Ever take on a project or try to learn a new skill, then somewhere along the way, feel like you are not making any headway? Well, that is what happens when you don’t have goals or a guide to show you the way – and this is especially true when it comes to swimming. Living out your Michael Phelps dream to either improve your swimming or learn from scratch is as easy as looking up swimming lessons near me and setting some goals with your tutor; let’s dive into this topic, shall we?
Why Set Swimming Goals?
Envision getting into a car without a destination in mind and driving endlessly. This might get you into an accident, waste your time, and most likely end with you stranded by the side of the road with no gas. Starting anything without goals in life is a fool's errand. When it comes to swimming, goals help you establish what you want to get out of your swimming lessons, how long it will take to get there, and what you will need to achieve certain goals.
Types of Goals to Set
Your goals can be as simple as learning a new stroke or as ambitious as gearing up for a triathlon. Once you sign on with a swimming tutor, set some short-term (improve your freestyle) and long-term (swim a mile without stopping) goals. Short-term goals give you something to work for every session; long-term goals make all that hard work feel like it’s going somewhere!
The Role of a Swimming Tutor
Your swim tutor is more than your teacher — they are your coach, your instructor, and your biggest fan. Your swim tutor will evaluate your skills, talk to you about your goals, and create a training plan specifically for your objectives. If your objective involves refining your fly stroke work, they can take you through that challenging stroke step-by-step, making this challenging technique much easier.
Your tutor will also monitor your success. They can clock your times, watch your technique, and provide tips on how to be better. It’s challenging to monitor our improvement sometimes when we are buried in training, but improvement — even slow improvement — is still there. And slow improvement is one of the best statements of motivation out there!
Tracking Progress with Your Swimming Tutor
The real secret to swimming is to keep an eye on your development and keep the fire burning inside. Swimming coaches can have a lot of tactics that they can use to check on your development.
They can keep freestyle tests in such intervals that check whether you are swimming faster and harder than before. Correcting the mistakes being made and identifying small things being ignored can be somehow very helpful. Also, guiding you through the process of how and where you have to work to improve more.
With the help of all the above modes, your swim instructor will help you to stay specific. The above modes of checking will help you to keep on improving and you will also be able to stay happy where you are. You can also make a separate plan for what else needs more improvement.
How to Choose the Right Swimming Tutor
The right swimming instructor can completely change your experience as a learner. Find a tutor who has experience teaching students of your level. If you are a beginner, you need a tutor who handles beginners as they are usually the hardest to teach. But if you are advanced, then you need a tutor with experience because it’s a different teaching process compared to beginners.
There are many websites like Superprof where you can find swim tutors, read students' reviews, and more. Also, try looking up swimming clubs and sites. Ask family or friends for recommendations.
Staying Motivated
Growth is the name of the swimming game. And with that in mind, you might find growth elusive if you don’t know where you are going. So plan your goals and celebrate your achievements when you reach these milestones. When feeling down, seek out these milestones again and reset your goals. For instance, if you are miles away from building your endurance, try to add in more laps of the pool for another week.
Try not to get repeating lessons. Ask if your tutor can help to vary your tasks, and try out as many drills as you can. You will be well on your way to becoming the swimming legend you have always wanted to be.
