Do you know someone who wants to learn to swim desperately but cannot afford to take swimming lessons? If the answer to this question is yes, then you can be the one to teach him/her. However, you will first have to know how to teach adults to swim as the technique plays a very important part in this.
Teaching an adult to swim is not something you will learn by just reading an article. You will have to put the techniques mentioned here in practice, by entering the pool and guiding the person to swim. You need to first concentrate on the basics and then only move on to the complicated moves and strokes.
Here are some tips that will help you teach an adult to swim:
- Take the person whom you are going to teach to swim to your local swimming pool. Get into the pool; but make sure you first enter the shallow side of the pool. This is especially important if your friend is scared of water.
- Start moving in the water to get used to the feeling and let the student get comfortable inside the water.
- Now hold your student’s hand or ask him to the hold the side of the pool and lower your bodies inside the water till the point where only your neck is sticking out of the water.
- Bounce up and down while holding your student. All this is just to make your students feel comfortable and get used to being in the water and help him get rid of his fear of water.
- Now ask you student to take a deep breath, hold his nose with his fingers and sink under the water. Don’t let him be under water for long. Stand up in a few seconds and repeat the process again.
- Once your student is comfortable holding his breath under water, encourage him to stop holding his nose with his hands and go under water, while holding his breath.
- Moving on to the next step, make your student stand facing the edge of the pool, holding the edge with both hands. Ask him to lift his legs up behind him so that they his body is parallel to the bottom of the pool and ask him to flap his legs. You might have to put one hand under his stomach to keep him in that position.
- Now, ask him to put his face under water when he lifts his legs for flapping. He might experience water getting in his mouth and nose; tell him this is alright and that he will improve with practice. Once he is comfortable with this step you can move on to the next step.
- In the float position, while your student is flapping his legs, encourage him to relax his hold on the edge of the pool and leave his hands totally and try to float.
- Remember, he will not get it right the first time and may immediately feel discouraged and may also start feeling scared of the water again.
- However, keep encouraging him to repeat the step and with practice he will be able to float in one position quite well.
- Now, it is time to stand with the back against the side of the pool. With one leg on the bottom of the pool and the other bent and placed on the wall, ask your student to push himself forward with both hands outstretched in front of him. Tell him to immediately start flapping his legs with his face under water and he will start swimming forwards.
- This step above will also need a lot of practice and will require both you and your student to be patient and persistent.
- Once your student knows how to launch himself in the water and swim while flapping his legs, you can now teach him how to move his hands to swim ahead. For this, it a good idea to show him how it is done by swimming yourself.
- Ask him to repeat after you. You may again have to assist him in this step by holding him while he swims forward. With practice, he will get this step right too.
- Remember all of these steps cannot be done in one class. It may take many classes for you to just teach your student how to float. The key is to be very patient.
- Once your students knows the simplest technique of swimming, you can teach him other styles such as backstroke, butterfly etc.
Always remember, it is never too late to learn to swim and you can help someone immensely by teaching them to swim.
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