one way to accom­plish a desired train­ing effect and it is the coaches area of respon­si­bil­ity and author­ity to select that method.

3. There is a lim­ited amount of work­out time in the water and a coach must make deci­sions about the type of train­ing aids to use and the amount of work using train­ing aids. These things must fit in with an over­all daily, weekly, and sea­sonal work­out plan.

4. Smart coaches are not quick to jump on the band­wagon when a rev­o­lu­tion­ary new train­ing device comes along. They want to speak with other coaches, observe its use, per­haps try it them­selves, begin using it on a lim­ited trial basis, and eval­u­ate its effec­tive­ness before using it on a reg­u­lar basis with the whole team.

5. One of the great strengths of Amer­i­can Swim­ming is in the diver­sity of approaches coaches use to develop young swim­mers. From this diver­sity comes great new ideas. Your coach may be a future Olympic coach and her use, lim­ited use, or lack of use of a train­ing device is her spe­cial approach to train­ing your young swimmer.

6. Many train­ing aids are not designed for young age groupers to use. Coaches like to intro­duce var­i­ous train­ing aids in a pro­gres­sion fol­low­ing the swimmer’s devel­op­men­tal age and abil­ity to han­dle greater workloads.

7. Some train­ing aids have a dual pur­pose, they can be used at low resis­tance for stroke devel­op­ment, and they can be used at high inten­sity for speed, strength, and endurance devel­op­ment. A coach may use this type of train­ing aid pri­mar­ily for skill devel­op­ment with younger ages and grad­u­ally use it for more intense work as the swim­mer grows.

8. Moti­va­tion is a large fac­tor in the use of train­ing aids. If a swim­mer gets to use all the “toys” at an early age they will become bored in years to come as they keep using the same “toys”. Smart coaches use this as a rea­son for the grad­ual intro­duc­tion of train­ing aids.

These are not easy issues for coaches, ath­letes, and par­ents. Ques­tions about “how much”, “how hard”, and “what type” are part of the sport. Coaches will make deci­sions based on first­hand expe­ri­ence, infor­ma­tion from other coaches, and pub­lished reports. What­ever the deci­sions are, one thing stands out, there are no quick answers and no short cuts. A new super duper rev­o­lu­tion­ary train­ing aid will not trans­form your age group swim­mer into a super­star. And even if there was such a thing, what would it mean? In age group swim­ming we want steady growth, a sound aer­o­bic base, excel­lent stroke devel­op­ment, and an appre­ci­a­tion for the rela­tion­ship between day to day effort and the real­iza­tion of goals.

News For

SWIM PARENTS

Pub­lished by The Amer­i­can Swim­ming Coaches Association

5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200

Fort Laud­erdale FL 33309

___________________________________________________________________

Teach­ing Tech­nique – What We Know, What We Think We Know, and What We Do.

By John Leonard

One of the more com­mon ques­tions that par­ents have, is when/how the coach teaches the tech­ni­cal aspects of swim­ming to the ath­letes. First of all, we know that swim­ming is a “tech­nique lim­ited” sport. Which means that with­out good tech­ni­cal strokes, starts and turns, effort and hard work will only carry you a very lim­ited way…..the fact that water becomes more resis­tant as you go faster, means that per­fect tech­nique is rewarded and impaired tech­nique is pun­ished with less speed for more effort. This is age old wis­dom that is accepted by all expe­ri­enced coaches and athletes.

We think we know, that we can teach good tech­nique. Coaches spend count­less hours learn­ing not only WHAT a swim­mer should do, but HOW to teach them to do it. It appears, in non-scientific terms, that when coaches spend time teach­ing tech­nique, tech­nique improves. We hope that means there is a direct cor­re­la­tion between our teach­ing and the ath­letes learn­ing. It’s a rea­son­able belief.

Our friend Dr. K. Anders Eric­s­son at Florida State Uni­ver­sity, is the world’s lead­ing author­ity on “becom­ing an expert” in any domain. Part of his research, writ­ten about in pop­u­lar lit­er­a­ture, is that it requires 10,000 hours of ded­i­cated prac­tice (which he terms “Pur­pose­ful prac­tice”) in order to acquire “expert” sta­tus in any domain. Inter­est­ingly, if the ordi­nary swim­mer begins prac­tice at age 8 and fol­lows a nor­mal curve of increas­ing prac­tice hours each year to age 17 – 18, they will have put in approx­i­mately 10,000 hours……which is a nice coin­ci­dence with the long held “truth” among coaches that it takes 10 years to “make a swim­mer.” Sci­ence meets expe­ri­ence right in the mid­dle, and both are validated.

Now “pur­pose­ful prac­tice” is time that is focused on specifics and exact­ing detail in per­for­mance. It has con­stant and real­is­tic and expert feed­back from the teacher, and feed­back again from the ath­lete to the teacher. The entire effort is hard work, not much fun, and men­tally focused and exhaust­ing effort.

