squidkid.

This is a touchy subject, or I could just feel this way because I highly value the importance of having control. I think it is a personality thing.

Regardless, it sounds about right to expect a teacher to play the role of Leader, but since swim lessons involve at least 3 people — a teacher, a parent, and a student — confusion over who plays what and how to execute your responsibilities can be an issue and struggle.

Let’s say you’ve got a dynamic of all participants having a history of being headstrong (but in the most positive way, of course): an aggressive swim student, a very involved parent, and an extremely experienced swim instructor.

In this scenerio, the Leader is the instructor; the Supporter is the parent, and the Follower is the child.

Okay, so now you’ve got a fearful swim student, a parent who witnessed the child almost drown, and a newly-trained swim instructor.

The Leader is the instructor; the Supporter is the parent, and the Follower is the child. For any situation, the line up always falls this way. Period.

It is important everyone in the triangle understand their role so expectations can be lived up to. It is also important to realize the amount of control hasn’t been taken away from anyone, just cleverly reassigned in a way that allows everyone to work together much better.

• The Leader: The assigned and expected expert, the teacher, is the Leader. No matter if the instructor is new to working with kids or just your kid or a complete know-it-all, the Leader is the one the position needing specific information so they can get the job done. The Leader is very dependent upon the Supporter to be able to find their way through their job.

• The Supporter: The parent is the Supporter. The Supporter grants the Leader the okay to create a swimming experience and relationship with their child. The Supporter delivers vital factual evidence about their child’s swim history, both good and bad, but keeps subjectivity at bay. The Supporter handles discipline issues. The Supporter’s magic wand is using words of encouragement to steer through tough times, no matter who the words are for (including themselves). Their support and information is vital to to the success of the Leader and the Follower.

• The Follower: The Follower is the child. They are here because the Supporter said they need to be. The Follower is there to try, despite fears, tears, the word no, and unique learning styles. All Followers have one universal goal that makes them equal: Learn how to be safe in the water.

Change assigned roles, and you create dysfunction. This is not to say a parent cannot teach their child to swim; but if you’re a parent and you’re doing Leader behavior, you aren’t ready to hire a swim instructor. A child might need explaining before a lesson how to be a Follower. And if a teacher cannot take the reigns despite encouragement from the Supporter, the Leader’s abilities need to be addressed to the Bigger Leader, or their supervisor (in a supportive way by the Supporter, of course).

It sounds brash, but that’s because I think this kind of truth-telling is either a shock to the control system, or it simply hurts your pride. But it also whips all roles into shape and cranks out success.

What do you think? Do you think it is appropriate to address this issue to a parent this way?

Are you new to the world of obtaining swim lessons for your family? And even though it is early May, are you ready to pull your hair out in confusion and frustration? Securing swim lessons in the summer is a very competitive business. Based on the feedback I get, which comes from hundreds of moms and dads and nannies and grandparents, they can tell you it can be quite a process, from finding (and sticking with) the right swim instructor to figuring out exactly when your child really is water safe.

Never fear, instruction is here! I’ve written about entires perfect for families new to the swim lesson process — I will save you tons of time (and money) with The Best Entires About Learning the Ropes of Swim Lessons:

• Could you be jumping the gun, or is your child to young to start swim lessons? You’ll need to learn about the pro’s & con’s of starting your child early in Part One. Be sure to follow up with Part Two.
• Don’t panic if they are age 5 and cannot swim! This is a great age to learn to swim and the most cost-efficient. Visit this post to find out how you can get your 5 year-old to start swimming in one lesson.
• How to prepare a fearful child with swimming lessons. Here is what you should know to break the fear. Also, make sure you know the difference between water fears and water trauma.
• Stop tearing your hair out and figure out how to beat the swim crowd. Know how the instructor and swim program cycle works. And don’t wait until summer — the “off-season” is a great time to take lessons, and my very first post tells you for many reasons.
• Do-it-yourself ideas. Here is a review of a swim book I recommend for teaching babies, as well as Level Cards — you’ll be able to assess where your child is at using Red Cross Safety Standards. Man, I should charge for these cards!

I recently returned from the Mendocino Coast from an abalone diving trip. Hunting for the marine mollusk is best described as dangerous, expensive, time-consuming, and highly regulated by the laws. But that is what makes the entire experience, from diving to preparing it for eating, completely exotic. I am actually working on a story assignment about the trip for The Christian Science Monitor, an international newspaper on par with The New York Times.

We had excellent weather conditions, but the north Pacific Ocean is very temperamental. Swimming in the ocean is a very different type of swimming. Here are ocean swimming pointers:

• Never turn your back to the ocean. Low tide switches to high tide in the blink of an eye, and along with it the size, frequency and powerfulness of the waves.
• If caught in a riptide or similar current, swim parallel to the shore. Don’t try and fight a current, you’ll get tired and lose.
• Swim under waves. Take a big breath and duck.
• Never swim alone. No one should ever swim alone, anytime, for any reason.
• The ocean is always in control. Work around its conditions.

