It’s Official: “Fears to Fins” is Available for Purchase!

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Katrina

A lifelong goal that has come true for me equates to an important milestone for your child. By publishing my learn-to-swim electronic book, your child now has a better chance at having a safe and successful water experience. The book is available on Amazon.com here for $7.99. And if you have Amazon Prime, it is FREE for five days.

The information in my ebook is priceless if you are new to navigating swim lessons … or even if you have a safely swimming child. It’s designed to save money, tears, and headaches. And lives.

You don’t have to have a Kindle reader to enjoy this book. You can download in seconds  this simple and free app for your laptop or iPad. Here’s why I think an ebook can bring added benefit to your child’s learn-to-swim experience:

  • The needs of your fearful swimmer will be addressed in a low-pressure environment. One of the problems with trying to address your fearful swimmer’s struggles is that attempts are often motivated by frustration or impatience for the unknown. At the pool, the fearful swimmer is often on high alert, which can tempt a quick parental reaction or push an instructor to search for the right words; this ebook offers a low-pressure alternative that supports your needs through reflective answers designed to get you results.
  • I’m confident much of the information in this ebook has never been presented to you in this manner. While the swim industry can offer many publications on learn-to-swim techniques, the market for dealing effectively with fearful swimmers is limited. Chalk it up to the fact there are not many mature swimming instructors with more than 15 years of combined swim instruction experience and an ability to communicate effectively in writing and with new media. In other words, you’ve stumbled upon and am benefiting from my motivation to exploit a unique niche.
  • You have a professional’s undivided attention for as long as you need it. I don’t have to rush to my next lesson or deal with the types of interruptions that come with working at a busy pool. My advice doesn’t have a time limit and has been paid for in full for a fraction of what it would have cost you to hire me or any other instructor. And you can keep referring to my sensitive, results-oriented advice and exercises again and again.

Reviews are critical for success on Amazon, so please leave one and let me know what you think. I’m excited to share my 15 years of instructional experience in a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) modern form!

Posted in Tina's Swim eBooks! | Leave a comment

New Website Just for My Swim Ebook!

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Katrina

Today is an exciting day. I am posting my new swim ebook, “Fears to Fins: Overcoming Water Fears with Children” up for purchase on Amazon. Price will be $7.99. That cost beats out the current limited competition. (And my material is so much more engaging because it is targeted to you, the parent or swim instructor).

So before working out a few more kinks, I will direct you to my new website created just for the book, FearstoFins.jux.com. Here I have shared several instructional images found inside the ebook so you can get an idea of what it is all about.

Accompanying the text is over twenty high-resolution visual photos to support the clear advice and solid swim path I provide in helping you create a safe and happy swim life for your little ones. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words!

Posted in Children Learning to Swim, Parenting & Swimming, Swim Lessons & Programs, Tina's Swim eBooks!, Uncategorized, Water Fears & Trauma, Water Safety | Leave a comment

How I Became a Swim Instructor — When I Couldn’t Even Swim That Well!

Posted on April 14, 2012 by Katrina

Here is an excerpt from my upcoming swim eBook about overcoming water fears with children. I want to make sure parents understand even seasoned instructors like myself have had their tough moments in the pool. This story is about how I almost never became a swim teacher because, truth be told, I wasn’t that great of a swimmer!

At 23-years of age, upon graduation of college, instead of pursuing a career in my chosen field of journalism I decided what I wanted to was teach kids to swim in a safe, educational and supportive manner to help them avoid creating such water fear stories of their own. Nobel enough goal, yes; but this meant first obtaining lifeguard training and certification. Shouldn’t be too hard for a recent know-it-all college grad, right?

There were a couple of hurdles in achieving this. Although I was an avid athletic and loved the water, I wasn’t that accomplished of a lap swimmer.  In fact, I had never been on a swim team or even had a lick of formalized swim instruction! My only swim background really was at age 10 when my mom signed me up for a synchronizing swim team filled with a bunch of older girls. I was so lousy for a swimmer and would get in everyone’s way that I started faking sicknesses to the coach the second my mom dropped me off just so I wouldn’t have to suit up and get in the pool.  Word got out about my antics and my mom silently removed me from the team.  So much for a swim career, right?

But here I was, an ambitious recent graduate signing up at the local YMCA for a lifeguard course with what looked to be a bunch of high school kids instead of sending my resume to print publications and the CNN newsroom.  And I feel the experience turned out to be just as challenging if I had been hired by a big-time media company.

On the first day of lifeguarding class, I found out we would be required to swim 200 yards in the lap pool. I could manage to do the eight laps, sure, but they had to be doing the freestyle or crawl stroke which requires rhythmic breathing. I decided I would do just fine winging it.

