Day 1 - Adult Beginner Swimming Lessons | How To Swim in 4 Days

This is Johnny Rocket here with another special video series. Today we have Quentin in the water. We're going to thank him to start for his service in the National Guard as well as being a police officer in the force. We are always grateful for the opportunity to give back to the people who have served our country and this is one of those opportunities. He's a beginner. He's learned a little bit of swimming from the YMCA as you heard and he's going to today learn how to get comfortable in the water. We're going to reteach him some of the things that go untaught when you're young about the pool and about how water works and how it's all physics and it's a lot like being in space. We're also going to be teaching him how to breathe to the side more comfortably, how to float on his back. Over the next four days, we're going to have two hours of lessons every single day and then he's going to go from before and after and he's going to be a better swimmer. He's going to be able to do laps on his own. He'll be able to go into the deep end, all those good things that we all want to be able to do but maybe have to be taught. Hopefully you guys can learn from these videos. If not, feel free to email me or text me right here. You guys can come to Austin as well and get your very own lessons with me in person. If you leave a comment in this video section, don't put an email address or a phone number because YouTube automatically will delete those comments. So if you're trying to get in contact with me, you can follow the text on the screen or you can go to the About page on our YouTube channel and find my email and my phone number there. All right, let's get ready to rock it. I'm Quentin. I'm from Nashville, Tennessee. I'm here to learn how to swim and improve on my swimming, floating on my back, also treading water and also improve my breathing and also include my distance. I served on the National Guard for 10 years and also I'm serving in law enforcement but also back in February of 2008 and March the 2nd, I had a back surgery due to an injury from a DUI that hit me. So now I'm just recovering and getting better. Also I learned that being in the water, I don't feel the pain that I normally have by moving around or getting up or anything like that. So swimming has been my therapy and I want to improve and get better and also be more comfortable in this day-to-day swimming in my life. And how'd you find rocket swimming? Online and when I first started taking swimming lessons from the YMCA, I started just looking up on YouTube and I came across your channel and I've been watching you ever since and I say, I got to go down and see them. So I booked my ticket and now I'm down here learning how to swim. All right, Quentin, the first thing we're going to do, I'm going to ask you to do is to get your shoulders underwater. I'm going to show you how water is a lot like being in outer space. Everything that comes above the water takes on about 12 times its weight. So when we swim, we want to be low in the water. That's going to matter later too when we're working on breathing to the side, the more you lift up, the less successful your breath will be. But if you stay low in the water, you're going to be able to take that breath nice and easily without feeling like you're sinking. So everything we do is low to the water. One of the first things I want you to do is pick your feet up off the ground, let them bounce off the ground. You're going to feel a little weightless. Feel weightless. Yeah. Getting your knees up, letting your feet come off the ground. You might have to keep yourself up by pushing down with the hands in the water, but anything that will make you feel weightless. Good. Now I want you to start moving, traveling in the water where both your feet come off the ground at the same time. Yeah. You feel a little bit weightless and a little bit unstable as well. Lowly balance. It's okay. Good. We're going back. So what this does is it helps retrain a swimmer's mind to understand what they need to do to be successful in the water. For instance, a lot of people will think that the more or the harder they try, the faster they'll go in the water when it's really almost the opposite. The more you're able to relax and extend your body line, the smoother and easier your swim experience will be. So the next thing we're going to do, so you said you want to be able to float on your back. I want you to be able to float on your back too. But before you do that, I want you to be able to get water off your face. In order to do that, you're going to go chin in. Good. Then you're going to go mouth in and then you're going to go nose in. And you tell me, do you get water up your nose when you swim? Sometimes. Sometimes, but not usually. Okay. So it's pretty comfortable. Put the goggles on. We're going all the way under now. What I did just now is just to see if Quintin had any fear of water on his face. Some people have a fear of water on their face called aquaphobia. And that water that tickles their cheeks is very uncomfortable for them and they don't like it. So now we're going to go all the way under. He's got goggles. And I recommend if you're someone who is afraid of water, that you wear goggles because it makes the whole experience more peaceful. When you can see what's going on underneath the water, you're less afraid of what's happening underneath the water. Okay. Come up. Good. Now when you come up out of water, I