Coach Sharing
The one that left the deepest impression on me during my teaching career was a 5-year-old boy with autism and moderate hyperactivity.
This little boy has been unable to control his body movements for a long time and has been constantly moving his hands and feet, which has caused many complaints from parents.
In this case, I adopted a special teaching method - first, I separated myself from other people, then, I used their habit of constantly moving their hands and feet and taught them with their heads not in the water. Finally, after they were familiar with moving in the water, I taught them to put their heads in the water and use a floating back.
After about three months of training, I was able to swim 50 meters freestyle.
However, because his arms and legs still had the habit of swinging naturally, his swimming style was mixed with other movements. Later, I used the method of manual fixation to improve it and help improve his swimming style. After a month, the basic freestyle was formed, and the problem of arm and leg coordination was also improved.
Looking back, although the little boy shouted and screamed many times in the swimming pool during the training, and even received complaints from the lifeguards in serious cases, fortunately, he was able to gain their understanding after explaining the situation to them. In the end, the little boy was able to improve his body coordination problems and complete the freestyle and breaststroke.
I am Coach Lin, and I have nearly 20 years of experience in teaching swimming. I have taught in many swimming pools across Hong Kong.
In addition to professional knowledge, I have also integrated and improved my teaching experience and research into various teaching methods. I mainly use progressive teaching methods, where each step is related to the previous set of movements, and can help solve the problem of uncoordinated hands and feet. I prefer not to use external auxiliary devices to teach, so that I can feel the distribution of each child's body force more realistically, and can help solve swimming problems for autism, Asperger's disease, etc.
I use my body and mind to feel every movement of the students, so as to resolve the fear of children and adults in learning to swim and let them enjoy the joy and happiness of swimming easily.
There have been many special things in my teaching experience, and there are several students who left me with deep memories.
A 4-year-old who only knows how to shout, no matter which coach she follows, she only knows how to shout. In the end, I spent a lot of time to understand her.
I first communicated with her, then used games to get to know her better, and then slowly added practice through games. Finally, under my careful teaching, she gradually learned the freestyle.
Another student's situation is that she had already started swimming before the pandemic (around 2020). She was looking forward to learning swimming at first, but unfortunately the pandemic broke out, the pool opening date was uncertain, she didn't learn the basics of swimming well, and the coach didn't record her learning progress, so her swimming journey was not smooth. Finally, she met me by chance, and finally learned freestyle swimming just 3 months after the pool opened. I can't describe the joy in my heart.
The two students mentioned above are common problems encountered in swimming. So as a coach, although you have to face different problems, each problem is a detail that cannot be ignored. Unfortunately, sometimes parents are too impatient and only want to see a big leap forward, and even "holding the edge of the pool" is meaningless. In fact, parents should understand that every big leap forward starts from the edge of the pool and is built up step by step, and patience is required.
We hope that parents can be patient, trust and supportive of coaches and their children.
