Swimming Fit Friday: The Meaning of Health
On this week’s Swimming Fit Friday, we’re going to talk about something a little different from my typical fit tips. This Swimming Fit Friday, I want to talk about common misconceptions of health and fitness, and how those play out.
To start this conversation we’re going to look at a general societal idea around body image. The idea of what a “healthy” body looks like has changed over the years. Prior to the industrial era, the wealthy elites of the era could afford an abundance of food, and could also afford to do little physical labor. As a result a more heavy-set body type was the ideal and thus health was attributed to this body type. As society has changed this same body type has been re-attributed to being unhealthy. As society continues to change the ideal model of health has turned in a lean, fit physique.
I recall a conversation with a friend of mine in the field in regards to being taken seriously. We had come to the conclusion that you needed to look like society’s idea of health. We as the experts needed to look toned and muscular. Otherwise, our clients and a wider audience would be less receptive of our information regarding health. This comes with consequences, as it sets the foundation for fat shaming for devaluing individuals due to presumptions around health that are in all honesty far from accurate.
The concept of an ideal body type is incredibly detrimental to the health of society as a whole. It is the misplacement of what we as a society value, we prioritize fitness and thinness over health. There seems to be no room for fat in our idealized vision of health, and it is this exclusion of fat that has created an obsession with food and weight and self worth. It is this exclusion and rejection that creates illness like anorexia, bulimia, and compulsive exercise disorder. When we prioritize fitness and thinness over health, we continue to perpetuate fat shaming that deteriorate the quality of life for those who do not fit into the mold.
For those who come back every week, or for those of you who stumble to this page by chance I would like you to take away that health is much more than weight. Weight is not the singular indicator of whether or not someone is healthy. Health is more complicated then weight, health is more complicated than body size, and health is something that is influenced by a multitude of factors.
Health is about improving our life condition through our environment, the quality of air and water, and the food we have. Health includes what our work life provides and if it allows us to have the basics, food, and shelter. Our interpersonal relationships with others influence health. We humans are social creatures and interaction is a fundamental need. Health is also comprised of our mental wellbeing and the resources we use to help maintain it. Is self-care something we have time for? Or does our quality of life deny us the opportunity to properly take care of ourselves? In regards to health, exercise should not be a punishment for eating a donut, or for eating at all. It should be a celebration of movement for the sake of movement! Our enjoyment of exercise should be a form of self-care, not weight loss. Every body is different and my center of health may look vastly different to yours. We should exercise for the enjoyment and what that activity does for you, the individual on a basic level.
It is important to know that you the individual do not owe society anything. I may have mentioned this before, but you do not owe society health, thinness, or fitness. You just need to be you. A person is valuable because they are a person.
If you’ve stuck with me till the end of this post, thank you! You have value, you are human and I hope you enjoy exercise because it makes you feel good.
That’s all for this weeks’ Swimming Fit Friday!
Learn more about our Health and Wellness programs here: https://www.aquafunacademy.ca/health-fitness/.
Swimming Tip Tuesday: Breaking Rules
Our Aqua Speed front crawl Advanced #TipTuesday of the week: To isolate and improve calf and core strength, it is okay to kick from the knees instead of the hips.
On this week’s Swimming Tip Tuesday, we’re going to discuss building muscle in the lower leg, by doing a highly unorthodox front crawl drill. This drill will allow the swimmer to make improvements in not only front crawl, but also butterfly!
To do this, we’re going to break a couple rules. When we first learn to swim, one of the key rules is to kick from the hips, rather than the knees, trying to bend at the knee as little as possible. This golden rule of flutter kick is told to us over and over again. Today, our advice is to kick from your knees. Instructors like myself will cringe when reading this but hear me out. The improvements we’re going to make by introducing this drill will be spectacular!
a pool buoy or pull float.
