Teaching Breaststroke

[Steve Freides]

Good teachers are always reinventing themselves - I try to remember
that.

Yesterday in the pool, there was a kid, not in my class, who simply
couldn't get the timing of breaststroke. Passing breaststroke is a
requirement for him to move out of his current class and into mine. The
way we normally teach it is with four words, to be performed in order:
pull, breath, kick, glide, and we stress gliding in the streamlined
position (hands in front, arms straight, legs straight). This child,
about 10 years old, had an extra kick going on, almost like butterfly -
two kicks, one pull. Kind of the right parts but misassembled, if that
makes any sense.

I made it as simple as I could think of at the time for him: two
positions, in and out. "In" meant bring the hands under the chin
(elbows out, head up for a breath) and also the feet (heels) brought
"in" to the butt. Out mean everything in a straight line, hands
straight in front, legs straight in back. And I demonstrated what in
and out looked like from the deck.

And that did it for him - took several lengths of the pool because he
kept reverting to his old form, but the idea was the right one for this
student and this time. If you think about it, it's not 100% right, but
it sure did the trick here, and you wouldn't have known from watching
him that he was following a two cue, and not a four cue, set of
instructions for breaststroke.

The teacher had tried and given up, the aquatics director was there and
also couldn't figure out what to do, and I just came up with the in-out
idea on the spot. The aquatics director looked at me and said she'd
never taught breaststroke like that before, and my response was that
neither had I - it was just something for this kid to try that I came up
with at the moment. She had walked away while I figured out this 'plan'
and had the student try it for a couple of laps, so when she came back,
all she saw the right thing happening in the pool for the first time and
asked me how I did it.

Felt great to be able to help someone through a problem like this, not
trying to say "look how cool I am" with this message or anything like
that, just offering what I hope is a useful story for someone else to
try when the need arises.

-S-