If you’ve been following my posts on the New York Times Best Seller, The Abs Power Diet for Women, you know we’ve talked about the ABS DIET POWER, a clever acronym to remember the foods to eat (ie. A = Almonds or W = Whey) or to just stay away from fake foods (when you can’t remember anything). We know The Abs Diet promotes 6 smaller meals a day and a focus on working muscles, as in more fuel and more muscle equals less flab.

What’s great to hear is the author Zinczenko beings his ab exercise formula by first starting and stressing the importance of working a very large muscle group in your body, which happen to be your legs, not your abs.

Most of your body’s muscles are found below your belly button, writes Zinczenko. Working these leg muscles “triggers the release of hormones that stimulate muscle growth throughout your body, kick your fat-burners into overdrive, and give you that thin-as-a-dime stomach you want.”

He goes on to share a Norwegian study where people who focused on lower-body work actually gained more upper body strength than a group who spent the majority of their time on upper-body exercises.

Who would have thunk. But that is great news for use water-lovers because most water workouts are 85% lower body, especially when it comes to water aerobics.

So much of what we think makes sense in health and fitness — drink 8 classes of water a day, always stretch before working out — well, some of it proves to be false. I remember one of my water aerobic instructors telling me when she started 20 years ago, she used plastic milk jugs filled with water as weights; in our field, we now understand the properties of using floating Styrofoam weights and working muscles opposite than you would on land due the laws of gravity, or the laws of buoyancy .

New or corrected studies and information is what makes fitness so interesting, and working out in the water is definitely cutting edge. Another interesting unknown I have for you is that you might not know an entire water aerobics class can be all about abs. Because 85% of the water workout is legs, and The Abs Diet just shared with us that working our leg muscles in various exercises stimulates muscle growth throughout our bodies.

It’s not about doing 1,000 crunches on land to get great abs. The headlining news is that getting great abs is really about having a holistic look at your body, from what you put into it to your posture to the exercise regime you choose. Think outside of the box.

One of the best ways for a swim instructor and/or swim program to increase their reputation is to get together and swap teaching notes. When you have a more knowledgeable staff, you offer a more desirable service. Although every teacher’s method and personality is different, it’s important that swim instructors share the same “wave” length because ultimately swimming is a life-saving skill.

We sort of touched on that vital fact last night at a swim instructor meeting. We were deep in discussion about our new Swim Skill Levels that I shared with you. Atually, we were more like bickering about small stuff. Like whether or not a child’s kicks should be corrected in Level 2 or not until Level 3, or when the butterfly should be introduced.

One of our great JCC instructors, Alex, interrupted the conversation and in a new tone of voice said: “You know, what we do is huge. We are teaching kids how to be safe in the water. Think about that. Teaching swimming is teaching a life-saving skill.”

We did think about that. I feel a great sense of responsibility for what I am doing.

Swimming in huge. Earlier, Alex had shared a memory when he was a little boy where he almost witnessed a good friend drown in front of his parents and parent’s friends. It was a pool party, and all the adult’s backs were to the pool. Alex watched his friend quietly jump in the water and could only see the top of his head bobbing. Alex shyly poked the kids’ father and told him their son was in the pool and we wasn’t sure if that was okay.

When I was a kid, I remember swimming in a huge, 50-meter public pool and a kid jumping on top of me and holding my down for fun. The kid didn’t mean to scare me, but he did, and no matter my protesting he continued to play rough with me so I had to kick and push to get away. I wrote about why it is okay to do this here. I had to have been about 9 years old.

Another instructor, Kathy, has a scar on her chin where she jumped from the side of the pool and hit the edge. Tami, our Splash! teacher of 20-plus years, remembers her story. And Casey hers. And Kim. We remember our own personal water trauma experiences. (I wrote about the different between water trauma and water fears here.)

Swimming is a memorable experience. The best thing we can do as parents and instructors is for everyone to be on the same page and reinforce the same messages to our kids about the importance of being safe in the water.

I’m not crazy about the book selection out there on teaching swimming to any age level. Most read like an insurance manual, as swimming can be very technical.

For babies, swimming needs to be approached with the perfect balance of comfort and concern, and the book Water Babies & Safe Starts in Swimming by Francoise Barbira Freedman is able to capture this particular spirit through vivid pictures accompanied by a digestible amount of text. This magazine-sized book gets it right with colorful image examples, photo captions, bullet points, and sidebar boxes.

