Transcription
In 1 hour, my roommate went from treading water like this to jumping into a deep pool. Monica said she can't swim, so I took her to the pool to teach her how to tread water. Watch this video till the end, and we're going to show you exactly how we did it. Oh, it's better.
Step one: First, I asked her if she could float on her back. While this is not a skill you necessarily need for treading water, I like to start with that as it helps you relax and get a little bit more comfortable. Then I showed her what to do with her arms when treading water. The first one is a constant movement, very efficient; it prevents your body from moving too much up and down, but it does require a little bit more practice to master. It's the figure eight: so your hands are going to be drawing number eight. Sweep your hands towards each other and apart, but your hands are not going to be 90° angled to the side; they are going to be facing more towards the bottom of the pool.
Move number two worked really well for her in my other beginner swim lessons. While it is easier to get a hang of at the beginning, your body is more likely to go up and down. It's the down pushes: pushing the water down results in your head coming out of the water, allowing you to take a breath. Whichever hand motion you're going to choose, keep your hands underneath the surface, moving near your hips. Even in the number eight movement, you must be pushing the water downwards so that your head stays above the water. You must feel the resistance underneath your hands. This is what Monica and a lot of beginners struggle with: moving their hands for the motion of moving instead of moving your hands to move the water. Don't overdo it; slow and strong is better than fast and weak. I wanted to thank you for subscribing and liking this video, as that keeps me going to do more videos for beginners.
Step three: The leg movement. I don't like to overcomplicate things, so I'm going to show you two most efficient and the easiest to start with. The first one—this is the kick that Monica went with—it's very stable and pretty simple: it's the flutter kick. At first, she had her feet a little bit flexed, so she wasn't able to support herself enough, but as soon as she switched to relaxed feet, she was able to keep her head longer above the water. So, no flexed feet for flutter kick. And the second one—this is where you want to keep your feet flexed—it does require a little bit more energy. I personally don't use this kick as much, but if the flutter kick doesn't support you enough, try this one: the breaststroke kick. For this one, feet are flexed; feet are turning outwards. You can watch my video on breast kick; it's the same movement, it's just in vertical.
Now, with that in mind, we practiced in the shallow one so that she could experience the buoyancy of her body. Starting in a sitting position, get your shoulders wet, start the hands, and try to keep it up for as long as you can. It's okay if your face gets underwater a little bit; try to keep going and see if you're going to come back up.
Step five: Then we went to a little bit deeper water where she could stand only on her tippy toes but still was comfortable enough because the bottom was right there. Here, I asked her to tread water for 10 seconds. Your flutter kick should be like a pendulum, so crossing the body line. If you only kick in front of your body, your kick won't be as effective, and you are going to have to kick much harder if you want the kick to support you enough.
Step six: The next task; it was specifically designed to teach her how to react in case of emergencies where she really needs to get to the wall. It also helped her to get a lot more control over her body: it's treading from the lane line back to the wall. For this one, it's very helpful if you lean forward, push the water from the front to the back like many breaststroke movements, because in this case you don't want to just stay above the water; you want to move forward. Now, if I was learning how to tread water without an instructor, here's what I would do: ask somebody, a friend or a family member, to be in the water with me. I would mention to the lifeguard that I'm not so good, just to keep an extra eye on me and stay close to the wall.
Step seven: Now, this is my favorite drill, and this was the pivotal moment of the entire lesson of treading water with Monica. It showed her that no matter what, as long as she has a lot of air in her lungs, she's not going to sink. It is a do-nothing drill: she's treading water for 5 seconds, then she takes a very deep breath and she stops moving—her arms and legs. She goes down a couple inches, but she doesn't sink all the way to the bottom. The rule here is that whenever your face is above the water, you're going to take a big breath and hold it. When you breathe out, yes, you will go down a couple inches, but as long as you have some air in your lungs, you're not going to sink down to the bottom of the pool. Two cases in which you might go down deeper are if you breathe out all of your air—like here you can see Monica breathing out and the bubbles coming out of her mouth—or if you lift your arms up higher than your shoulders; it adds more weight to your body. So, to avoid that, we keep our hands near the hips.
Step eight: Now, after the drill in Step seven—the do-nothing drill—I can tell Monica becomes calmer, and she's overall just a lot more confident in the water. I'm taking her a little bit deeper; same drill: treading for 10 seconds in place and going from the wall to the lane line, from the lane line and back. We kept repeating these two drills, alternating with breaks, until she felt comfortable enough to move to 16t deep water. The deeper you get, treading water doesn't change; it's the exact same thing; it's just your mental game of how deep you are.
Step nine: This is the extra step. Monica did so well, so I asked her if she wants to do the ultimate test that will show that she is perfectly capable of being in deep water. I asked her to jump into the deep pool, but we also did it step by step: first from the lowest step of the ladder, then a little bit higher, and at the end from the edge into the water. Now, I'm going to share with you the secret tip that I gave Monica at the end of the lesson. So, as you may have noticed over this video, her body was going up and down even though she kept treading water. So then I told her, if you don't want your head to be up and down, lean your head back; resting your head on top of the water helps your body stay up. Her face was not coming down. Oh, it's better. So if you're in a similar situation and treading water is still a little bit tough for you, start by doing the same thing by leaning your head back a little bit and see if it helps.
To summarize all of this: start in the shallow water, keep going deeper as you get comfortable, do the drill of treading water from the lane line back to the wall, and definitely try the drill of doing nothing. Take time to understand and learn how deep your body is going to go if you just hold your breath. Thank you for watching till the end. This is what helped Monica out. Everybody is different, but I am hoping that you will get something out of this video and that you will share your journey in the comments. [Music]