The Two Most Important Swimming Aids

When it comes to learning how to swim, using floats and other swimming aids is essential for both adults and children alike. The team at Sharks Swim & Triathlon, who also run Sharks Swim School in Swansea, have launched their own brand of quality, affordable floats and aids to encourage those learning to swim to invest in these products for the best and quickest results.

Says Leah Morgan, owner of Sharks Swim & Triathlon and coach at the Swim School, “We believe that using floats and aids plays an important role in teaching babies, children and adults to swim. At our swim school, all our babies and children learn through repetitive teaching and we use a selection of different buoyancy aids to encourage independent floatation during the lessons. “

Here are their top two swimming aids which they introduced to their range this summer.

Kickboards

Kickboards: These are effective and lightweight and fantastic for improving balance and body position in the water. Using kickboards can improve leg strength, kick technique and core strength. If you are an experienced swimmer, kickboards can enhance your workout. Athletes of all ages reap benefits by using kickboards to isolate leg movements, remain streamlined and take a breather during a lengthy workout.

Kickboards give confidence to new swimmers, both young and older. Swim instructors often use kickboards as a flotation device to provide buoyancy for their students and to improve the streamline and isolate desired movements, such as front crawl kick. Because swimmers keep their heads above water with a kickboard, instructors can communicate easily with students while swimming alongside. For nervous swimmers, kickboards boost confidence by keeping the swimmer afloat while they exercise by doing laps or treading water.

Pull Buoys

Pull buoys are useful mainly because they reduce the amount of large, sweeping kicks that swimmers usually make, encouraging faster development of upper body strength. They also help to focus the mind on arm motion and breathing. 

Pull buoys are particularly useful in training situations. Because you're omitting half of your stroke (the kick), a buoy frees you to really concentrate on mastering your arm-stroke technique.

Buoys are also beneficial as they eliminate kicking. Kicking is hard work that leaves even experienced swimmers tired. Minus the kicking, your breathing will be more relaxed, letting you work on disciplined breathing.

At Sharks Swim School, the instructors also use pull buoys to help with breast stroke training.  By balancing a pull buoy to the head, helps swimmers learning and improving breast stroke to keep their head still (and it’s a bit of fun for the children too).

Sharks Swim & Triathlon

Sharks Swim  & Triathlon offer a complete range of swimming aids in addition to their own brand including major makes including Maru and Finis.

To see the full range, call into the shop in Sketty Cross or shop online at www.sharksswimpshop.com