“My child swims so much, but cannot seem to improve.”

A lot of parents watch their children practice every day – sometimes twice a day – but wonder why the kid in the next lane is improving faster. With 20 to 30 swimmers—or more—in a practice, coaches seldom have time to focus on an individual’s technique. This can lead to tons of yardage, but little improvement.

One of the biggest challenges for most swimmers, but especially young swimmers, is being able to visualize the feedback that their coaches give them. Many hear the same feedback over and over again and often don’t understand or believe their coaches – or Mom and Dad with their stands-side view. Seeing the stroke fault from different angles and at different speeds and then seeing the correction is invaluable for swimmers. Often the correction will feel funny because it’s a different movement groove, but seeing the video will help to comfort the swimmer that the stroke looks better visually.

Another challenge with stroke corrections is that the change often makes the stroke FEEL easier or slower. This effect is a natural part of lengthening and smoothening out the stroke and reducing unnecessary and wasteful movement. In the Swim Studio environment, we can fix the speed of the current at the pre-correction speed. If the change feels better and the speed hasn’t changed or if we need to speed it up to hold your child in place, your child will know and feel the benefit of the stroke correction.

If your child is having trouble taking his or her swimming to the next level, we recommend a bringing him or her in for a lesson at our Swim Studio. We not only want to make your child faster, we want to have him understand what makes a stroke faster and how to practice fast technique every time he gets into the pool. Your child can work on one stroke or multiple strokes, his best strokes or his worst strokes. We’ll end the lesson giving your child two or three things to think about between lessons to help him take the lesson into his weekly swim practices. If you’d like to take the DVD of any video clips we take home with you, let the coach know beforehand and we’ll give the DVD to you for a $25 supplemental charge.

Over the years we’ve worked with many competitive age groupers and high school swimmers and their parents to improve swimming times and to understand the strokes. We’ve worked Beth’s daughter Becca (11) regularly over the last few years to teach her the strokes, starts, and turns. As a 10 year old, Becca was the top 10-and-under in the country in the 1,650 yard freestyle and the 400, 800, and 1500 meter freestyles as well as top 10 in the 100, 200, and 400 IM’s and the 100 and 200 Backstroke and Butterfly events. She’s also a top triathlete, open water swimmer, and the youngest swimmer ever to complete the Maui Channel Open Water swim. She just aged up to the 11-12 group and swam an 18:18 at JO’s in her 1,650 to get her first Top-10 time as an 11-12 year old.