When swimming, we generate a significant amount of power and forward propulsion from the legs, generally the thighs, as we spend most of our swim time kicking from the hips. To improve our overall leg strength, and to improve strokes like butterfly (where our dolphin kick happens at both the hips and knees), you’ll need a pull float or a pool buoy. See the image to the right.
The swimmer should place the pull float between the thighs, squeezing them together. The swimmer should then practice their front crawl with a kick from the knees. When performing this, the swimmer will move slower, as we are using some of the smaller and less developed muscles in our lower leg. The swimmer will also be using core strength to maintain a horizontal body position and activate the abductors (the muscles that pull the legs towards the centre of the body). Most importantly the swimmer will begin to improve leg strength in the calves. The swimmer should do this drill at a minimum of 2 times in a general practice to improve calf strength.
Some rules are meant to be broken. Remember when you switch back to doing your unassisted front crawl, you should return to kicking from the hips. As we’ve discussed before, kicking from the knees without the pool buoy will disrupt the flow of water, increasing drag acting on the swimmer, who will then slow down and sink.
Want to learn more? Sign up on our website for personalized training with one of our instructors!
See you again right here for another Swimming Tip Tuesday!
Swimming Tip Tuesday: Increasing Arm Power
Our Aqua Speed front crawl #TipTuesday of the week: As the swimmer enters the pull phase they increase the surface area of the hand by pushing with a flat hand.
On this week’s Swimming Tip Tuesday we’re going to talk about front crawl and increasing our speed by focusing on the power we generate in our arms.
For those of you who have progressed to bent arm front crawl, congratulations for joining the intermediate group of swimmers! Now to improve upon this achievement we want to build power. Raw power will allow us as swimmers to improve our speed. For those of us who gotta go fast, it is improvements in our technique, muscular endurance and muscular strength that get us there.
A common beginner mistake when trying to improve one’s speed during front crawl is moving the arms out of the water has fast as physically possible. This often results in flat-handed recovery and flat-handed entry into the water. Increasing the surface area of our hand during entry and recovery phases will slow down the swimmer as a result of the increased resistance acting upon the arms, which we spoke about in a previous Swimming Tip Tuesday.
This swimmer is using medium power paddles.
To get faster, swimmers can make use of power paddles. As the swimmer enters the pull phase, they increase the surface area of the hand by pushing with a flat hand. This allows the swimmer to find the catch and propel the body forward. What the power paddles do is they further increase the overall surface area of the hand during the pull phase of the stroke. With power paddles the swimmer can increase the level of resistance acting on the arm as they pull through the water. In doing so, the swimmer will build muscular strength and muscular endurance.
There are three levels of resistance for power paddles. Swimmers using the power paddles for the first time should use small power paddles. Keep in mind however, a more seasoned swimmer may start with medium power paddles. More advanced swimmers, such as AFA instructors, competitive swimmers, and lifeguards may opt to use the large power paddles.
The use of power paddles can help balance muscular strength, which prevents swimming on a diagonal angle. Power paddles are also a key tool in stroke correction, as the shape of the power paddles will prompt the swimmer to enter and exit the water with the hands horizontal. This will reducing the surface area of the hand and the effect of drag.
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See you again right here for another Swimming Tip Tuesday!
Swimming Tip Tuesday: Alternating Propulsion
Our Swimming Tip Tuesday of the week: Alternate your propulsion between your arms and your legs.
There is always something propelling you through the water. The arms will be propulsive while the legs recover and the legs propel while the hands recover.
When performing breaststroke, there is always a slight pause between the arm motions and the leg motions. The more advanced you become at breaststroke, the smaller the pause becomes, however that pause is always there.
The pulling motion should remain within your body, as you pull your arms in while you breathe. This motion should look like clockwork, quite literally. Like the hands on a clock, your arms will begin at the 12, which will then pull towards the 9 and the 3, down to the 6, and finally shooting themselves back towards the 12.