want you to start blowing the water away or spitting it away. Because when we go from belly to back later, breathing and learning how to breathe, there's going to be water on your face and you're going to be upside down. So if you just start inhaling, you're going to inhale whatever water is still in your mouth. Right? So when you come up, you're going to be blowholing like a dolphin. Just to get that water away from your face before you go in. So let's go down again. When you come back up this time, blow the water away as hard as you can. Good. And then breathe it in. Good. Okay. Now we're going to do three in a row. When you come up, you only get one breath at a time. So it's under, up, under, up, under, up. Okay? Ready? It's okay to definitely spit the water out of your mouth before you inhale. It's not like you have to lower yourself quickly. It's that you have to only take one inhale before you go back in. So you can take as long as you want to spit it out. Totally fine. Now you're starting to blow as you go in. Blow as you come up, breathe in, and then go under. Go down. Come up. Blow out. Breathe in. Go under. Come up. Blow out. Breathe in. Go under. Come up. Blow out. There we go. There you go. Dude. Nice. You got it. Nice. You got it. Okay. So our next step now is just to see how well you kick. And one of the things I'm going to test you on your kick is you're just going to float. You can have your head up or, preferably, I want you to put your head down, and then I'm going to lift you up with your arms once you get close to me. What you're going to do, you're going to push off at the bottom with your arms in front of you, and then you're going to take a deep breath, put your face in the water, and kick towards me. All I'm going to be assessing is whether or not you're kicking the proper way or if we need to take that as our next step. So here's what you'll do. And then I'll be there to pick your arms up. Okay. Stand up. Good. What I'm going to do is I'm going to help him try to gain some control back over that leg where he's got numbness. So when we kick, or when we walk, rather, we walk with our feet flexed. Whether you realize it or not, you pick your foot up, pick your toes up, and then plant them back on the ground. But when we swim, we don't want stiff feet. We want loose, floppy ankles. We want our feet to be loose and floppy as if we're barely, barely pushing water backwards. So it's not so much as you're pulling water backwards with the back of your leg, and he doesn't do that. He does it just fine. But his left foot is a little bit flexed, and I think we're either going to have to tell him to point his toes or just help him with this exercise. This might do the trick. But in swimming, you don't want a foot flexed because it'll actually cause you to travel backwards. Watch me. It is the most bizarre thing you've ever seen. See, I won't go anywhere. If anything, I'll go backwards. But if I loosen up my feet and let them flop, there'll be no problem at all. It's almost like you want to put oil in some of those rusty parts in your ankles. So here's what we're going to do. We place the kickboard directly in front of him, and he's going to start kicking. So he's going to have to lean back a little bit. You're going to start kicking. The kickboard should float away from you if you've got a powerful kick. If not, it'll kind of just stay here, go off to the side. Go ahead, start kicking. Good. And then with that left foot, just make sure that water's flipping off the toes. Good. Flop. Do it faster. Good. Let's take this foot real quick. Does that hurt? Okay. Try pointing. Pointing the toes. That would be flexing. Try pointing. Other way. Good. Okay. Now relax. Flex. Point. Relax. Flex. Point. Relax. Now kick with it relaxed. Go ahead. Woo! Nice. Did you see how you had it there for a second? It's starting to flex up a little bit, so point it. Relax it. Kick. Yeah, there it goes again. Again, toes are much more whippy, so he's got a pretty flexible kick. I like that. Now we're going to put it back on his belly, but I'm going to have him holding the kickboard now. Okay? And we're almost going to be ready for Finn soon, but I want to get him floating on his belly and his back next too. So I'm going to have him on his kickboard. When you hold a kickboard, it's very important that you have your hands at the top of the edge. If they've got handles, you can hold the handles. But you want to hold it at the top edge, not the side, and not the bottom. The only time you would ever hold it at the bottom is if I'm going to give you a drill that requires you to hold it at the bottom. Otherwise, I will never ask anybody to hold it at the side, but rather just at the top, because if you hold it from the side, your elbows will bend and your core will disengage. When I was a youngster, I thought when my coaches said, engage your core, they thought, or I thought it meant crunching my abs together, but it doesn't. It actually means extending your body longer. The taller you stand, the more you stretch out your spine, the more engaged your core becomes. Your core is always going to make you balance better. So if you were to fall off balance standing on land, the first thing that would catch you is your foot. Well, that leg coming forward is brought forward from your core. So the more you stand up and the more you feel almost imbalanced, the more engaged your core will be to rebalance you. So if you hold the kickboard at the top, your arms will stay stretched. Anytime the