After about two laps, I began struggling to catch my breath while these 17-year olds sailed past me in the lap lane. The lifeguard instructor who had been giving me the evil eye the whole time pulled me over to call my bluff. He told me point blank he didn’t think I was going to be able to do this. “You can try to practice, but I cannot guarantee I’ll even pass you then,” he warned.

I pondered giving up. I was obviously in the wrong place. Yet I am not someone who takes defeat lightly, so I attacked the threat of failing head-on and practiced my side-breathing every day. This is how I became a self-taught lap swimmer who did not really learn to swim (by some definitions) until age 23. As the lifeguard class progressed, my lap swimming got stronger. Three weeks later when I was able to fight my 270-pound instructor off me in the water (talk about the irony) which was part of our life-saving test, I passed my certification and officially began my career as a swim instructor.

For over fifteen years now I have taught swimmers of all ages and abilities, from experienced infants to first-timer senior citizens, in private and class settings at both homes and large facilities, on how to perform all swim strokes and practice water safety techniques. The number of humans I’ve taught to swim has to be in the thousands. One last shot of irony: one of the most memorial moments in my career was when I performed a double-rescue on two kids who were clinging onto one another underwater as a means for safety.

Posted in Adult Swimming, Children Learning to Swim, Swim Instructors, Tina's Swim eBooks!, Water Exercise & Aerobics | Leave a comment

Fears to Fins Ebook Soon Available to the Public!

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Katrina

I had to share with you the working cover of my upcoming ebook, “Fears to Fins: Overcoming Water Fears with Children.” What do you think?

The ebook is currently being formatted and will be available in just a few weeks for purchase on Kindle readers. Let me entice you a bit more about what’s inside with some of my favorite parts:

  • There is a huge difference between a water fear and water trauma. This book teaches you how to figure out which one your child might have and what to do about it.
  • The most common error we make as parents (and instructors!) when helping our child with their water fear. I actually used to do this one all the time until I got a great piece of advice from Mr. Rodgers.
  • Creating a better swim environment for your fearful child by controlling one simple thing. One choice can make all the difference in the world when warming your child up to lessons (I just dropped a big hint as to what it is).
  • How much your child actually needs to get into the water to make progress. While it is different for every child, my ebook suggests a very simple and flexible schedule that is do-able for even the busiest families.
  • … and how to basically save hundreds of tears, headaches and dollars on swim lessons.

As per advice from my publisher, ebook guru and tech writer Damon Brown (as in Damon Brown’s Simple Guide to the iPad), I need to research a fair price for this book. What price would you put to this information?

Posted in Children Learning to Swim, Parenting & Swimming, Swim Instructors, Swim Lessons & Programs, Tina's Swim eBooks!, Water Fears & Trauma | Leave a comment

Save Money with My 5-Minute Swim Test for Kids

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Tina Ramser

Do you think your kids need a swimming lesson refresher before summer hits?

Save yourself some money by first trying out my 5-Minute Swim Test. You’ll of course need a body of water to complete.

 

 

Directions: Take one of those cheap plastic, basketball-sized balls you find at any variety store, toss it in the middle of the deep end of a pool, and have your child tread out and retrieve it. Add more floating objects, like smaller balls or noodles.

The point? Although this task will seem like fun, it’s actually very hard work. Kids splash about, sending the objects further away from their grasp. They are forced to stay afloat and tread for minutes at a time to get the toys before returning to the side or shallow end.

If a kid gets tired too easily — within 5-minutes of engaging in this activity — then you must question their safety. Signs of being too tired are hanging onto the wall, not being able to keep their head up, and wanting to stop the activity.

If a child does not pass the 5-minute swim test, a parent needs to be prepared to swim with the kid(s), sign up for lessons, and go over a safety plan.

For example, if a child becomes in distress during this exercise, parents should toss a noodle from the pool deck or from within the pool. The Red Cross, and the Boy Scouts of America, teach: Reach or Throw But DON’T Go. Reach for your kid from the pool deck. Throw from the pool deck. Go to them as the last option.

This is because even in the midst of an emergency, you still need to enforce a climate of safety. And safety is always done CALMLY.

If you’re not worried about your swimmers, then worry about Other People’s Kids and what they don’t know about pool safety. That’s why this 5-minute swim test is perfect.

 

Posted in Children Learning to Swim, Parenting & Swimming, Water Fears & Trauma | Leave a comment

It’s Never Too Late to Face Your Water Fears

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Katrina

Oprah Winfrey once said, “The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free.”

Fear can keep us circling. And we can get pretty good and comfortable at circling. I’m going to be publishing my first book soon on how-to teach your child to swim, and it took me years to finally accomplish this goal even though I was able to get in touch with this dream as early as seventeen years of age. Maybe even earlier, since my favorite thing in grammar school was the time of year when kids got to create and author their own book.

