How to Make Swimming Lessons More Fun and Lively

Swimming is a skill that everyone should learn at some point in their life. No matter if you’re young or old, this is something that could one day save your life, or simply allow you to enjoy more fun in the sun. Whatever the reason is for learning to swim, it’s a very good way to get active and make the most out of the outdoors.

The thing about swimming lessons, especially for kids, is that it’s not always the most fun. You want to splash around, jump around, and go wild, but learning to swim requires dedication and devotion to learning technique, which isn’t always fun. Here are some good ways to liven up those swimming lessons, teachers and students alike.

Make It a Competition

Everyone likes a little friendly competition. It can help you feel more motivated to learn or do something better than the next. It’s healthy to want to be better and providing students with opportunities to compete in races, helps them break through the doubts and build confidence. This could be the difference between a child learning that they love to swim the breaststroke and learning that they just like a casual swim.

Add Entertainment

Swimming is a good activity for cardio purposes, but learning to swim isn’t always that fun because you aren’t able to go full-tilt or do all the fun stuff like diving yet. If you’re learning to swim, it could be a good idea to add some entertainment to the mix. A good one is swimming headphones because you can listen to instructors, or listen to music, while you learn. It’s a great way to cut through the boredom to feeling more engaged with the lessons.

Add Games to Make the Lessons More Fun

This one is especially helpful for kids. Nothing gets kids going more than organized games and sports, so incorporating games into swim lessons is a great way to keep them entertained, help pass on your instructions in a way that they’ll listen and apply them, and have some fun yourself. Teach them how to tread water while keeping a ball from touching the water, teach them water polo, have them compete in relay races. All are good ideas for making swim lessons more palatable for even the most disengaged child.

Bring Plenty of Swimming Aids

It might also be a confidence problem that a child or adult is struggling with. Going into the water when you’re not ready to can be scary and dangerous, so it’s important to include swimming aids in your lessons for students who aren’t quite at the skill level of their peers yet. If you’re taking lessons yourself, don’t be ashamed or afraid to use a swimming aid either. It’s always better safe than sorry to use a noodle, lifejacket, floaty, or snorkel to help you learn at your pace. It’s also good liability protection for those teaching so that every student can feel safe.

Create Goals

Goal-oriented learning is important. It’s so important that it’s one of the best ways to teach people, especially kids. Even adults can take advantage of this. By setting goals, you have something to strive for. Maybe it’s increasing your length of breath underwater, or increasing your height in dives, or reducing lap times in the pool. No matter what it is, adding goals to a lesson as an instructor or imposing goals on yourself as a student will help you learn faster and improve more.

Incorporate on Land Exercises

Swimming can really take it out of you, it’s one of the best full-body, cardio exercises for a reason. Anyone from a kid to an adult will eventually get exhausted from splashing around in the water so it’s a good plan to incorporate some land exercises too. You can teach them the swimming stroke motions on land while laying down, teach them breathing exercises, and teach them movements that are key to navigating through the water properly. Land exercises can be just as important for helping build the stamina and strength of a swimmer as the activities in the water.

Swimming is something that everyone should learn at some point in their life because of how vital it is for many things. It could be that you want to learn so you can join in on the fun with your friends at the lake, or because you want to be safer while out on the water. No matter the reason, these tips will make it a more entertaining way to learn for the teachers and students out there.