Why you should teach your kids to swim

Why you should teach your kids to swim

Water safety is very important for children to learn from a young age due to the risk of accidents and even drowning. It is one of the only sports you can teach your child that can save their life. 

Drowning is one of the top causes of accidental deaths in children, so being able to swim is an essential skill, not only for your child to exercise and socialise with friends but also so they can survive if they accidentally fall in the water. 

Swimming is fun! It’s a great form of exercise that is fun for all ages, so it is much easier to get a child to learn. Swimming is also an accessible sport for children, regardless of age and ability, and can be a key form of exercise for children with additional needs. It can have the advantage of making your child more self-confident, and to make friends. 

Swimming keeps your child’s heart and lungs healthy. Swimming works out the whole body, helping to improve their strength and flexibility, as well as their posture and stamina. Swimming has many health benefits that work for all different muscle groups and help to promote a healthy life if your child is introduced to swimming at a younger age. This can also help to increase their confidence in the water and be able to keep themselves safe with more knowledge and experience.

Swimming is also a great sport to meet new friends and work on team building, allowing your child to learn new social skills and helping them build a team atmosphere. Swimmers learn to support and help each other from their shared experiences in the pool, often making great friendships for life. A positive atmosphere and team skills are skills that can be carried through life. 

Swimming also helps your child to learn self-motivation and goal setting, to push themselves to learn more skills, and to be more confident in the water. Swimming ties teamwork and individuality into one sport.

Swimming is also a sport you can have for life if you teach your child how to swim from a young age. The skill is forever with them and is something they can take with them as they get older. Since swimming is a low-impact sport, it is a hugely popular and safe option for older adults, unlike other sports which can risk falling, swimming is good for the joints and is great for people of all levels.

At Proswimwear, we have a large variety of swimming costumes for children, ranging from performance swimwear to training swimwear. We also have training aids to help support your child in learning how to swim. Make sure to check them out! 

https://www.proswimwear.co.uk/swimming-accessories/swimming-training-aids.html

https://www.proswimwear.co.uk/kids-swimwear.html

Arm Exercises To Make Your Swim Stroke Stronger

Arm Exercises To Make Your Swim Stroke Stronger

Swimming is a full-body workout. It requires the use of every muscle, meaning you need to care for and maintain each one. The upper body is important. Even if you have the strongest legs, a weak upper body will slow you down in the water.

Dryland training should be incorporated into your exercise for your swimming. Let’s delve into the different ways you can focus on your upper body strength to see those results in the pool!

 

Equipment-based exercises

Hopefully, your pool membership also includes access to a gym full of equipment to help train your arms. There are lots of gyms that have a lot of equipment to allow proper arm exercises for swimmers for example cables, free weights, and much more. Let’s take a look at some examples of equipment you can use for dryland exercises and a movement you can perform while using it: 

  • Dumbbell curls are probably the first thing you visualise when you think about somebody training their arms, they are versatile and you can pick the weight depending on what it is you want to do. 
  • You can also practice preacher curls which are one of the most effective isolation exercises, try three sets where you push yourself to failure and pick a weight where you are failing between 8-10 repetitions. 

Bodyweight exercises

You can build some serious muscle and endurance from just your own body weight. Don’t feel discouraged by the lack of dumbbells, you can still build muscle with bodyweight arm exercises. These exercises can also have a much lower chance of injury.

  • Pushups are a classic. They don’t just improve your arm strength, it targets your chest, triceps, biceps, chest, and more! It can also improve core strength, which helps you to minimise your drag in the water. You can also turn pushups into full-body cardio by changing them into burpees. 
  • To perform a pushup correctly, put your body into a high planking position and put your palms flat on the ground beneath your shoulders. Let your chest sink towards the ground until your nose touches the ground and then push yourself back up to the original position. Keep your feet close together, but not touching, your toes pointed, and your heels up. Pushups can be done in a variety of styles, such as diamond pushups, elevated pushups, and even one-armed pushups, which can make your workouts more fun and dynamic!
  • Dips are one of the most essential arm exercises for swimmers as it helps to target strength building in your triceps. Put your legs at a 90-degree angle, and cross your calves. Lower your body, keep your chest forward to apply balance. Dips can be very hard at first and will make your triceps burn, but this exercise also targets your pecs, anterior deltoids, and even back muscles. 
  • Chin-ups are performed by gripping a bar in line with your shoulders above your head, palms facing towards you. You then pull yourself up until your chin rises above the bar and lower yourself back down. Chin-ups also work out your lats and scapula. Chin-ups can be one of the most difficult arm exercises, especially if you are lifting a lot of weight. Resistance bands can help to push your body up. 

Dryland arm exercises for swimmers will make positive changes to your performance in the pool. If you have access to a gym, don’t be shy to try the weight machine! If you cannot access a gym, you can exercise at home with either equipment or simple bodyweight workouts! 

