Whether you are starting your swimming journey or you would like to take your basic swimming skills to the next level, I have a few pointers that will help you to improve your swimming.
I have taught more than 1000 hours of swimming and there are some basic things that people get wrong most of the time leading to frustration. Once they understand the three basic requirements to learn swimming, it becomes much easier for them to go on and master it.
What’s your reason to learn swimming?
This is the first question I ask my students. This gives me an idea about their motivation level and how much encouragement I need to provide to help them. People learn swimming for different reasons such as they don’t know how or they want to improve their skills. Maybe your physiologist suggested that you to swim to ease your back pain or the pressure on the knees. I have also seen couples learn swimming to enjoy going to the beach together. Often one of the partners likes to go to the beach but the other ones doesn’t know how to swim and it makes them little apprehensive to go to the beach.
Regular gym goers also enjoy swimming as it is an excellent cardio exercise and works on multiple muscles at a time. Whatever be the reason. Make sure you are learning swimming for the right reasons, so you can pursue it for a long time.
Manage your expectations
You need to have the right expectation if you want to learn swimming even if you want to be able to just move forward in the water. Why do I say you need to manage your expectations? I have had a few students who wanted to learn how to swim in one hour. I tried to teach everything in an hour but it turned out there were too many things to remember. You need to have patience and just like any other sports you need a lot of practice sessions.
Perseverance
This is one virtue that will help no matter what you are trying to learn. Research has shown that perseverance and consistency can help a long way in learning a new skill.
Remember learning swimming is like learning to ride a bicycle. Once you learn it you will never forget. But the difference is that swimming requires more techniques to be able to swim. Many elderlies come to learn swimming because the doctors suggested them to. You can imagine that if you put more effort to learn swimming step by step now, you wouldn’t be forced to swim in your 60s when the doctor tells you so.
Conclusion
Learning swimming can be easy or hard based on the factors mentioned. Also, you can interpret these listed in order of importance. If you have right motivation, you can overcome any obstacle you may encounter in your way. This principle is applicable to all aspects of your life. I’m not giving life lessons here but I have seen this happen across various aspects of my life and those around me.
Keep swimming 🙂
Contributor
Vic Chen (Certified Personal Swimming Coach with 10 years of coaching experience)
BookingStoreHK 