elbows bend, your core is no longer engaged. Keep the arms fully stretched. The reason I like it on the side is because it's easy for people to bend their elbows. Same with the bottom. It's very easy for people to start wearing the kickboard like a hat. I want you to keep that kickboard fully extended, arms stretched. The thing I want the beginners to do is to breathe. I don't want you to put your face down in the water yet when you're using a kickboard. It's actually more enjoyable to kick and breathe because you need that oxygen to keep firing your legs. Your leg muscles are at least twice the size of your arm muscles, and so they are going to require twice as much oxygen or refueling as your arms would. So when you're just doing kickboard, don't worry. You're going to go slow and you're going to be tired. It's both. It's almost a rotten exercise, but it's so good for you. So that's why we do it. So hands at the top of the board. Yep. Head up. I'm going to keep this kickboard extended and you're going to start kicking. We're not going to go to the deep end just yet, but you might have to turn the iPad to follow us. Do you ever feel imbalanced like that? A little bit tippy unless you have fins on it. Smash the water with the top of this foot right here. Yeah. Pushing it backwards. Good. Almost there. Stand up. Good. He has a good standing position from when he is finished kicking. The dismount that we teach people is to bring your knees straight to your chest. It might seem intuitive, but not a lot of people know to do that. They'll be on a kickboard and they'll be like, I can't get off. You just bring your knees up to your chest like Quentin did, and then plant your feet straight on the ground and stand up. Okay. Now, when you're on your back, the dismount is actually like you're sitting up in bed like this. When you sit up in bed, your hips drop and then you bring your knees in, plant your feet on the ground and stand up. Okay. But we'll get there soon. All right. I liked his body position on the kickboard. I like your kick. We're moving on. We're not trying to improve that just yet almost. We got that left foot to be a little bit more flexible, but now we're going to move on to back float. Okay. We're going to help you start to feel a little bit more comfortable so that if you ever need a long break in the water, you can just float on your back. A lot of people want to learn how to tread water. We can also teach you how to tread water, but treading water is not as efficient as back floating. Back floating could save your life. Treading water could kill you because it's so exhausting. Treading water should be done for pleasure or if your rescue is finally nearby and they're about to throw you something, maybe you just want to come up into a tread to grab whatever they're throwing you. Treading water is only reserved for water polo players or other water sports, synchronized swimming. But for you, when we're on our back, everything is the opposite as when you're on your belly. When you're on your belly, you want your chin down, but when you're on your back, you want your chin up. Now, the other thing that happens on your back that most people don't like is the water will enter your ears and it tickles. It almost feels strange and foreign and it kind of is uncomfortable. The reason that doesn't happen on your belly is the way our ear cavities are developed. When you're on your belly and you come up, first off, the water kind of suctions on the way in and then just kind of pops out on the way out, whereas on your back, you're allowing it to drain in a little bit. And so it does feel uncomfortable. When you come up, you're always going to feel like there's water in your ears or there's a radio in your ears. But when you're on your back, to get used to that tickle, you're going to let it settle in. It's going to tickle. And then you're going to take a deep breath here and you're going to blow it out with some sort of noise because when you make that noise, it muffles the sound. And all of a sudden, your brain becomes more curious about the sound than it does the feeling. So if you just start talking to yourself when you're on your back, most people find themselves calming down. It's the weirdest feeling. So I'm going to have you turn around. The way I'm always going to help a swimmer when they back float is by holding their back, their head like a football, not their backs. If I'm holding their back, they're going to press down with their hips and sink. If I'm holding their head, then they're going to press their head back, which is going to bring their hips up. So if you're an instructor out there watching these videos, I call it the football hold. Always hold the head by the football for back floats. Now I'm going to have him just lean back as if he's falling asleep in bed and I'm going to keep his head up. He's got to trust me a little bit here. Now I'm going to ask him to stretch his back out or stretch your belly out. Stretch your belly out. Good. Stretch through your belly as if you're almost arching your back the other way. Good. And stand up. Nice. You got weightless there at the end, a lot more weightless there at the end. You also need to breathe. You also need to remember to breathe. The first time through, you're always going to hold your breath because you're like doing exactly what you told me to do. I'm following the directions. But once you've learned it, now we need to bring back the breath. Okay, lean back. Stretch through the belly. Yeah. And