Course Components
The course fee includes the ebook Coaching Swimming Successfully, Second Edition; access to the course outline; downloadable forms, checklists, and evaluations (provided as PDFs within the course); and an online test. You will have immediate access to the course upon purchase; nothing will be shipped to you.

Course Description
This course features sport-specific content based on the Coaching Swimming Successfully, Second Edition, text (delivered as an ebook), plus content gleaned from the Human Kinetics Coach Education course Coaching Principles.

Learning Objectives

• Explain approaches for generating support for the swimming program by your athletes, the school administration, other coaches, and parents.
• Explain the difference between technical and tactical skills.
• Explain the elements of the tactical triangle.
• Implement a coaching strategy that addresses different kinds of skills (technical and tactical, communication, character, mental, physical).
• Differentiate between the traditional and games approaches to swimming instruction.
• Recognize opportunities to shape, focus, and enhance skills through practice activities (games approach).
• List the criteria coaches should use in making preseason evaluations.
• Describe the basis for evaluation of swimmers.
• Explain how swimmers should be observed in practices and at meets.
• Identify the main reasons for keeping written practice records.
• Explain the purpose of formal and informal evaluation of your players’ performance.
• Use evaluation tools, including videotaping, to evaluate swimming skills.
• Employ consistent, positive, and effective feedback when critiquing your athletes.
• Identify the three factors that contribute to speed in swimming.
• Employ the minimum-number drill with your swimmers.
• Explain the purpose of teaching swimmers to scull and using sculling drills in practices.
• Explain why the acronym KISS is important in teaching.
• Teach your swimmers the streamlined torpedo position.
• Explain when the dolphin kick is used.
• Describe how swimmers should generate power when performing the dolphin kick.
• Identify drills used in teaching the dolphin kick.
• Teach your swimmers optimal hand and arm position for the stroke.
• Explain why trunk rotation is important and where in the body it should be initiated.
• Identify the four drills used in teaching proper kicking technique for the crawl.
• Describe how swimmers should breathe when performing the crawl.
• Identify the three Rs for success in the backstroke and the purpose of each.
• List the two kicks necessary for backstroke success.
• Identify the characteristics common to both the crawl and the backstroke.
• Explain why the breaststroke is unique among all the competitive strokes.
• Identify the main objective in teaching the breaststroke.
• Describe the technical characteristics of this stroke.
• List the steps for teaching the stroke in the proper sequence.
• List the five areas that coaches should focus on when teaching this stroke.
• Describe the distinguishing characteristics of the front-end butterfly stroke.
• Identify the most important practice goal for this stroke.
• Explain the four segments of the two-season yearly plan.
• Identify the foundation for and the most important objective of a season plan for swimmers.
• Understand the USA Swimming training categories and terminology for the training systems.
• List the equipment needed at swim practices.
• Identify strategies for long-course training when only a short-course pool is available.
• Describe how to assign swimmers to lanes in practices.
• Identify the training aids discussed in Coaching Swimming Successfully and explain their purpose.
• List two strategies for injecting fun into practices.
• Identify the three factors that would make a regular-season swim meet more important than normal for a coach to focus on.
• Explain the three Rs in peak preparation.
• List the eight factors that coaches should consider before deciding on the length of the peak preparation period.
• List the two statistics that should be recorded by the coach or student manager throughout a meet.
• Describe the method and purpose of a postrace cool-down.
• Explain how and why the timing of the post-meet team meeting varies.

Audience

The course is designed to help coaches learn how to teach the technical and tactical skills of swimming and is suitable for high school coaches, serious club coaches, college and university undergraduate students, and advanced coaches at the youth level.

• Teaching Sport Skills
• Evaluating Technical and Tactical Skills
• Coaching Stroke Technique
• Dolphin or Butterfly Kick
• Crawl Stroke
• Backstroke
• Breaststroke
• Butterfly
• Season Plans
• Practice Plans
• Before the Competition
• During and After the Competition
• Practicum Exercises

Established in 1981 and rooted in an athlete-centered philosophy that places the developmental needs of athletes ahead of winning at all costs, Human Kinetics Coach Education courses and resources are customized and widely used by youth sport organizations, state high school associations, school districts, state departments of education, colleges and universities, and national governing bodies of Olympic sports to teach, train, and certify coaches.