At Proswimwear, we offer a large range of resistance bands and dryland equipment that could help you with your workout.

Dryland Training Aids: https://www.proswimwear.co.uk/swimming-accessories/land-training.html
Resistance Training Aids: https://www.proswimwear.co.uk/swimming-accessories/swimming-training-aids/resistance-training.html

Improve your competitive swim times with a stronger underwater Dolfin Kick - FINIS FOIL MONOFIN

improve your Dolfin kick

If you watch a lot of competitive swimming, you will see a lot of races are won and lost on the underwater kick at the turns, if you want to improve and dominate underwater against your competitors? Here’s how a Finis foil Monofin can help you considerably improve your swim times and considerably up your swimming.

 

All swimmers love to train with swim fins on in the water: We are able to swim far faster than we ever would without them,  on top of this our legs get a great power workout, and swimming at faster speed is simply a load of fun.

 

How one piece of equipment can seriously improve your underwaters speed, which is key off the wall at tumble turns in all race situations you can also introduce one powerful dolphin kick of the wall in Breaststroke turns before your first breaststroke kick will give you a much faster turn of speed than just using the two underwater stokes allowed in breaststroke style.

 

Underwater dolphin kick is the dominate feature of short course back stroke as you get so many turns with 15 metres underwater every 25 metres. Actually, the dolphin kick underwater has more effect in all short course events as there are twice as many for each distance swam. But all good long course swimmers need not to lose distance on each turn, just to swim harder to regain the loss down each length.

 

The monofin helps you get the feel and motion of the dolphin kick. Helping you to experience the whip like motion of the dolphin kick. Its large surface area has a way of forcing your core and lower back to engage in the kicking motion, which extends the range of the kick to gain full dolphin kick effect once you have trained with the mono fin it will become natural without it also.

 

Power work for your dolphin kick. Using a FINIS foil monofin will strengthen your core, lower back, and your legs.

 

The Monofin Trains better motor neuron pattern memory in your brain to repeat it continuously without thought. Strapping on a Monofin will help you experience those upper tier speeds and help train the motor neuron patterns necessary (streamlining, tightening your core, snapping the full kick through, etc) to get closer to those speeds without the fin on.

 

Improves undulation. Often you will see swimmer’s dolphin kick from their knees with a very rigid and limited undulation with little success or speed. The dolphin kick should originate from your upper body—not your knees. Training with a Monofin will deepen and enhance the undulation in the butterfly kick, by forcing you to use all your body not just your knees.

 

Helps build better rhythm. The first thing you notice when your fly kick gets better is that you can bang them out quickly and with almost rapid-fire precision. This kind of rhythm is built via training repetition but can be speeded up by training the rhythm you want to hit when racing. By emphasizing the muscle groups with the monofin that stabilize and drive the kick you are developing a stronger kicking rhythm.

 

THE FINIS FOIL MONOFIN

 

The FINIS Foil is the ideal choice for competitive swimmers looking to level up and develop their dolphin kick. the fin is long enough to give you a sense of the full range of your dolphin kicking motion.

Watch the video on our You Tube channel and many other interesting video’s https://youtu.be/ZCRJXr902lo

How to Use a Pull Buoy to Improve Your Swim Technique

using a pull buoy

Pull buoys are small but effective training aids that can really help swimmers develop their skills and make the most of their time in the pool.

The benefits of training with a pull buoy include improved arm strength and technique, a more efficient breathing style and better swim posture.

Our guide shows you how to use one of these pull buoys to their maximum potential, and features some of the top products currently on the market.

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Top Tips to Improve Your Breaststroke Pull Technique

breaststroke swimming tips

If you're wondering how you can fine-tune your breaststroke technique to bring your times down even further, try taking a look at your breaststroke pull and pull down.

Perfecting your arm technique, as well as your transitions between the three phases of a breaststroke pull, will boost your efficiency and speed in the pool.

Even by doing the slightest thing wrong, you'll be costing yourself valuable seconds or milliseconds, so check out these helpful tips and video demonstrations to maximise your potential for a new breaststroke PB.

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From halo to Kona: How Tim Don recovered from broken neck

tim don zone3

This time last year, British triathlete Tim Don was lying in a hospital bed wondering if he would ever compete again.

Don suffered a broken neck in a training accident just two days before the 2017 IRONMAN World Championship in Kona but, after a year of incredible recovery, he's back to compete in the 2018 race.

In association with his sponsor Zone3, we take a look at the 40-year-old's inspirational journey back to fitness.

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4 Freestyle Swimming Tips to Help You Swim Faster

tyr freestyle swimming tips

There are several key components of the freestyle stroke that must come together perfectly to get your technique spot on.

If one is not performed correctly, it will adversely affect your efficiency and speed in the water.

