Back to the beginning (Breathing)

I remember being a young coach, and my dad hired me as a swim coach, and one of the first things he advised me about, actually one of the few things he advised me about on how to teach young swimmers, was something that seemed so simple. He told, "Make sure that you teach them to breathe first." I thought to myself, ""yeah right, why would have to teach somebody something so simple." I learned a lot that first year, and one was that my dad was right. Teach them to breathe.

All swim lessons begin this progress at the lowest level of lessons. Remember blowing bubbles, that is just to get used to blowing into water, but the big one is bobs. A swimmer must be able to bob in the water and exhale all their air underwater, and then come up and take a single breathe. Without this skill, it is too hard to concentrate on stroke technique and they definitely can't learn how to breathe to the side on freestyle.

I learned bouncies when I swam for the Selma Aqua Bears. Every little kid likes bouncies where they would exhale their air under water so that they could sink to the bottom of the pool to be able to jump off the bottom as hard as they could, and then rise up take a big breathe, and then fall back down under water to blow all their air out again. It was fun, but it also develop a basic skill of breathing, that made it so they could actually learn  the other skills that we want them to take in.

It is a skill that seems so automatic to so many of us, you don't realize how important it is for new swimmers. If you are trying to teach a new swimmer and you're getting hung up on their panics that occur on every stroke, or you can't understand why they can't just turn their head to the side without looking forward; consider that they may seem like they are breathing right, but they probably are just holding their breathe and trying to exhale and inhale with their head above water. Coaching the Flying Dolphins now, I am seeing the lack of this skill a lot, and I do some bouncies at almost every single practice. They have trouble getting to the bottom because they won't blow their air out, but they are starting to get use to the drill.

Breathing, don't just assume they know how to even if they've gone through lessons.