There’s a new member at the facility I teach at that is learning to swim for the first time. She is an older female. She shows up every night. She watches swim videos. She takes lessons. She always tells me about her progress. It takes a lot of courage to be her.

So face your fear of learning to swim. Procrastination sets in when we give ourselves the opportunity to think a choice over too much (of course we’ll choose television over getting in a bathing suit — it’s so much easier and less stressful). Face the truth. It will be hard, but it will be rewarding and help you grow. And become water safe, something everyone — including you — deserves.

Posted in Adult Swimming, Water Safety | Leave a comment

How to End Neck Pain During Freestyle Side Breathing

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Katrina

I recently received this question from Karen, a 37 year-old training for her first sprint triathlon who is experiencing neck pain from side breathing during the freestyle stroke:

“… I have always worked out … and I would say I am in fairly decent shape. I am a good swimmer but laps is another story. My breathing technique is horrible. I have a heating pad on my right side of my next right now! I have been favoring my right side to breath and I am positive I am picking my head up to high when trying to catch a breath. Advice, help, anything is appreciated!”

First of all, this is a common issue with newer lap swimmers, so it is a common fix. The idea is to stop turning or craning your neck, and instead, roll your entire body more to get air.

Let’s break that concept down, and then support it with some exercises.

So when Karen decides to breathe, I am imagining her torso is mostly facing downward, or perhaps tilited just a bit on the side. In order for her to get air, she has to crane and strain her neck out. After doing this — let’s see, she said she swam 800 meters — that’s well over hundreds of incorrect turning-breathing actions so undoubtedly, her neck is in some pain.

What Karen needs to do is to roll her entire body a quarter turn, trying not to move her neck at all. A quarter turn, with her ear remaining in the water and her right shoulder pointing straight up to the sky (right arm stretched down resting on right thigh; left arm stretched in front with hand surfacing water and left ear resting on upper arm), should give her mouth enough clearance to get air. It’s a body roll. Not a neck turn.

Easier said than done. What can make learning to swim laps so complicated is that you have to keep the rest of the elements or body parts moving while trying to make new fixes. It can be like trying to rub your tummy while patting your head WHILE trying to tie a cherry stem into a knot with your tongue. So you create an exercise that can put the rest of your body parts on auto-pilot.

I recommend Karen building up to her correction by first getting a kickboard. The kickboard serves as a training wheel. Exercise:

  • Side-breath roll with kickboard. Place two hands on the tail (end) of the kickboard with arms stretched out. Perform your typical side-breathing or freestyle stroke. The modification will have at least one hand on the kickboard at all times (doesn’t matter how often you breath, or on what side — what matters is you are rhythmic and remember proper timing). So at the moment where you ROLL to breath, linger. Feel the position out. Notice the shoulder placement. Get used to the kicks or propulsion. Feel the ear in the water. Notice if your neck is straining. Fix it. Repeat. Repeat.

The kickboard allows for slow motion. When learning anything new, we need to go slow and make sure we have mentally — and in this case, PHYSICALLY grasped the concepts — before moving on. When you feel more secure, take the kickboard away. See what you just took in and made “yours” with the corrections.

However, we have one more issue for Karen. Since I’m assuming she will be swimming in an open body of water for her race, she needs to adopt a two o’clock/twelve o-clock breathing strategy. This is because she will be facing zero visibility.

I don’t want to mess her up with throwing an advanced lesson at her when she needs to get this one down, so we will wait and write about this is another post. What do you think?

Posted in Adult Swimming, Lap Swimming & Strokes | Leave a comment

What to Expect & Not Expect From a Swim Instructor

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Tina Ramser

Learning to swim really is a miraculous experience. It’s my belief everyone has the potential to swim.

There can be much confusion, or at least a difference of opinions, when a group of parents, instructors or kids for that matter sit down an try to define what swimming is.

For one mom, it’ means their 3-year is able to jump off the steps and use arm and leg motions without assistance. For another, it’s dropping her 7-year off at a swim party with no fear the kid would be able to take care of his/herself with little pool supervision.

Just the same, it’s important to distinguish what an instructor can and cannot do:

  • A swim instructor cannot drownproof anyone. No one is drownproof. It’s a false term and any person or school that advertises this benefit is promising something they could never deliver. But a swim instructor can teach swimming and water survival skills.
  • A swim instructor cannot stop a child from panicking. We can give the skills and review over and over again what to do, but it’s really age, personality, strength and comfort that helps a child act correctly in a dangerous situation. People don’t drown because they cannot swim; they drown because they panic.
  • A swim instructor cannot stop a 2-year old from running straight for the water. We think starting early means getting more control: As the Academy of Pediatricians states, children are not developmentally ready for lessons until 4, and what they are getting at is anyone younger has a lack of judgment skills. Teachers who are certified in or specialize in infant survival skills can teach infants and toddles to roll on their backs if they fall in.
  • A swim instructor cannot tell you how many lessons it will take for your child to swim. Especially if they never saw your kid swim. I can estimate. I can ballpark. I can assess, reassess and conference with you every step of the way. But there are too many variables to put a number to it and every child is different.
  • A swim instructor cannot talk a child out of being cold. In all my years, I have yet to learn how to do this. Temperature comfort is one of the most important element in swimming — a teacher can make important decisions about creating optimal pool comfort.
  • A swim instructor cannot give your child a lot of one-on-one time in a group class setting. If I have 6 students in a :30-minute period, it’s easy to figure the math: I can give your kid a little under five minutes of individual attention.

