Adults Need More Than A Polystyrene Float!

 

This week I’ve been working with Paul whose wife bought him a few lessons for Christmas.

He’d tried to learn to swim before, in an adult group at a leisure centre. He said he wasn’t really taught anything, it was more like a social thing. Unfortunately, whilst ‘having a go,’ holding on to a polystyrene float, he lost control and wasn’t able to get his feet back on the floor.

He wasn’t being closely supervised, didn’t know what he was doing, got into trouble and had to be rescued. A bit of a setback.  I asked him if he’d been shown how to breathe out into the water at all. He hadn’t.

I’m glad to have been able to help Paul. It would have been sad if his experience of swimming had ended there, at the leisure centre. Because, with a few simple skills learnt in three Swimming Without Stress lessons, he’s independent in the water, enjoying being supported by it, fully submerged, and learning to move.

“Hi Ian, really enjoyed my lesson today, you have given me confidence in the water. THANKS.”

It’s important for teachers to work on our skills – working out a person’s learning style, trying not to overload them with information, listening, giving them space.  But it’s crucial with non swimmers to have a clear plan, to know what needs to be done. And it’s easy for me to forget, till I meet someone like Paul, that a lot of swimming teachers really don’t know what to do with adult learners.  We weren’t taught how to do it on our two week teacher training course. We can’t just leave them with a woggle, to get on with it and work it out for themselves.