Where to begin? That’s what every instructor asks his/herself when teaching a class fun of babies for the first time. The authors, essentially a trio of credentialed infant and swim specialists, start off the book with three important concepts:

• How feeling happy and secure is the foundation of swimming, from the minute you and your baby enter the pool until you both step out.
• The benefits of early swimming, which involves parents showing their own motivation for getting in water.
• Frequently asked questions, such as what exactly happens biologically when a baby goes underwater (fully submerged).

Water Babies explains water exploration fundamentals, such as floating, parental holding, cuing, submersion techniques, surfacing and rolling, and activities that lead to traveling (passing, rides on the back).

I’ve mentioned this book before. This is the only book I’ve ever used to create — no pun intended — crib notes for my classes. Instructors, and even parents who read this book, might question the order or progression. For example, in Water Babies, back floating is introduced before proper holds. But if you choose to flip around the teaching concepts to accommodate your learner, you won’t go wrong. Just remember the opening points about comfort coming first.

The only small detail that would make this book better is if the pages were laminated so you could bring it near the pool side.

Water Babies & Safe Starts in Swimming is recommended for parents, grandparents, and instructors.

To show off your abs, you have to flatten your belly, The Abs Diet author Zinczenko writes. To flatten your belly, you have to burn fat. To burn fat, you have to build muscle.

The Abs Diet workout focuses on strength training (3x a week); cardiovascular exercise (1 tougher interval such as jogging and 2 light ones such as walking); and ab exercises (2x a week). Swimming laps would fit into the definition of a tougher cardio.

The plan focuses on using strength training to increase your lean muscle mass as quickly and easily as possible. As I view the bulk of the exercises outlined in the book, I’m convinced with some slight modifications, all of the strength training exercises can be done in a water aerobics class or simply just in the water using regular weights, weight floats, resistance paddles, or webbed gloves. Especially due to the fact it is recommended the exercise method be done in short circuits (smaller repetitions or reps, one exercise after another) and in a compounded manner (working more that one muscle at a time), done with speed or intensity.

A good water aerobic class does this, and for one more important additional reason: This method keeps your interest. Add great music and you won’t even feel like you are exercising but dancing at a party.

If you have never taken a water aerobics class and are working on getting there, here are Three Things You Can Do Right Now to Build Your Abs:

1. Stand tall. I love this helpful image: Think of a cape flowing behind you.
2. Abs aren’t just in the front. Abs connect around your hips and to your backbone.
3. Abs have memory. Be conscious of the first two and you’ll develop awareness. Awareness leads to habit.

We previously found the right food (using the acronym ABS DIET POWER) and eating pattern (6 small meals). Here’s the formula for success:

MORE FOOD + MORE MUSCLE = LESS FLAB

And on the other hand, consider the formula for failure:

LESS FOOD + LESS MUSCLE = MORE FLAB

Have you ever done a fast? I’ve done a few. I’ve done the “Master Cleanse” Vince Vaughn is rumored to be on, the one where all you drink is water mixed with lemon juice, molasses, and cayenne pepper. Which is disgusting. It wasn’t fun and I didn’t last.

I’ve done the one where you drink un-iodized salt mixed in water, which cleans you out in a matter of hours. Do NOT leave the house if you do this. But the drinking part is also disgusting, and it has actually made me throw up.

Like I said in my first Ab Diet post, if I’m going to embrace a new eating plan, which is my definition of a diet, it needs to be easy, painless, and quick. I’m not going to act like I’m a super-human with the ability to motivate in a single pound (er, single bound). I have to build up to getting there. We’re talking about changing habits.

So when I followed a fast that recommended I do a pre-fast, I was able to complete the actual fast. If you don’t know what a fast is, it is where you basically do not eat but consume liquids, like water and freshly-squeezed fruit juices. They can last 24-hours or as long as 10 days.

The pre-fast had me eating fruits and vegetables one day, fruit smoothies and veggie soups the next, and then just fruit juices and veggie broth. By the time I reached the actual fast day where all I was supposed to do was drink water, I was able to do it.

That is why I recommend my Pre-Abs Diet for Women. It starts with eating awareness.

• Definition of Eating Awareness: As I mentioned in the first post, I became aware, or attracted to, the effort of splitting my 3 meals a day into 6. I also stopped and sized-up food before I just ate it, using my own personal values and present motivation to make a decision about whether or not I really wanted to eat it.

It’s not the plan, but it is something. I want to change eating habits for life, not go on some wonk diet or personality change. As a society, we’re always waiting for that right moment to do something, when all the stars are aligned and the weather is perfect and house is clean and the holidays have passed. Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.

Ask yourself, What can I be aware of today and be interested enough to engage an eating change? I’d love to hear about your progress.

Did you know that August is one of my slowest months for swim lessons? Sounds hard to believe since it is still summer. But it is slow because many families are on last-minute vacations, dealing with the transition of starting school, and are generally burned out. Such are the secrets you need to keep in mind when creating consistency and results for your SquidKid.