Is that what we do in swim­ming? Not for most of us. When swim coaches teach tech­nique, it is typ­i­cally “to the team” or a group of the team, almost never in a sus­tained 30 – 60 minute burst of one on one teach­ing. (essen­tially a pri­vate les­son.) My friend Guy Edson, who edits and dis­trib­utes this newslet­ter, describes it as work­ing to “get in the same neigh­bor­hood” as a good stroke, with most of his novice swim­mers. Not nec­es­sar­ily in the right house, much less in the right chair in the liv­ing room….just get­ting in the neigh­bor­hood. Swim Teams, by their very nature, of being “A TEAM”, do not allow much one on one teaching….or what Dr. Eric­s­son would call “delib­er­ate, or pur­pose­ful practice.”

Of course, years of suc­cess­ful age group swim­ming would tell us that we’re being suc­cess­ful “some­how”. Per­haps at cer­tain ages, “get­ting in the neigh­bor­hood” of a great stroke is enough. As the child matures, addi­tional pur­pose­ful prac­tice gets the ath­lete more finely tuned, and even­tu­ally, if they are pur­pose­ful and stu­dious enough to war­rant a lot of one on one atten­tion from a coach, they will have the oppor­tu­nity to per­son­al­ize that per­fect stroke for them….deliberate and pur­pose­ful prac­tice at its best.

To be suc­cess­ful in swim­ming, we need to not only learn, but also to improve our phys­i­cal state…training. Both are needed for top per­for­mance at all ages. So those 10,000 hours of prac­tice we put in may not all be “pur­pose­ful and directed learn­ing”, but many of them qual­ify as con­tribut­ing to our even­tual expertise.

The ques­tion for coaches? How to incor­po­rate more of that delib­er­ate and spe­cific prac­tice to improve strokes? And the ques­tion for par­ents and ath­letes? How to best apply the “train­ing time” to swim the strokes in the pat­terns that have been taught by the coaches…..so they become habit and ingrained skill.

Improv­ing the qual­ity of our prac­tices will improve the speed of our performances.

News For

SWIM PARENTS

Pub­lished by The Amer­i­can Swim­ming Coaches Association

5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200

Fort Laud­erdale FL 33309

___________________________________________________________________

TRAINING VERSUS LEARNING

By john Leonard

Last week I was speak­ing to a young coach who had just taken a new job.

His spe­cific prob­lem was that the coach that was there before he was, had every­one “train­ing hard” and had done a great job of sell­ing that con­cept. Every­one from 8 and unders to seniors was pound­ing the yardage daily.

The new coach wanted to spend 6 weeks or so con­cen­trat­ing on skills devel­op­ment, because in the first few days on the job, he noticed that many of the swim­mers were defi­cient in the types of stroke, turn and start skills that would sup­port them as they aged into older swim­mers in the program.

He’d laid out that plan to his par­ent group, includ­ing cut­ting back prac­tices from 2 and one half hours per day to just 90 min­utes for the older swim­mers and 60 min­utes for the mid­dle groups and 45 min­utes for the youngest swim­mers. This, con­sis­tent with today’s best advice to ded­i­cate one­self to “pur­pose­ful prac­tice” of new skills if you hoped for opti­mum learning….shorter peri­ods of intense con­cen­tra­tion, with lit­tle to inter­fere with the con­cen­tra­tion process.

He imme­di­ately faced rebellion.

Moms and a few Dads, called him to com­plain that impor­tant swim meets were com­ing up and their lit­tle dar­ling needed to “train” in order to be suc­cess­ful. Inter­est­ingly, more than 70% of the calls came from the par­ents of younger chil­dren. The coach asked my advice on how to edu­cate the par­ents on this issue.

Here’s my answer.

“Long prac­tices, with high train­ing vol­umes will make all swim­mers VERY good at what they are doing. Rep­e­ti­tion builds habit. Habit stands up beau­ti­fully under the pres­sure of competition…when in fact, noth­ing else does….as the pain of com­pe­ti­tion effort removes all traces of thought from the brain…..it becomes habit that the swim­mer relies upon to get him home to the finish.

“Unfor­tu­nately, if they are prac­tic­ing poor tech­nique, that will be learned and habit­u­ated, just as well as good tech­nique. And poor tech­nique makes you bio­me­chan­i­cally inef­fi­cient at the time of great­est stress. Hence you strug­gle more, go slower and your stroke col­lapses at the end of races.

“This makes swim­ming a tech­nique lim­ited sport. Your child will be severely lim­ited by the degree with which they can per­form the strokes with good habits, instead of poor habits.

“Lots of train­ing with poor habits will make a very poor swim­mer. A lit­tle train­ing with good habits, will result in a good swim­mer and one that is “unlim­ited” in their future.

“Which one do you want for your child?

HINT: Get the strokes right FIRST instead of pur­pose­fully prac­tic­ing mistakes.

All the Best for Great Swim­ming Experiences!

John Leonard