Aust Swim Teaching Course

Last weekend I went along to Ravenswood School in Gordon to complete the 2nd part of this course. 0830 to 1730 on each day proved too much for some, especially on the Sunday, with a few taking impromptu 'power naps' during the theory sessions. You know who you are! Anyhow, it was really useful to get some ideas to use for teaching kids to swim. I learnt a whole load of fun games and now I also know the words to the 'Hokey Cokey'! The course was packed full of information about water safety: did you know that 80% of the 270 people who drowned in Australia last year were male and heaps of them were washed into the sea from rocks?

Our facilitators Sonya, Melissa, and Karina were really enthusiastic and did a great job of getting us through all of the mateial we know in order to pass our exam and become qualified swim teachers. Click the link to see photos and a video of some of the pool activites we did which were really good fun. I thought that there should have been more emphasis on some of the personal qualities that makes a good swim teacher such as being a really positive person who loves swimming & teaching it and how to build a good rapport with kids. Perhaps this is something that is a pre-requisite for being Australian and that's why it doesn't need to be covered! In any case, all of the people on the course seemed like they would make great swim teachers anyway! GO YOU GOOD THINGS :-D

I'm a Total Immersion coach. We run weekend workshops with a 100% focus on freestyle technique where we use underwater video footage and teach a clever sequence of progressive drills to transform the swimmer's stroke into a more efficient one. Last workshop there was a guy called Steve who improved from 22 strokes for 25m at the start of the workshop to 10 strokes at the end. AWESOME! It was good for me to see that some of the key TI concepts are present in the Austswim way of teaching, but I felt that the concept of 'balance in the water' should be introduced at an early stage in the teaching progression and emphasised throughout as it is probably the single most important consideration for efficient swimming.

I had a very constructive discussion about 'principles of movement' with Melissa Rickwood and she asked me to demonstrate one of the TI drills we use to teach swimmers how to 'lean on their lung' and 'hide their head' in order to swim downhill (ie in balance) rather that uphill (head out of water and legs sinking). On the TI workshops we have a teaching ratio of 1:6 or better and we give very specific feedback to our participants. Next summer I'm going to organise a Total Immersion Swimming Camp For Kids and I'm looking forward to implementing some of the Austswim ideas.

In the meantime, all you soon-to-be swim teachers should definitely sign in and leave me a message on this blog. Its really easy and it would be great to hear how you are all going with your swim teaching! ;-D

Dunstan out.