Choosing Your Swimming Lessons

Whatever your swimming goals are, the key factors to consider when choosing swimming lessons are as follows:

• The type of swimming lessons to take
• Choosing a swimming instructor
• Finding a place to swim
• Choosing the best type of swimming pool

With all of these variables to consider, you could believe it’s impossible to find the perfect combination, but it’s not. Think about it carefully, do your research and you will find the right mix to ensure that your swimming goes from strength to strength.

What to consider when choosing swimming tuition

Whatever your goals, you should get lessons from a qualified swimming instructor. The question is, should you get one-to-one instruction or go for group sessions? There are obvious benefits from individual tuition but that also has to be offset against the cost.

Swimming solo

This simply means learning at your own pace, having the full attention of the swimming instructor and not being distracted, intimidated or held back by others. However, it also means paying a lot more for the experience. The benefits with one-on-one instruction is that you’ll probably progress quicker and be a lot more focused in your sessions where the coach has their keen eye on your every move.

The benefits with one-on-one instruction is that you’ll probably progress quicker and be a lot more focused in your sessions...

Group swimming sessions

These can be fine if you have an instructor who knows how to work well with a swim group and gives everyone the same level of attention. However, if there are one or two swimmers in the group who need more support then this could prove difficult and effectively hold the rest of the group back.

You need to decide how much you want to spend and how much having others around bothers you before making a decision on swimming tuition. If you decide on the group option, make sure there aren’t more than around six in the group, or it could become unmanageable.

Choosing a swimming instructor

There are as many approaches to tuition as there are swimming instructors. Some are better with swimming beginners than others, whilst some work better with intermediate and advanced swimmers. If you are a total beginner, especially if you have a genuine fear of water, then you need to chat to a potential instructor beforehand and ascertain their experience of dealing with your concerns.

Similarly, if you are at a higher level and need pointers about technique, ask whether they have experience in that area. Check out their qualifications and find out if they use a particular technique.

There are plenty of different techniques out there and you need to make sure that what will be taught and how you will be taught suits you. You can normally tell just by talking to someone whether you are going to get on with them, and if you are in this for the long term this is a very important consideration.