Stroke Development

bunya

Our pool is 12.5m in length; this length is ideal as children tend to fatigue at this point and drop their form. If required, we shorten the length of the pool with platforms in the pool. Some children who have begun swimming lesson in school but are not yet competent for Stroke Development may be better suited to our school aged Emerging Swimmer lessons.

​Prices: $18 for 30 minutes

Team Teaching

We practice team teaching with most of our stroke development classes. Generally, a senior teacher and junior teacher work together to teach their classes. This allows the children to benefit from the strengths of each coach, allows our teachers to collaborate and makes the class a little more fun for everyone.

Enrolment Form

our teaching method

We teach stroke development for school aged children at both the Bunya and the Mitchelton pools. Which pool your child swims in will depend on their individual needs, which location works best for you and sometimes where we have a vacancy.
After a child has a good understanding of water safety, water awareness and water independence and they are propelling through the water and happy to keep their face in the water they’re ready for it to look a little more like swimming as we know it.
We aim to teach a stroke that doesn’t require stroke correction. We teach it right the first time. In our experience, it can be trickier teaching this way but it’s much more rewarding learning this way. Teaching a stroke that doesn’t require correction means that your swimmer isn’t repeatedly practicing an incorrect stroke pattern. Unlearning a bad habit is so much harder than learning it properly the first time.
​

​Swim development: There is a series of skills that an emerging swimmer needs to master before a graceful stroke begins to develop. 

1.    Head position

2.    Body position

3.    Effective Kick 

4.    Effective Arms and hands 

5.    Breathing 

6.    Timing

​Some schools want you to be able to master one step before moving onto the next. The problem I see with this is that it can take some children years to master number one or two – to be working exclusively on these skills and adding no other skills I believe can be a little boring and a little demotivating as well as preventing the development of any kind of stroke which could be lifesaving. 
 
At Little Big we use a ‘whole, part, whole’ approach to stroke development. The ‘whole’ is as best as your swimmer can they tuck their chin, stroke their arms, kick their legs and bubble – their best version of freestyle. We then start breaking down those skills for them to begin to effectively develop the above 6 milestones. 

We will watch your swimmer and gauge which skill needs some development and work on that in that particular lesson. Some children will ace their arms and legs but take some time to trust themselves to have a really great head and body position. Because we’ve spent the time working on the other skills when they do finally crack the code for head and body position their stroke begins to look fantastic almost overnight. In other words, we put the ‘parts’ together at the same pace as your child is developing their ‘whole’ freestyle.