We’ve all heard of the crawl, walk, run concept of teaching new skills, whether it be in sport or elsewhere. At the core, the crawl to walk developmental sequence involves patterned neural activity, perception, cognition, and social interaction that has sequential effects on each subsequent skill. Ideas illustrated by research on the development of walking are broadly applied to other functional areas of development, in both the particulars and the process.
However, learning to walk is not merely a euphemism for maturing and evolving. Like swimming, it is a physical skill with concrete markers of achievement that must be built upon sequentially in order to achieve the desired end state. At One with the Water, the crawl, walk, run is foundational in determining the method and order in which we teach you or your swimmer each new skill.
Our Coaching Method
It is vital to understand that when a new swimming skill is introduced, only minimal space is needed to perform the skill correctly. Once you or your swimmer is no longer able to do the movements correctly, your coach will stop and take a moment to correct the mistake, provide an opportunity to review the correct steps , and begin again training the skill.
You may wonder why we teach in such small spaces, but because of the minimal space required, coaches do not have to have a swimmer swim more than a few strokes when learning a new skill. Once you or your swimmer shows appropriate mastery of the technique, we start having you move beyond the 10 meters mark. Forcing a swimmer to do more than 8-10 meters due to outside pressure or misguided coaching will only teach bad form and cause them to tire them out sooner.
Like crawling and walking, new opportunities for learning in each stage provide a developmental foundation for the acquisition and understanding of new skills.
“Fluency is what makes skills efficient, coordinated, and beautiful to observe. It is the ability to execute movements smoothly, accurately, and rapidly. Consistency and automaticity—performing the same movements in the same way over and over—are the signature attributes of fluency that allow for more efficient use of psychological and neural resources.” Source.
Take advantage of our research-based, and time-tested, growth-mindset influenced coaching methods and register for premium swim lessons today.
Molly is a member of our creative team, mom of four water-loving babies, and a fierce advocate for CPR training and really early swim instruction.