However, you must remember that these hands need to remain within your body, pulling too wide will lead to lost momentum, slowing us down and tiring us. As we pull our arms back, we swiftly pull our heads out to take a breath, and as we are returning our arms back to the 12 position, we lower our heads again back into the water. This leads us to our kicking portion.
Moments within getting our arms back to the 12 position and getting our heads into water, we will be whipping our legs around with a lot of power, pushing ourselves forward.
The whip must remain within the water, as often we tend to raise our knees up, which allow a splash to occur. Just like the arms, if our feet whip outside of the water, we will lose our momentum and tire ourselves down. A good tip is to lower the knees instead, allowing ourselves to get the full motion while keeping ourselves in the water.
As well, remember to put the power on the actual whip component, instead of putting the power into dropping the knees into position as this is a common error. Finally, remember to give yourself a second or two to glide, giving yourself the maximum amount of time to push forward before you begin to slow down and need to whip again.
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Swimming Tip Tuesday: Backstroke Finger
Our Aqua Speed back crawl #TipTuesday of the week: Lead with your thumb as your arm comes out of the water.
On this week’s Swimming Tip Tuesday we’re going to discuss back crawl! Our focus is going to be on the positioning of our hands as they exit the water. A common beginner mistake is to have the hands lay flat as they exit and enter the water. Due to the resistance upon exiting the water, and impact when entering the water, keeping the hands flat (horizontal) can cause the swimmer pain. As well as create drag, which slows the swimmer down.
To eliminate the pain and increase our speed it is important to monitor and maintain how our hand exits and enters the water. The swimmer wants to lead with your thumb as your arm comes out of the water. The arm should be lifted out by the movement of the shoulders – not the other way round. By keeping the thumb up and pointed towards the ceiling we reduce the amount of water resistance upon exiting the water during our backward rotation of the arms.
Now as you may know, the shoulder can only rotate the arm backwards to a certain point with the thumb pointed towards the ceiling. As we re-enter the water the swimmer will face the palms outwards away from the body and let the pinky finger enter. Again, by doing this the swimmer minimizes resistance and drag by making the entry surface of the water smaller.
When we enter the water with a flat hand, the surface area the swimmer must push through is larger. Therefore the swimmer will need to work much harder against the force of the water. Swimming is all about efficiency and effective movement for our desired outcome. Which in the case of back crawl is to move quickly while maintaining our body position on our back. As you progress through the levels mastery of this stroke can take you to many competitions. Those who are the very best at this skill can compete for national and even olympic standing!
Want to learn more? Sign up on our website for personalized training with one of our instructors!
See you again right here for another Swimming Tip Tuesday!
Swimming Tip Tuesday: Goggles
On this week’s Swimming Tip Tuesday we’re going to talk about swim equipment, specifically goggles!
It is important to be comfortable without them. However, as we progress goggles are a great piece of swim equipment to help enhance our swimming. How do goggles enhance our swimming? Firstly it will allow the swimmer to see clearly underwater. This is important for many different skills: from “bobs,” also known as submersion in our preschool levels, to surface dives and rescue drills in our swimmer and bronze levels.
It is also helpful during strokes performed on your front (or stomach). From breaststroke to butterfly, all strokes require the swimmer to swim in a straight line. Being able to focus our sight under the water at the wall ahead will allow the swimmer to travel forward without deviating into a wall or lane rope.
When choosing this piece of swim equipment you want to ensure that there is good suction around the eyes without the use of the strap. Press the goggles to the eyes and hold for about 5 seconds then release your hands. If the goggles are still stuck and suctioned around your eyes these are the pair for you.
Another thing to keep in mind when selecting a pair of goggles is the swimmer’s face shape. Everyone has a different face shape, some of us have bigger eyes than others, or our eyes are closer or further apart. Some of us need the lip of the goggle to sit differently over top the cheekbones. You want to pick the right goggle shape for your face. It is easy to pick up the pair everyone already owns. However that style might not be the best choice for the swimmer. Always try them on and get what works for your face shape. A great brand I like is called Aqua Sphere, as they have a variety of shapes, they suction well, and they are a bit softer around the eyes. For those of you who like to yank the straps very snug around your heads, these are kinder to your face.
