The Benefits of Multiple Swim Lessons per Week

Swim lessons are important to teach a person how to stay safe in and around the water, plus it is a fun and social activity that everyone should be able to enjoy! There are three main things that can be gained from having swim lessons frequently: building “muscle memory” of the body positions and strokes in the water, building endurance to allow the body to swim for longer periods of time without tiring (important water safety skill), and to build social and communication skills.

Muscle Memory

To truly learn how to swim efficiently and effectively in the water, it is important not only to participate in swim lessons, but to have swim lessons frequently. This is because swimming uses muscles in new ways and it takes a lot of repetition to reinforce the muscle-neuron connections between the muscles and brain. Plus, the brain learns and uses new things every day, and if the lessons learned during swim practice are not reinforced, they are easily forgotten.

The best way to set up the muscle-to-brain connection to help reinforce the lessons learned during a swim lesson is to have swim lessons as frequently as possible, with the goal being at least 3 sessions per week. This will build the muscles necessary for swimming and help the brain to remember the movements and body positions used to swim well. Swimming is a very physical activity and it takes a lot of time in the pool to develop the skills needed to do it correctly. But, this can also mean that it is a very tiring sport, which leads us to our next benefit of having multiple swim lessons per week: building endurance

Endurance

Once the necessary skills are learned to swim and stay safer in the pool, it takes a lot of practice to continue to build these muscles to keep enough energy to swim for longer periods of time. It also build the endurance necessary to swim in more difficult locations, such as lakes or the ocean, which take a lot more strength and energy to stay safe in. When we first learn how to swim, we can only handle a short time in the water. But, with more and more time spent in the pool with swim lessons, the stronger we become and the more we can do in the pool and longer we can stay in the pool to not only play, but stay active, leading to our third major benefit of frequent swim classes: increased social and communication skills.

Social Skills

The third major benefit of swim lessons is that they are an opportunity to interact socially not only with the swimming instructor but other children who are either in their swim lesson with them or are also taking group swim lessons at the same time. Social skills related to communicating effectively with others face to face are harder to obtain given that interaction with others is becoming more and more technology-based versus face to face. Swim lessons, however, are not something that can be done through an online course, it must be done in person with a swim teacher. Therefore, it forces the learning to take place in close quarters and with effective communication skills between teacher and student, and between students as well.

Pupils must be able to communicate to the teacher effectively so that the learning is being done at a pace that is suitable for all parties involved. That means that students learn how to communicate needs with words instead of tears or shouts. Having lessons frequently will get the student comfortable with the water, the teacher, and the new things being learned quickly, so that it keeps the students calm and makes the learning more effective.

After teaching swim lessons for many years, there is one thing for sure that is the most effective at helping people learn how to swim in a happy and effective environment, and that is increased frequency of swim lessons. Having lessons 2-4 times per week can lead to increased rate of learning, increased efficiency of learning, increased comfort with the teacher and the water, and an increased positive attitude for everyone involved!

Stephanie Mitchell’s bio:

Swim Instructor in Los Angeles, CA

Hi, my name is Stephanie and I've been teaching swim lessons for 10 yrs and coaching for 2 yrs. The age range is from 1 yr- high school age. I have experience with children of all ages for 5 yrs. I also have worked as a dietician at a children's hospital. I was a competitive swimmer from age 9-20. I went to Penn State for my undergrad and University of Alabama for grad school and earned my Masters degree in Human Nutrition in 2015.