• Know thy busy seasons. June and July are my busiest months. If parents want lessons in these months, you have to start calling swim programs in February or the second you see ads.
• Find instructors or pool programs that offer a consistent schedule for long-term planning. I cannot expect to be booked by families if I don’t offer a schedule that can be counted on. My entire yearly schedule can be viewed here.
• When kids are off from school, instructors should be off too. Families go on ski trips during Ski Week, a Hawaiian Break during Spring Break, and Grandma’s at Christmas.
• Don’t plan any lessons 2-3 days before or after any holiday or major event. There is nothing like beating the crowd when going somewhere during busy holiday weekends, as well as not having to rush home. Even just having an extra day to prepare for a party without cramming in a lesson is nice. Yes, I feel the same way, which is why I plan days off around holidays. Kids don’t much like to show up to swimming on Halloween either, when they’d rather be wearing a costume with face paint.
• Book as much as you can so as to keep on schedule. Planning removes doubt — if you know when the kids are out or when you have vacations, you should be able to see where you are in the long-term scale of things.
• Know the cancellation policies of the program. Kids get sick, as do instructors. Is is a 24 or 48-hour notice in case of cancellation? How do they reschedule? Is there an extra fee for doing so?
• Plan a break from swimming. Every family needs one. Take a month off.
• If you want a refreshed instructor at the top of their teaching game, find one in the Fall. This is when I have fully recovered from the summer and my load is very small.
• The more “together” a swim program or person is, the more you have to keep planning ahead. I used to get booked for summer by April. I get requests and calls in January now for summer lessons. Stay on your instructor or swim connections.

The headline is my preface for taking on any new exercise regime or eating plan. If you are anything like me — or if I am anything like you — if I am going to modify my eating and exercise plan or change these habits, it needs to feel easy, it needs to not take up my time, and it needs to net results rather quickly. Hence why I picked up David Zinczenko’s The Abs Diet for Women. He claims that the plan is easy to follow because:

• Every part of the eating and exercise plan is quick, simple and flexible
• Every goal is attainable
• Every claim is supported by scientific research

I’m not a diet kind of a person AT ALL. But I am healthy kind of a person and I am also reasonable. The author Zinczenko, who was chubby as a kid and now at the top of his game as an editor at Men’s Health, promises to take into account a female’s lifestyle as well as her hormones, including prenatal to post-menopausal women.

Nutrition is a major focus on the Abs Diet. It works around 12 Power Foods high in fiber and protein that will help build muscle, which speeds up the fat-burning process. It focuses on eating 6 meals a day. The food idea goes like this:

ABS DIET POWER Eating List

A = Almonds and other nuts (not sugared nuts!)

B = Beans and legumes (not refried beans — they have too much bad fat)

S = Spinach and other greens

D = Dairy (fat-free or low-fat stuff — and watch for the high-fructose corn syrup in flavored dairy!)

I = Instant oatmeal (unsweetened, so don’t buy the flavored stuff)

E = Eggs

T = Turkey and other lean meats (yes, you can east steak still and ground beef; just choose lean)

P = Peanut butter (not Jiffy or Skippy, which is filled with sugar and stuff)

O = Olive oil

W = Whole grain bread and cerels (no white bread or packages that just say ‘wheat’ — must say whole wheat)

E = Extra protein, which is whey and can be found at the health food store

R = Raspberries and other berries (sprinkle on oatmeal to bring back the flavor of lost additives!)

If you look closely, the food plan isn’t limiting you on weird foods you’ll get sick of. Actually, the focus is more geared to get rid of fake foods. And the list is a lot more extensive than what you see above. If you want a bigger eating list, go here. Ketchup and mayonnaise are included.

The book is somewhat dense, so if you’re not into reading it yourself, I’m going to gleam the most important information from The Abs Diet for Women and post entires here on Squidkid. Apparently is it a super-popular book and has been on The New York Times Best-Seller List; I just know that Men’s Health (along with Women’s Health) are very credited health magazines and thus credited editors, so I trusted the author when I picked a copy up.

So, have I been following the Abs Diet Power? I’ve been eating six smaller meals, and that’s going fine, although I feel kind of hungry more. On Sunday at a dinner, party, I skipped dessert. They were cupcakes. I lOVE cupcakes. But I passed only because I stopped to consider if it was totally worth it for me to have a lot of high-fructose corn syrup. In the past, I’d just shove one in without thinking twice. My real weakness is cheese and I haven’t been able to stop eating that. I just don’t want to say no to stinky, good cheese. Oh, and stopped with the coffee thing and I’m drinking green tea — the author says green tea, water and milk are the best things to drink.

I’m a naturally svelte person, so if you know me, you’re probably wondering why I’m bothering to do this. Because I care about my health! Because there is always room for improvement! And because I represent exercise, I need to live the part inside and out.