How to Teach the Butterfly Stroke to Young Children

Teaching a young swimmer the butterfly arms

If you would like a creative way to teach Butterfly to young children (ages 4 - 12), this article will share a few creative, and easy steps to teach the butterfly stroke.

Steps

1. Have your young student(s) lay on their stomach on the deck. Their arms should be at their sides, thumbs down, pinky side of the hand up.
2. Say to your students, "I want you to pretend you are a "caterpillar." We call this position (with their arms at their sides) the caterpillar position.
3. Say to your students, "Now I want you to slowly move your arms forward, keeping, your thumbs down, and pretend that you are changing from a caterpillar into a butterfly."
4. Say to your students, "I want you to stop moving your arms when they get in front of your shoulders, which is where the arms enter the water."
5. Practice this movement several times until your students have a clear understanding of what the stroke/recovery of the arms should feel like. Then you can teach the pull.
6. Have your young students practice the arm recovery and pull with a buoyancy device. It works well. Why? because the child can concentrate on the technique without worrying about staying on top of the water.

Tips

• The late legendary Olympic Swimming Coach Richard Quick would have advanced swimmers do the same drill while lying on a kickboard in the the water. Use a similar technique with younger swimmers learning the butterfly.

Since the kickboard works poorly with young children because they have a hard time balancing on the board without it popping out, use a Swim Ways Power Swimmer (buoyancy device) on young swimmers that lace up the sides so it can't slip out from underneath them.