Another helpful Swimming Tip Tuesday tip for you swimmers who wear glasses, prescription goggles exist! They are typically a negative prescription, and are the same prescription for both sides of the goggle. An example would be -5.00 or -3.50, they increase or decrease by half.
Well that’s it for this week’s Swimming Tip Tuesday! For more tips and tricks for success join us next week, or register and train with one of our brilliant swim coaches!
Happy Swimming!
Swimming Tip Tuesday: Backstroke Body Positioning
On this week’s Swimming Tip Tuesday we’re going to discuss backstroke and a unique aspect of our body positioning. Often you will hear your instructors refer to the streamline position. What 
this entails is that the body moves through the water with the least resistance. From the tip of the hands to the tip of the toes, the swimmer’s body lays flat as it glides across the water. Now, contrary to our understanding of the streamline body position, laying flat on the water does not require one to be perfectly horizontal to the water. As a matter of fact many strokes will cause the body to slope slightly.
When performing any stroke, the goal is to minimize drag. To do this the swimmer should avoid dramatic bending at the hips, neck, and knees. When we bend at the joint we create pockets for the water to get trapped in and push the body down. This ultimately slows the swimmer down.
When performing backstroke slight bending is necessary, due to the nature of the stroke. During backstroke the body will slope slightly from the hips to the toes. You’ll notice that this causes the head and arms to be slightly higher in the water than the legs and toes. By slightly sloping the body, and the slight difference in height between the hands, head and toes, the swimmer breaks streamline position less dramatically as they swing the arms to generate power.
Furthermore, with the hips slightly sloped down, we can now capitalize on the flutter kick. The legs will remain underneath the surface of the water, as to not break our streamline position and reduce the effects of drag.
By making this adjustment with our body position the swimmer can increase the speed and precision of the stroke.
Want to learn more? Sign up on our website with one of our brilliant swim instructors! We’ll see you next Swimming Tip Tuesday for another fun tip on how to perfect those strokes! Happy Swimming!
Tutor Thursday: Paraphrasing and Math
On this week’s Tutor Thursday we’re going to discuss math, specifically word problems. As many of you know, math can be a weak point for students. Word problems can be especially tricky. Not only does the student have to read and understand what the paragraph says, but also find out what information is going to be useful to help solve this problem. In the following article, our Academic Director Sofia demonstrates how she uses the power of paraphrasing to help our students with word problems!
Using Paraphrasing as a Tool to Solve Word Problems
Another mathematical discourse tool that I used in order to help the grade six students solve word problems was the paraphrasing activity that was described by 
Cathy Marks Krpan in a graduate course at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). Paraphrasing constitutes students explaining mathematical problems in their own words and without the use of quantities. Word-problem-paraphrasing allows students to focus on understanding the context first rather than trying to extract numbers from the question and aimlessly come up with a solution. To model the paraphrasing process I used question #10 from the students’ booklet:
A store has 11.2 kg of potatoes. Maria buys 572 g of potatoes from the store and Colin buys 1.42 kg of potatoes from the store. After these two purchases, how many grams of potatoes does the store have left? Show your work.
A student volunteered to model the process and paraphrased it as follows:
A store has potatoes. Maria and Colin come buy some. How many potatoes are left at the store?
This paraphrasing activity makes word problems look simple and easy to comprehend. Furthermore, paraphrasing can provide an opportunity to link students’ use of everyday language and mathematical terms. According to Kotsopoulos, for a lot of students the language that is used in mathematics is “like hearing a foreign language” (2007, p. 301). Findings showed that students were unable to understand mathematical terms due to teachers primarily speaking in the mathematical register, even when introducing new concepts (Kotsopoulos, 2007). Thus, these findings illustrate the importance of using paraphrasing activities in a mathematics classroom in order for all students to have access to comprehensible mathematical language, which allows them to move forward in their learning.