In association with TYR, we have come up with four top freestyle swimming tips that you can start working on in the pool now.

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6 Simple Breaststroke Drills To Help You Swim Faster

breaststroke drills

If you want to concentrate on improving your breaststroke swimming technique, there are a number of exercises you can perform regularly in the pool.

Check out these easy-to-follow video guides from Arena that will give you six top breaststroke drills to start working on as soon as you hit the water.

These breastroke drills will help you develop your strength, timing, coordination and technique.

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Best Swimming MP3 Player? The FINIS Duo

finis duo underwater mp3 player

Listening to yuor favourite music while training is no longer a luxury that only runners and cyclists can enjoy.

The advances in waterproof MP3 player technology over the past decade means swimmers can also take their favourite songs and podcasts with them when they're training in the water.

We take a look at the benefits of training to music, and pick our top recommendation for the best swimming MP3 player.

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How To Find the Best Swimming Watch

finis swimsense

The rapid rise in quality of swimming watches over the past few years has provided swimmers with more accurate training data than they've ever had before.

Specialist waterproof watches for swimming can now measure everything from laps, strokes, distance and speed to swimming efficiency, duration, sets, rest time and calories.

We stock specialist swim trackers which can help swimmers of all standards. This article highlights our two favourite swimming watches, and how you can get the most out of them.

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How to Swim Breaststroke - Top Tips for a Better Breaststroke Technique

speedo breaststroke video tips

Mastering the breaststroke swimming technique involves a lot of strength, stamina and perfect timing.

Getting the perfect balance between pulling and kicking takes a lot of practice, not to mention the incredible upper and lower body strength that's also needed.

Our Speedo video training guide will help you visualise how to swim the perfect breaststroke, while our article answers all the commonly-asked questions regarding body positioning, breathing, kicking and arm technique.

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How to Swim Butterfly - Top Tips for Improving Your Butterfly Stroke

speedo butterfly stroke technique

Swimming butterfly requires high levels of strength and endurance, so it's vital to ensure your technique is up to scratch.

Weak techniques will result in wasted energy and see valuable seconds or milliseconds lost in the pool.

Our video training guide from Speedo will help you understand the fundamentals of getting the most out of your butterfly technique.

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Freestyle Swimming Technique - Top Tips for a Faster Front Crawl

Front Crawl Breathing Technique

This helpful video training guide will give you expert tips on how to improve your front crawl swimming technique.

We focus on four key areas that will help you swim a faster freestyle – positioning, breathing, kicks and strokes.

In addition to offering advice on technique, we will also suggest a variety of training aids that will help you develop your skills and see you shave some crucial seconds, or milliseconds, off your times.

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How to improve your backstroke technique for a faster swim

speedo backstroke video tips

Check out our latest video training guide that will provide you with some helpful hints and tips on how to finetune your backstroke swimming technique.

This video from Speedo will cover the basics of positioning, breathing, kicks and strokes, and we'll also look at backstroke starts and flip turns as well as a number of useful training aids you can use in the pool.

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Cliff diver Rhiannan Iffland's Instagram pool diving stunt goes viral

rhiannan iffland instagram dive

This incredible new video showing cliff diver Rhiannan Iffland's stunning dive from a poolside swing into a swimming pool has already clocked up more than 8,000 views on Instagram.

The Australian, a high diving world champion in 2017, performed the risky stunt with her fellow Red Bull Cliff Diving star Todor Spasov.

She is catapulted nearly 25ft into the air before performing multiple flips and landing it perfectly. Check out the video here, but remember – don't try it yourself!

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How To Improve Your Dolphin Kick With The Finis Evo Monofin

finis evo monofin

The FINIS Evo Monofin can be used as an effective training aid to help swimmers develop their dolphin kick and build leg strength.

It is designed to be worn for longer periods of time to improve endurance, boost core strength and develop muscle memory.

Find out how the Evo Monofin can help your training by watching our video with Olympic and world champion Olivia Smoliga, who uses it to build her endurance prior to races.

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Arena Powerskin R-EVO ONE Race Suit - A Second Skin in the Pool

arena r-evo one race suit

The Arena Powerskin R-EVO ONE is the latest race suit to join the Arena swimwear range, and it's already proving a popular addition among competitive swimmers.

Available as men's jammers or women's kneeskins, the Powerskin R-EVO ONE delivers on unrestricted movement and streamlined performance.

Made from a single piece of fabric, with only one bonded seam at the back, this competition suit lives up to its claim of feeling like a second skin.

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What to do if your goggles fall off during a race

Tully Kearney British Swimming

Tully Kearney's winning performance in Sheffield at the weekend was a welcome reminder for swimmers that losing your goggles mid-race doesn't mean disaster.

While she may have got out of the water with two very sore eyes, her ability to stay calm and continue with her race plan was rewarded with gold and a new GB best time of 2:44.73.

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