Hope I don’t sound like I’m venting. It’s actually the complete opposite. I think instructors need to be as open and honest as possible with their clients, and their client’s time, money and kids. Learning about swimming is as much of a lesson for the parents as it is for the kids.

Posted in Children Learning to Swim, Infant & Baby Swimming, Parenting & Swimming, Swim Instructors, Swim Lessons & Programs | 2 Comments

The Problem with Praising New Swimmers Too Much

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Katrina

To quote this Psychology Today article, many parents have been misguided by the “self-esteem movement,” which has told them that the way to build their children’s self-esteem is to tell them how good they are at things.

I don’t see the value of overtly praising a child for doing something to be expected, especially when it comes to swimming.

Occasionally in my lessons, I come across these uber-positive moms who put on a very exaggerated happy face when their child has accomplished some average feat, like responding to my request that they kick their feat. And the child, used to this kind of treatment, eats it up.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for creating a healthy, supportive swim environment, as my last post discussed. But too much praise, especially when unmerited, really doesn’t teach our children about reaching expectations in a responsible manner.

So in situations like this, good teachers like myself feel frozen. Because we sense the child is not used to being pushed, asking them to put forth any real effort — which is required when learning to swim — would likely be way too traumatic for them.

Therefore, I think not being honest about what it takes to become a swimmer is much more traumatic.

Here’s some advice all parenting styles can use when introducing a young and tender new swimmer to the pool:

  • Splashing is totally normal, totally expected behavior. I site this as the first bullet point, because it will likely be the first dislike your hesitant swimmer will encounter in the pool. Explain this is what water does, and it’s okay. But do not try to stop or control it. Which leads right into my next point …
  • Getting your face wet is to be expected, and accepted. Do not run and get the towel when your child cries because of water on the face. Stay calm, ensure they are fine. Which leads into the next point …
  • YOUR reaction teaches them how to react. It’s time to do a body language check. Do you cringe in the water? Well, that’s why they do. Do you try not to get your hair wet? Well then, why should your child feel all enthused about going under water?

We want to help our children adjust to the world around it, and in my case, that means the pool. I think by being honest about when praise is truly warranted — and when it is not — we can create measurement sticks that kids can, and will want to respond to. We must have faith in their resiliency.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Effects of Stress Associated with Swimming Lessons

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Katrina

The World Aquatic Babies & Children Network posted these really fascinating interview videos featuring clinical psychologist, Susan Tonkins, PhD, about the effect stressful swim lessons can have on a child.

Because a child’s full brain capacity is developed by age four, there is a visceral memory in pre-verbal kids. Bad memories, which can develop in the water when an adult (teacher or instructor) behaves in a manner perceived as threatening, don’t just go away. They are tucked in that little cranium and can later respond to a trigger. I call this water trauma.

Impatience is threatening. It jeopardizes trust. And so water trauma develops.  Aquatic infant survival techniques, defined as when small children as young as six months of age are forced to perform highly stressful survival actions in the water,  can jeopardize trust. (For more lengthy discussion on the controversy approach, go to this entry). Weaving in some excellent points from Dr. Tonkins, here is what to look for in a positive swim environment:

  • Existence of a flexible curriculum. Look for a Montessori-like approach, where each child is treated as an individual.
  • Find a calm teacher. Parent and teacher responsible for creating a safe and calm environment. Help educate appropriate behavior.
  • Survival swim tactics are risky lessons. The opposite from relationship-based guidance, in our quest to give kids water safety skills, we can give them psychological consequences instead. Dr. Tonkins asks, do we really need to be using such grave training to teach our kids?
  • Psychologically healthy teaching. Parents often feel compelled to take drastic measures to obtain water safety. But the key is to trying to set your child up to create a relationship with a trusted adult so they can learn something.

Children can’t learn comfortably if safety is an issue, says Dr. Tonkins. We can get a child to do anything because we’re bigger. We can create fear to get them to comply, but with long-term consequences like anger and anxiety. Tough instructors or programs make a child want to quit. Why would we think stress is a tool in teaching swimming?

 

Posted in Children Learning to Swim, Infant & Baby Swimming, Swim Instructors, Swim Lessons & Programs, Water Safety | Leave a comment