And I pushed off the wall again, as hard as I could, to grab the floating thing—and she grabbed it and pulled it back. And with what I realize now was probably a shock of adrenaline, I swam towards it. And she swam backwards with it, and I kept swimming towards it. It was a horrid doggy paddle, of course, but I was swimming.
This is actually a fairly standard method. It’s called a progression: you go from something easy (pushing off and gliding to a barbell) to something hard (swimming to a barbell). It sounds like in your case it wasn’t a very smooth progression (there was a big jump in the difficulty level, as shown by your “absolute shock of fear), but it worked.
Don’t they teach floating before swimming any more? I’m probably missing something, but it sounds like the process is being made unnecessarily difficult and frightening because the student must learn floating and rudimentary swimming at once. We learned the dead-man’s float, then the flutter kick, then the arm stroke, and finally breathing. Learning to float was the easy part; co-ordinating the three motor components was what was hard.
Learning to float was the easy part; co-ordinating the three motor components was what was hard.
Assuming, of course, that people can properly teach floating. In my own case, though many tried to teach me it, none succeeded till long after I had learned to do a front crawl...
Floating to gliding to kicking to front crawl is one progression. Swimming in deep water with your head up, i.e. doggy paddle or treading water, is a separate skill and has to be taught differently. Let me think… In Preschool A and B, the first swimming levels, I teach assisted floats, i.e. the child doesn’t have to hold themselves up because the instructor does, but they have to have the correct body position. In order to pass Preschool C, the child has to do unassisted floats on their front and back. In order to pass Preschool D, they have to tread water for 5 seconds in deep water. So that comes after floats, but it’s not the same skill exactly, and it’s not what progresses into front crawl.
This is actually a fairly standard method. It’s called a progression: you go from something easy (pushing off and gliding to a barbell) to something hard (swimming to a barbell). It sounds like in your case it wasn’t a very smooth progression (there was a big jump in the difficulty level, as shown by your “absolute shock of fear), but it worked.
Don’t they teach floating before swimming any more? I’m probably missing something, but it sounds like the process is being made unnecessarily difficult and frightening because the student must learn floating and rudimentary swimming at once. We learned the dead-man’s float, then the flutter kick, then the arm stroke, and finally breathing. Learning to float was the easy part; co-ordinating the three motor components was what was hard.
Assuming, of course, that people can properly teach floating. In my own case, though many tried to teach me it, none succeeded till long after I had learned to do a front crawl...
Floating to gliding to kicking to front crawl is one progression. Swimming in deep water with your head up, i.e. doggy paddle or treading water, is a separate skill and has to be taught differently. Let me think… In Preschool A and B, the first swimming levels, I teach assisted floats, i.e. the child doesn’t have to hold themselves up because the instructor does, but they have to have the correct body position. In order to pass Preschool C, the child has to do unassisted floats on their front and back. In order to pass Preschool D, they have to tread water for 5 seconds in deep water. So that comes after floats, but it’s not the same skill exactly, and it’s not what progresses into front crawl.