🐬FUN FACT FRIDAY- FLIPPERS EDITION! 🐬

Did you know at H2O, we start using flippers with our Mini students, aged 3-4 years, all the way up to adults?!

While flippers are fun for students, there is also a multitude of benefits to using flippers as a teaching aide while learning to swim. Wearing flippers helps create a horizontal body position, especially for our younger students who are starting to learn proper kicking techniques or to help students whose legs are prone to sinking. Flippers also help to increase ankle strength and flexibility, which helps to correct a child’s stiff feet that can sometimes drag in the water, making it feel like they’re going backward.

But will my child be discouraged once their flippers are taken off? Nope! When the flippers are taken off, the student engages in neuromuscular pattering, where the muscle and nerves in the body remember the feeling of swimming with proper technique. The body then works to replicate that same motion the next time the child swims, with or without flippers. Using a combination of flippers and no flippers during class, students learn proper body position and kicking technique since the more this pattern is used, the stronger it becomes!

The next time your child is excitedly wearing their flippers and swimming speedily with a big smile, know that it’s fun for the students but also helping to build proper technique right from the start. Now that’s something we can happily flip out over!