With school holidays still on we don’t expect that many swimmers back. Today was no exception, with my designated lane empty, teachers away and at most 7 swimmers over 6 lanes. I took two of them. To ease them back we make things easy, introduce drills, short sprints and a variety of skills. If I see an easy fix, such as head position, or can improve the way they breathe I’ll do something about it.
The second session was a new group called Dev 3 Dev (of all things). A decade or so ago this was Dev 4, something of a remedial class for young teens. They ought not be in the pool alongside 8-11 year olds – some kids would be put off by this alone.
The scale of problems one swimmer presented were so great I felt like falling into despair. Yet, a challenge is a challenge, and able to work with them alone I could return to the same issue: severe stabbing, cycling of legs on front and back which, despite three years with the pool teacher, had never been addressed ‘because my arms are so strong’. This will take a lot of effort from the swimmer and us to correct – it can be done, though not in a regular class as one-to-one is needed.
