Hi,
My son is almost one month into swimming learning from a professional swimming coach. He is 9 yrs old. He is good in kicking and can cover 25 meters pool with his kickboard easily without any problem. Currently his coach is teaching him freestyle. He is progressing well but he is stuck at a particular point. He currently uses one arm swinging in water and one arm on the kickboard and breathes fine through side head but he is not going to next step from here on. The shallowest side of the pool is 4.5Ft and his feet do not touch the bottom and he is scared to swimming without kickboard. He can hold my hand and can swim with kicking easily but he still needs someone's hand or some support on his front. His coach tried to encourage him go swimming with his kicks and his arms straightened but hardly covers 10 feet with this and goes down. What can be done here? Should he use hand paddles? Any swimming accessory which could help here?
Kind Regards,
Khabbab
I concur with 'storms above. It's WAAAaaay early. Just regular and consistant practice...but I wouldn't say anything intense. That is, you want it to remain a 'fun' activity for the kid. Take him (and maybe a friend) to 'open swim' and just let him play...telling him to "swim to get that float" or some other thing to demonstrate to you what he's learning...and at the same time reinforcing his own abilities. And I don't know that accessories like hand paddles are a good idea at this early stage. He's really in a stage of learning coordination, and technique right now. And any coordination activity for a 9 year old is difficult...let alone the coordination required for swimming. Just get him in the water often...and not always in a regimented fashion so that it's fun...and it'll come.
Dan
I concur with 'storms above. It's WAAAaaay early. Just regular and consistant practice...but I wouldn't say anything intense. That is, you want it to remain a 'fun' activity for the kid. Take him (and maybe a friend) to 'open swim' and just let him play...telling him to "swim to get that float" or some other thing to demonstrate to you what he's learning...and at the same time reinforcing his own abilities. And I don't know that accessories like hand paddles are a good idea at this early stage. He's really in a stage of learning coordination, and technique right now. And any coordination activity for a 9 year old is difficult...let alone the coordination required for swimming. Just get him in the water often...and not always in a regimented fashion so that it's fun...and it'll come.
Dan