then remember to breathe. Nope. Stretch up through the belly. Yeah. There you go. Your legs will sink a little bit. Let them. It's okay. And stand up. All right. So a lot of you guys have asked me the question of how do I keep my legs from sinking when I'm on my back? If you notice there, I said to him, it's okay if your legs sink. That's because they will sink every time. They will, unless, unless you're kicking. When you're kicking, your legs keep coming back up to the surface. And as you're moving, things in motion tend to stay in motion. So as you begin pushing forwards through the water like a boat, you're going to rise in the water and then you're going to stay there so long as you don't change anything. Okay. So it's almost as if, if you are complaining about sinking legs when you float on your back and you think you're unique, you're not. Everyone's legs sink when they float on their back, including mine. Now, I have trained myself to be able to use my core and my body line and my head position to kind of keep them up even when I'm on my back, but it's not something that I expect anybody else to do. I still kind of have to, it's not going to work. I still kind of have to use my arms to keep them up or I have to use my hip to keep them up. But at some point, you're going to have to move forward in the water for your legs to stay up. They will sink every time. It's a guarantee. So this time, once he gets on his back, I'm going to have him stretch his belly out, then breathe and then I'll tell him to start adding in a little kick. Back. Good. Stretch the belly out. Take some deep breaths. Yeah, get your muscles to float. Remember, you're in space. Pretend you're an astronaut and just float away into space. Now start kicking. You're going to feel them rise. Lean the chin back. I know you don't want to. Chin back. Sun's in your eyes. Just keep your eyes closed and kick. Kicking on your back with your eyes closed is one of the most scary things in the whole wide world. It's right up there with heights. Stand up. You did good. Look how far you got. Yeah. You did good. Let's do it one more time. Good. Nice arch. Good job. Don't push the head underwater too far because you'll get water on your nose. It's okay to pick the face up. There you go. Now kick. This time I want you to kick a little bit faster. A little smaller and faster, but don't break the surface. Nice. Yeah, you're doing it. Chin back. Face up. Yeah, you got it. Stand up. Nice. You're doing some of those on your own. You felt it? Yeah, good. Good. Yeah, as you're able to kick it up, it helps keep the body up a lot more. See how, like, even though you saw this video, I'm sure, and you thought you taught yourself how to do it, it's different when there's an instructor right there helping you and holding you and tapping the points where you need to, like, every once in a while put a little knee in his back to remind him to stretch his belly out. That's the advantage of having an instructor. You can teach yourself these things, but don't be surprised if it takes you a lot longer than it's going to take Quinton to do this in four days because I'm in. So we're going to start with the kickboard and the fins so that he can get used to the speeds that the fins provide, and then we're going to go back into the back floating with fins, and then by the end of today, we're going to be teaching him how to roll from belly to back to get his own breath. This will be the foundation of the side breath. Okay? All right. So you're just going to kick out and back for me just to, basically, the lifeguard chair hold. I won't make you go in the deep end today. Go ahead. Good. Remember to breathe when you're on the kickboard. Stay long. And go ahead and kick the feet a little deeper, a little bit wider volume, bigger volume. Up and down more gives you more control. The kickboard, keep the nose of the kickboard near the surface. Good. And when you're kicking, the larger the volume in the water, the more control you have. If it's small and fast, you're going to feel out of control. If it's big, you're going to feel in control. Yep. It's a balance. So keep the nose of the kickboard up, push off the bottom, start kicking, and make each kick a little bit bigger. Yeah! There you go! Wow! Wow, you really picked up speed there at the end. That felt way better, didn't it? Okay, good. Yeah, the bigger you kick, the more control you'll have in the water and the faster you'll go. Now, as a youngster, we'll teach you to kick small and fast on purpose. That's because a lot of children run in the water. They're running in the water, and we're trying to teach them that kicking is not the same as running. Kicking in the water is actually a much smaller operation. Even what he was doing there is smaller, a smaller volume than if someone were to try to run in the water. Push the water back, okay? So as a kid, we'll say small, fast kicks on belly and back, but as an adult, we only want small, fast kicks on your back. Now that you're on your belly and you're an adult, you're going to kick bigger. More volume gives you more control because it engages your core more. Okay? We're going to do this one more time. The nose of the kickboard up, breathe a lot, kick big. That push off where you get water over your face, that's totally normal. Start to anticipate it. Good job breathing. Stay nice and pointy. Here we go. Stop. I forgot to tell you how to dismount. When you're dismounting in fins, you could do one of two things. One, bring your knees up