Butterfly is a difficult skill. Often swimmers have learned the other 3 competitive strokes – freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke before they attempt to learn butterfly. In this article we will take you through the the important tips when teaching young children butterfly.
Tips for Teaching Children Butterfly
- Build the stroke
- Like any stroke taught drills and skills are a building block process.
- Start small – break the stroke down into smaller achievable skills.
- Make sure the student has mastered each skill before progressing
- Ensure swimmer can do each skill consistently before moving on
- Teach slowly
- Learning slowly can be frustrating but is well worth the wait as skills are usually good quality if learned slowly and perfected.
- Insist on perfection
- Give feedback on strokes and drills from the beginning. It’s easy to correct any mistakes early on before muscular patterns have been established.
- Perfect practice makes perfect.
- Don’t start teaching butterfly until swimmer is proficient at other strokes.
Remember there are many other areas of swimming that can be practiced and perfected before moving on to butterfly. Butterfly is a tricky stroke to master for a swimmer.
That is why the Laurie Lawrence method of teaching butterfly focuses on isolating arm and leg movements before utilising a number of butterfly stroke drills to develop the correct full stroke butterfly.
One of Laurie’s teaching philosophy is learning to swim should be a positive experience for both parent and child.
Patience is Key
Both swim teachers and swimmers should be patient. Don’t rush the process. Slow and steady perfection of each skill will result in great butterfly stroke.
Keep up to date
Sign up to our newsletter https://worldwideswimschool.com/newsletter/
Follow us on facebook https://www.facebook.com/worldwideswimschool
Follow us on instagram https://www.instagram.com/worldwideswimschool/