Swimming is an amazing sport that can help your swimmers gain some invaluable life skills. Here are some life lessons you don’t want to forget to teach during your summer swim league!

Team Work Makes the Dream Work

Swimming is both an individual and team sport. So even when swimming in their own lane, swimmers have to know how to work hard on their own to benefit their team.

For younger swimmers, it’s important to impart this sense of being a part of a team early so it can benefit them and their future team later on. They need to learn that it’s not just about them out there in the pool, but their whole team. When they swim in meets, they’re working for something greater than themselves.

Confidence is Key

Swimming is a wonderful confidence booster! This is an important skill set for anyone to have and will have a positive effect on your swimmers’ physical and mental health.

Achieving the goals your swimmers’ have work towards hard to accomplish will have an effect on their self-confidence and self-esteem. Learning to swim with peers, who congratulate them on their efforts and help teach and encourage, will also help build confidence. Using positive reinforcement in your swim lessons will help build up that confidence in your swimmers and aid them in learning how to recognize their own achievements. Being confident in their own abilities will own serve them positively in and out of the pool.

Be a Goal-Setter

When coaching your summer swim league, don’t forget to teach your swimmers to be goal-setters. Teaching to set goals is an important feature of self-discipline. Because it’s not just about setting a goal, but it’s also about putting together a suitable framework to succeed in them and accomplish them. You have to work hard to achieve your goals as a swimmer. And if they put in the time and effort, they’ll be able to reap the rewards of their hard work.

Work Hard…

Speaking of hard work…

As coaches, we know there are no easy shortcuts to success in the pool, or in life. To reach goals, hard work and dedication are critical. Swimming teaches that training hard and working on technique are key to being great. So teaching swimmers to be dedicated and to push themselves will get them far in the pool and in life in general.

But learning to swim can be hard, and it can be easy for swimmers, especially younger ones, to feel like they fail and want to give up. It’s important to help your swimmers process their feelings and teach them swimming can be challenging, but challenges help you grow and get better.

…Play Hard

While there may be no shortcuts to success in the pool or in life, there are plenty of opportunities to have fun in both. A wonderful life lesson to teach is that while we spend time working hard, we should also spend time playing hard!

Life should be enjoyed, and we should all aim to have fun and be happy in our everyday routines. Enjoying life and seeking out the tools to make the most of it is the most important goal we can set for ourselves. So, while working on technique and running drills is necessary, spending time playing sharks and minnows, Marco Polo, or fishy in the middle is just as important.

Helping You Provide a Safer, Fun Environment

These are just a few of the many life lessons you’ll teach through your summer swim league. It can be exciting and intimidating to be responsible for imparting such important life skills onto your swimmers. If you’re feeling more uneasy than pumped, then you may want to take our swim coach certification course! It will provide you with the tools to learn and grow in your craft and help you coach with confidence.

Let Summer League Swimming help you become equipped with the tools needed to positively impact your swimmers. No matter where you are in the United States, let us help you reach your full potential!