We hope that was helpful and we’ll be back to break down more with you on our next Tutor Thursday!
Swimming Fit Friday: Expanding Routines
Hello Everyone! On this week’s Swimming Fit Friday we’re going to continue our conversation around forming habits and also talk about expanding our exercise routine.
The KISS principle, also known as “Keep it simple, silly!” is our key component to making this work! It is easy to get discouraged when we add too much onto our plate. Though we have good intentions, our ability to stay committed can wain when we simply have too much. My dear readers, our magic number is 3!
I want you to pick 3 simple exercises! I assume some of you are showing skeptical faces, hold on I know what you’re thinking! What is a simple exercise,
Maintaining form is crucial.
walking, squats, bicep curls? A simple exercise is one you can do by yourself, and that you can perform with proper form. I highlight that it should be an exercise that you can perform with proper form, because most injuries come about from doing various moves wrong. Injuries are not welcome on our exercise expansion journey!
Have you picked your 3 exercises? EXCELLENT! Now that you’ve chosen your 3 exercises we’re going to factor in that we want to keep our intensity low to start off. If you remember when we were working towards forming the habit last time, we want to increase the intensity in increments. This is to help us maintain the challenge and keep us away from burn out.
Let’s look at different forms of measuring intensity for different activities and exercises:
- Walking or dancing – we can gauge that through the length of a song, or the pace at which we choose to move at.
- Lifting weights – can be measured in reps, or through the duration of a song like “Flower by: Moby.”
The idea is not to take on more than we can chew. Keep it super simple, and really easy. As we get into our groove, we can make adjustments and expand our repertoire of exercises as we go. Making use of our calendar method, mark off when you complete your routine for a week, making note of your intensity. Remember to change up the intensity to keep your routine effective!
Hope that helps give you a strong foundation to beginning the expansion of your exercise routine. Until our next Swimming Fit Friday!
Swimming Tip Tuesday: Breathing
On this week’s Swimming Tip Tuesday we’re going to be discussing the important of where to breathe when performing front crawl!
Now I know some of you are thinking, breathing, bah! How hard could this possibly be! However, fine tuning our strokes is not about making a skill more
The bow wave forming in front of a moving yacht. Swimmers form a similar bow wave during front crawl.
difficult. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. We change the way we do things to make the overall stroke easier on the swimmer. Working against the water is difficult, and in order to make it across the pool with ease, instructors like myself break down strokes so they can be mastered and performed well.
What many swimmers do, both new and experienced alike is that we create something called a bow wave. What on earth is a bow wave? A bow wave is the wave that forms at the bow of a ship when it moves through the water. As the bow wave spreads out, it defines the outer limits of a ship’s wake. Well, just like a ship’s bow wave, a bow wave is the shape the swimmer makes as they point the elbow up and as they reach forward during front crawl (check out the image below)!
As we create this shape, the swimmer does not need to lift the head or focus on dropping the shoulder. The creation of the shape includes the action of a slight shoulder roll and head tilt. This is important because it provides the swimmer with the perfect window to breathe. That window is the trough.
The bottom of your bow wave is the trough. Breathe into the trough for maximum efficiency.
A common mistake occurs when we are blissfully unaware of the bow wave. The swimmer trying to find a window to breathe will lift their head causing them to sink and put extra effort into returning back to the surface. This head lift as instead of tilt also causes the swimmer to over-rotate head and shoulder.
Both actions push the swimmer down into the water, making it harder to breathe, and harder to scale the length of the pool. Remembering to breathe into the trough (shape), will allow the swimmer to smoothly transition from exhaling to inhaling as they complete the stroke from one of the pool to the other.
Want to learn more? Sign up on our website for personalized training with one of our instructors. Hope to see you at Aqua Fun Academy, until stay tuned for our next Swimming Tip Tuesday!
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