to your chest and let them linger there for half a second to full second, just so the fin blades start to come up too, and then slam your feet into the ground, or roll to your back and bring your feet to the ground so your heels come to the ground first and the fins don't trip you up on the ground. Because when you're dismounting with a fins and kickboard and it starts to trip you on the ground, it's a very chaotic feeling that we don't want. Stop. Good. Nose up. Good. Good breath. I hear it. Nice big kicks. Yeah. You're looking good. You're looking very balanced, controlled. Good. We're going to roll him back to his back. With the fins on his back, he's going to find it way easier to float, way easier to move and to stay on his back without water going over his face, without sinking. Watch this. Start with his knees. Okay. You're going to come back. Head position's perfect. Belly's perfect. Now start kicking. When you're on your back, you do want to kick small and fast, and you want to keep the kick just below the surface of the water, as if you're boiling the surface. So you don't want to be too high, which is perfect. You're not too high. You're just below the surface. If not, maybe a tad deep. And stand up. When you're on your back, you don't want to kick so big that your knees and feet start to break the surface. Because if you're kicking too big, you're going to cause the water to get too rough, and it might go over your face, or it just might cause an unpleasant, imbalanced experience. If you keep your feet just below the surface of the water, and then kick to the point where it looks like the water's boiling, that's perfect. You want the water to look like it's in a pot boiling. That's the perfect kick, with the toes right there underneath the surface. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. That applies in swimming more so than you would think. If you are kicking the water straight back, you're not going to go straight forward. You would think you do. But when you're kicking water straight back, the way that the water moves, it's going to roll off your feet upwards, and you're not going to move forwards. You're probably only going to feel yourself starting to sink. In order to move forwards in the water, you have to give an equal kick down as you do with the kick that's coming up. So the kick that goes down and the kick that comes up should feel like you're giving equal amounts of effort towards. It's kind of like the scissor, the ab exercise where you do scissors with your legs. You should feel that every time you kick. You're pulling and pushing with opposite legs, opposite directions. It's pulling and pushing. Gotcha. All right. Let's see if you can kick up just as much as you kick down. Whoa, you got way lighter. You got way lighter. The face up. I'm going to let you go on your own. Your face up. Pull it up towards the sky. There you go. Like a half inch. There you go. Yes. Stand up. Yes. When I'm holding him by the head like I taught some of you guys to, his head will go weightless when he starts to do it the right way. As soon as I feel like I'm not holding him up anymore, now I'm going to start to take my hands away slowly just so he doesn't get panicked that I'm leaving him. And then I'm going to tell him before I do, I'm going to tell him, okay, I'm going to let go for a little bit longer now because you're doing really well. I'm not holding you up anymore. You're doing all the work by yourself. Once you get to that point where that person's head is light, they're doing it. You need to reward them. You need to encourage them. You need to help them remember that feeling so that they can do it on their own when they're not with you. The next step for you, Cody, is to actually bring your arms down by your side. You're going to start to paddle the water away too, like you're pushing it away or waving goodbye to your feet. What this is going to do is it's going to help keep your body positioned. You're going to feel like, whoa, I can keep my chest and my belly way easier. Okay, so when you're redirecting water backwards or down with your hands too, you don't even need your legs. I can do this with just my arms, but when I add in the legs, I'm going to feel like I'm an actual swimmer. I'm going to feel pretty good about myself. I'm going to feel like I can move through water as much as I want, as long as I want. Okay? Good. So now you're using your hands too. Looks good. It doesn't have to be more, it doesn't have to be robotic out there, subscribers. It can be fluid. See how Quinn's doing it really fluid? Because he's using the natural instincts of where he needs to push the hand in order to keep his body up. Pick up. Good. Use your hands to direct. Here we go. Nice. I'm still here, just so you know. Get the knees a little deeper in the water, keep them with the feet. The knees are coming up kind of high, you're going to slosh water over your face and you're there. Wow. You're on it. You're doing it all by yourself. You're light as a feather. Yeah. You felt like? Good. He's coming in, he's developing his relationship with water. He's learning about pretty much how to be in space. He's becoming more and more weightless in the water because he's like, okay, water does keep me up. Most people out here, we think that water is pulling us down and sinking us and the deep water even more so, but that's not the case. Water exists. It's our job to develop a relationship with water. Water is not going to pull us down or push us anywhere. It's