Swim on your back
The child swims at least 10 meters in a supine position with interchangeable impact as propulsion. The arms lie on their sides next to the body and help out a little by moving up and down gently. However, the focus is clearly on leg drive. The exercise can be carried out in the children's pool or in the deep water pool. In deep water, the safety of the child must always be ensured.
This exercise primarily trains the core element of drive.
Prerequisite exercises from the previous course:
Please read the Safety notes before you start.
Preparatory exercises
bubble bath
This exercise should already be familiar from the last course. If you don't remember, please click on the picture of this exercise, the “bubble bath” is linked there. In the following section, you will find a brief summary.
The child is sitting on the stairs in the children's pool. The step should be selected so that the legs are approximately half underwater. In a first step, the legs and feet are stretched. Then the child slowly starts moving the straightened legs up and down. The leg stroke starts off very weak and then gets stronger and stronger. The legs always remain straight.
With swim noodle
You can use a swimming noodle to help yourself with this exercise. The swimming noodle is wrapped around your back and stuck between your armpits (see picture).
The swimming noodle gives the child a boost and the exercise is immediately a lot easy. In this way, the learner can concentrate on the leg stroke and improve the feeling of water in their legs on their back. However, swimming noodle also has a disadvantage. The child can sit up in water and lower their hips without sinking. This is no longer possible without a swimming noodle. This means you must insist, even with swimming noodle, that the child's gaze is upwards, that the chin is placed back and that the hip is pushed upwards. However, you shouldn't swim with the noodle on your back for too long.
Water arrow in supine position
The child holds the edge of the pool with both hands, with the front of the body facing the pelvic wall. The knees are tightened and the feet lie parallel to the foot surface on the wall. The child then leans backwards, looks at the ceiling and pushes himself away from the wall with both legs. After the push off, the child glides in a supine position for as long as possible without leg or arm drive.
This exercise is also the start of the core exercise, the only difference is that in otter swimming, the legs start after a short time. This exercise trains body tension and gliding in the supine position.
Common mistakes
Too little leg stroke
This is a very common mistake. If the legs are moved too little, the lower body will unavoidably sink. This then increases water resistance, which makes hitting the leg even more exhausting. Thanks to the whirlpool bath, leg endurance can be trained even on the stairs in the children's pool. To do this, simply extend the phase with a particularly strong leg stroke
Legs and hips below
As with any other supine exercise, the water position is also a common problem during otter swimming. If the gaze is not strictly upwards and the hip is pushed downwards, the water resistance increases and the entire exercise is no longer manageable.
If your child has this problem, you should go back to the starfish first. Make sure that the water is right there. If you are correct there, it is because your child has problems concentrating on the leg stroke and on the water situation at the same time. It may also be that he or she wants to look at their own leg stroke and therefore looks at the legs. In both cases, we recommend that you start with the water arrow on your back and only start hitting your leg after a long period of gliding. This allows the child to concentrate first on the water situation and only then on hitting the leg.
