At Dolphin Academy, standard swimming lessons are for thirty minutes. That’s a great amount of time to learn but we’d also like to remind parents of the benefits of social and exercise focused swimming that can be done more regularly. Your child will benefit from swimming outside of lessons enormously and will probably progress during lessons quicker if they can swim outside of the thirty minutes they have with us being coached.
Let’s talk football for a bit
Okay, so imagine you want your child to be a fantastic footballer. If you wanted your child to be a really great footballer, you will send them regularly to coaching, but you’d also want to inspire a love for the sport, respect for their team-mates and get used to kicking a ball around the field. You’d want them to be playing football regularly, training their body to be good at that sport, and they’d probably make friends with people who also love football. All this takes time.
It’s the same with swimming. If you want to be a great swimmer it’s really a good idea to swim for fun, to get used to the water and exercise your body at swimming. It’s important to develop confidence in the water and a love for the pool. After all, you don’t want your little dolphin to start taking his or her lessons as a chore.
So, what we’re saying is…
Water time is important. The time spent in the water splashing around, having fun and getting exercise is important. Doctors don’t recommend half an hour of exercise a week so, if you believe swimming is a fantastic exercise like us, little dolphins could spend more time in the pool per week than just half an hour.
Water Time Idea 1: Book More Lessons.
The first idea is that you’re perfectly welcome to book more swimming lessons with us. If you want, you can go to multiple sets of lessons. We don’t have a rule against this and we believe that more water time is crucial especially for those who want to progress onto our Top Squad level. We have lots of learners who book more than one session a week and they progress much faster.
Water Time Idea 2: Swim for Fun.
We fully encourage our swimmers to swim for fun outside of lessons. There are lots of public pools around Greater Manchester, check their timetables and you’ll probably find that they have free swimming hours you can just go along to. It’s easy to turn swimming into a family or friends’ activity and everyone will benefit from the exercise. It’s also a great opportunity to get confident in the water and start competitive swimming for fun with mini-races. And when swimming is done sometimes just for fun children are more likely to enjoy both their lessons and their independent water time.
Water Time Idea 3: Swim Competitively
Being coached and swimming for fun aren’t the only options to increase water time. If you’re at the right level of skill and you’re the sort of person who benefits from the feeling of competition you can join our Top Squad where you get the chance to swim in races and learn advanced techniques. Competitive swimming is a great extracurricular activity which helps a swimmer develop not just their swimming skills but it also boosts their confidence and gives them a good amount of healthy exercise.
Bonus Water Time Idea for Babies!
Children and adults aren’t the only ones who can benefit from some fun little water time! Babies can do that too. They aren’t going to be able to swim for fun without a lot of help or to swim competitively but there’s no reason you can’t get them confident to be in water. Our partner Our First Steps offer Adult and Child classes from a very young age – only 6 weeks old, and it’s generally a good idea for you to ease them into the classes during their bath time and help them with any potential water stress they might experience. When you’re bathing your little bundle of joy you can splash about with them, get them to blow bubbles in the water and wash their face in the water (gently of course!). These little things add up and will help a baby be comfortable around water as they get older which is a great start!
We recommend getting as much water time as you’re able to. If you’ve got any more ideas tell us in the comments on Facebook and we’ll include them below!