us. Right? We're going to take deep breaths always to keep lungs in our air so we stay above water so we don't drown and we're going to be using our hands and our feet subtly, very subtle, just to keep yourself afloat and to move yourself around. That concept goes all the way into when we start learning freestyle and breaststroke. The relationship you have with water makes a difference. If your relationship with water is still chaotic and it's spiteful, then get to an instructor, have them help you figure out ways to calm down. I know that there's not an unlimited supply of great instructors out there. Again, if you want to travel to Austin, I'd be happy to help you out. We also do online lessons where I chime in from videos you've sent me and I show you what you're doing wrong and how to fix it and then I'll send you on your way with some workouts and some new instructions on what to film next. We're going to have Quintin do this a couple more times. Take a look. Good. Face up. There you go. You might need to use your hands to keep your face up. Good. You'll see that the water level is right around his goggle line. That's perfect. Right here between the goggle and the ears is where you want that water line to be. Stand up. Good. As soon as you feel water start to come over your goggles, beware that the water is about to go over your nose and your mouth too. You're starting to push it down too deep. So the chin up is an interesting concept because chin up makes it feel like you're pushing your head down, but that's not what we're doing. You're picking your chin up and then if you are someone who's pushing their head down farther then you need to be someone who now picks their face up a half inch into the air. Don't be pushing it so far back that before water goes over your nose and mouth. Yeah. Good. Stretch your belly out. Breathe deep. Good. Chin up. Belly's stretched. He's getting tired. Okay. And stand up. Good. I think you were just trying to be more relaxed. You were going slower and I thought you were getting tired. You were just trying to be more relaxed. I love it. Slowing down in an exercise is a-okay. If you're learning how to be relaxed, if you think that all swimmers are out here training at a certain level, you're not. the time, you're wrong. We're constantly learning how to take less strokes when we swim across the pool or how to use less kicks to get across the pool in the same amount of time. We're always trying to make it easier on ourselves as swimmers. Many adult beginners, when they go in, especially if they've never had a swim lesson until their adult age, they go into water thinking unless they're giving 100% effort, they're not going to be able to accomplish what they're being taught. That's not true. Oftentimes, it's actually the opposite. You kind of want to calm down a little bit, see how easily you can do it with how little effort you could do it, and then maybe you start to put forth a little more effort on the right parts like the pull or the kick. One more time through. Good. Push off. You got it. Stretch the belly out. Tall body line. This is great. Yep. Anytime you pick your face up, also remember to stretch your belly out because the opposite happens when you do that. You pick up your face. Usually, you're tightening your core to do it, and then you figure it out right away. You're starting to gain the instincts. Good. Instincts are helpful. Unfortunately, in water, though, you'll all find that instincts tend to mess you up. Instincts when you first get in the water are the opposite. They're lying to you. Water bends light and muffles sound. It's a great deceiver. Once you learn some of the tricks of the trade, then the light instincts start to kick in. Go ahead. Yeah, you don't care. Smooth. Swim taller. Stretch your belly out. Swim taller. Kick a little faster too. A little smaller. A little faster. Stretch the belly out and you're there. Okay, so now we're going to start teaching Quentin how to go from belly to back to get his own breath. Of course, I think most of you know this by now. We call it the pineapple. We call it the pineapple for no particular reason other than when I was younger, I watched this show called Psych, and they had this pineapple hidden everywhere, and every episode is a good show. But the other reason I like it is because whenever you're teaching certain concepts, if you can name them, you're oftentimes going to help a swimmer learn the process faster because what you're doing is you're summing up the whole process in a one word or a couple of words that is memorable and interesting or fun. And for me, I like to use the pineapple, I'll also call kids their head to coconut sometimes. So the pineapple, in order to accomplish this, you're going to be on your belly and you're going to need to kick. You're kicking with your arms in front of you as if you're holding on to an invisible kickboard. When it's time to roll to your back, you're going to elbow the air and then slap the water. So watch me as I demonstrate it for you. I'm going to start on my belly, I'm going to kick a little bit away, and then I want you to watch my elbow. All right, so now Quinn's going to try it. The first time he tries it, though, I'm going to be there to protect his head from going underwater. So a lot of times when people first try the pineapple, they'll do the roll and then face will get a little bit wet and they'll stop. I'm going to be there for a couple of times just to keep that from happening and then he'll realize