Here’s more video about last year’s Make a Splash initiative. Have you gotten involved with this great program yet? Here’s some info on the local partner program. Do what you can to bring that drowning rate down this summer. And be sure to get in the pool yourself a couple times. Happy Summer!

Cullen Jones continues his Make a Splash tour. The tour just stopped in Chicago on June 22.
Upcoming Stops:
Washington, DC – July 13
Los Angeles, CA – August 2
Oakland, CA – October 15
New York City – November 19

Here’s a video from last year’s Make a Splash tour.

My daughter has been lifeguarding rather than teaching lately. I have been swimming during part of her shift lately, but yesterday I just dropped her off and picked her up. When I arrived to pick her up, I pointed out the lifeguard to my 6 year old son. We noticed that she was a different girl. I was looking around trying to find my daughter when my son said, “There she is!” And sure enough, my daughter was in the water, teaching a lesson.

She was excited, because lifeguarding makes her want to get in the water so bad she can taste it. Also, she got to teach a couple private lessons, which pay much better than group lessons.

She shared with me the challenges of one of her students. He was a young boy, 6 or so, who would eagerly copy everything my daughter showed him to do. The problem was when he would immediately start trying to float on his back while she was still telling him what to do. My daughter learned not to directly model what to do, but to tell him everything they would do before sending him on his way to practice the new skill.

Her student was eager to swim a length of the pool, but my daughter wasn’t sure he was ready. She broke the length of the pool up into digestible chunks, and before they knew it, she and her student had made it all the way to the deep end. He asked her how deep the water was. “Nine feet,” she told him. “Hey, Dad!” her student yelled, “Can you stand up in nine feet?”

Our neighbors across the street have an above ground pool. They invite our little kids over nearly everyday to play in it. That includes our 6 year old, who can’t swim, and even the 2 year old. I have resisted letting the 2 year old go to play until the other day. I went over to supervise her pool time, fearful that the water would be over her head.

I needn’t have worried. The water came up to her chest at best, and my toddler happily splashed and played with her water wings on her arms and cube on her back.

The 6 year old played with noodles and kickboards, etc. Periodically, the neighbor kids would throw all the toys out of the pool. The baby started leaving the pool at that point to bring the toys back.

Which brings me to my question. Are above ground pools really for swimming, or are they glorified wading pools?

I remember being a non-swimming child. I was so excited when someone invited me to play in their above-ground pool. The water was shallow, so there was no anxiety about accidentally wading out into the deep end. There is no deep end in these pools.

As a swimmer, I understand that deep water is part of the whole deal with a pool. It’s easier to swim without worrying about stubbing your toe on the bottom of the pool.

So can anyone actually learn to swim in an above-ground pool? Or should we rename them wading pools?

I squeezed in another swim session during my daughter’s lifeguard shift yesterday.

The pool was crowded, so there were three of us crammed into a single lane for lap swimming. I haven’t shared lanes in a while, and I self-consciously hugged the lane lines most of the time.

I was tired, but motivated to swim better in the shared lane. This meant that I swam 900 yards total–no elementary backstroke at all. That is quite a feat for me. My daughter still tells me that my freestyle breathing is wrong. She says I move my body too much. I must have created that tick by the constant breathing drills I do.

It was good training for Masters swimming, I’m sure. I never see those folks swim 1 per lane.

From USASwimming.org: The USA Swimming Diversity Select Camp recently took place at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. Thirty-three swimmers from ethnically diverse backgrounds spent three days in a world-class training environment. In this video, Olympic gold medalist Anthony Nesty, now a coach at the University of Florida, explains a freestyle streamlining drill.