Introduction by Steve Haufler
Hello. My name is Steve Haufler. Ever since I started teaching -- more than 30 years ago -- I’ve had a passion for finding the most effective ways to teach people how to swim.
In this video I want to share with you the single most important concept that has helped me be a better teacher.
The concept is simple -- it’s all about how you position your body when you teach your students... and how you guide their movements.
Once you try this simple concept for yourself, and see the results, you will know that you’ve reached a new level as a teacher. I’ve seen this happen with dozens of my assistant coaches and swim-school instructors that I’ve trained.
This video can help you immediately to become a more effective teacher. It’s all about getting you and your student into the right position so that learning can take place.
In this video I want you to watch not only what I teach, but also how I teach and what I say.
I’ll demonstrate a 5-step progression for teaching each of the four strokes. For each step, watch how I position my body so that I can get the swimmer into the best position to execute a correct swimming motion.
My goal when teaching is to make sure the swimmer experiences correct movements and only correct movements. This is called kinesthetic teaching. If the swimmer experiences only correct movements, there will be almost no bad habits to correct later on.
Most students will not swim correctly on their own. It’s up to you to hold, stabilize, and manipulate their bodies so that they do swim correctly -- right from the start.
All this takes is an awareness of where to stand and how to use your hands so that you can guide your student’s through the proper kicking, pulling, recovery, and breathing movements in all four strokes.
I’ll also show you how to provide resistance to your swimmers’ movements so that they learn what it feels like, within their muscles, to swim correctly. The idea is for you, the teacher, to help them experience what happens when they perform the skill correctly. By speeding the learning process, you will see amazing results.
Before we get started, I want to share with you my ten habits of effective teaching. These are the things I try to do with every student and at every lesson. If you can incorporate these into your teaching, I guarantee you will become a more effective teacher. They are...
One: Teach one on one...even in a group lesson. Swimmers learn better, faster, and more completely when they have your full attention, and when you can position their legs, arms, and bodies to make correct movements. Even in a group setting, you can find ways to teach one on one.
Two: Teach eye to eye. Get in the water when you teach and teach from an eye-to-eye position. Get down to the swimmer’s level. Better yet, go under water and look at the swimmer’s technique.
Three: Talk to your students...and use their name. Tell them exactly what you want them to do and keep talking to them even when they’re under water. They can hear you!
Four: Keep it simple. Teach with simple phrases that your students can remember. Boil your key instructions down to two or three words. Repeat the phrases and have your students repeat them back to you.
Five: Keep it positive. Tell them what you want them to do rather than what not to do. And when they do something right, even the most basic thing, be sure to tell them.
Six: Know where you’re headed in terms of stroke technique. You must know the end result you want to achieve, and have a basic path or teaching progression that will take you there. You need to know what to tell your students to do.
To know the end result -- to know what an efficient stroke looks like -- you must watch videos of world-class swimmers. Ideal resources are any of the Go Swim DVDs featuring Olympic swimmers.
To develop your teaching progression for each stroke, this video will get you started, but you’ll find even more ideas in my earlier DVDs on Teaching Progressions and Mirrors, Tools, and Toys.