what he needs to do on his own to prevent it for himself. So you're going to be on your belly, arms stretched out in front, and then I'm going to go like this underwater, it means roll. Okay, ready? Go. Good. Breathe here. Stand up. Water in the nose or mouth? This happens. This happens when you're learning. If this is happening to you, don't feel like you're not learning it or that you haven't figured out or that you're never going to figure it out. This is unfortunately part of it. We try to prevent it as little as possible. I'm not out here trying to say that when you learn swimming, get ready to drown half your lungs, but that this will happen maybe, you know, and it happens less and less as you learn. Okay, so the way to prevent this from happening is while you're turning on to your back, give me a big old blow out the nose. It's probably still going to go in, but then you're going to be able to clear it out and keep going as opposed to being like, I need to stop. Arms in front. Ready? Go. Take a deep breath with your mouth. Blow it out of your nose. Good. Now, bring your arms by your side and kick. There's one successful pineapple. Good job. Was it as, uh, was the water up your nose as bad as it was before? Good. Thank God. Blowing out as I was turning. Good. You were blown out as you were rolling. Therefore, it kept it from going up as, uh, up your nose that far. Good. And stop. I'm going to help him roll a little easier here. Go ahead and clear out whatever you need to clear out. When you're rolling on to your back, you want to be moving at a faster pace. So right before I have him roll, I'm going to make him kick a little faster on this next one. Because when he's kicking and he's moving, his body will rise in the water and it makes the whole operation a little bit smoother. Watch my examples. When I'm doing this, if I do it slowly, you'll notice more water comes over my face as opposed to when I do it fast. Okay. I'll do it slowly first. It wasn't much, but there was some. Now watch when I do it fast. Now watch when I do it fast, less water will go over my face. Okay. When I'm going faster, I can keep my face elevated out of the water. If you're going slow, especially if you stop kicking on the transition, on the roll, you stop kicking, think, picture a boat, a boat's going at a fast speed and it slows down. What happens? Droops into the water a lot more than it would have if it were just sitting still. So if you're going slowly, it'll happen. Something like this will happen. You're not kicking fast enough, or if you stop kicking completely, disaster will follow. Good. Stand up. That was a way better turn. Now I still pulled you and I still caught your head, but did you feel like you were getting it? Yeah. You're going way faster too. We're going to be doing this probably half a dozen more times, and if you were ever wondering how many times you should practice something until you get it right, let me remind you of what Coach Nick Saban says from Alabama. He says, we don't practice until we get it right. We practice until we cannot get it wrong. Okay. So we're going to keep practicing. If you want to know what that magic number is, the best number to use is 21. If you do something 21 times, not only will you learn it, but you'll create a habit out of it. Because in psychology, they've told us that it takes 21 days to make a habit. If you're trying to change the way, I don't know, maybe you don't normally put your clothes away at night or something like that, and you're trying to get better about that or trying to make your bed every day, you have to do it 21 days in a row for it to be a consistent habit. So generally I'll make kids do this 21 times. Adults, I'll make them do it six to 21 times. Six will be usually my minimum. 12 is a pretty good standard for adults. Once they've done things 12 times in a row with me, they've got it. But when you're practicing on your own, I highly recommend you use that 21 number. Use the number that actually will produce a bigger difference, guaranteed. Kick, kick, kick, kick, kick. Wow, you're going fast. And stop. Nice. So I'm also going to have Quinton use his legs now to help rotate his body onto his back. With the arm, like I taught you, elbow, slap. But with the legs, I'm going to have him, not stop his kick, but all of a sudden he's going to add a really big scissor into his kick while he's rolling, right, in order to initiate the roll. And we're going to see if that helps using his legs and his arms. Stand up. Good. I know a lot of dancers out there talk about how important core is, but when it comes to twisting my body, I was never very good at using my core to do it. I always used my limbs to do it easier. But the taller you stand, the easier it'll be to rotate that tight rope onto its side as opposed to a loose rope. If you're trying to rotate it onto its side, you're going to have to rotate one part, then the next part, and then the last part of the rope all the way over until it's rolled. But if it's a tight rope and you roll it, it should roll pretty easily all the way through. Tall, tall. Yep, bear it out. Tall. And stop here. Good job. And stop. Good. Dismounting with fins on your back, sit up in the water, bring your knees to your chest. When your legs are out there like that, it's keeping you from being able to stand up. Bring your knees to your chest, all of a sudden you have more control over your legs. Okay, we're going to practice this two more times, then I'm going to teach him how to roll back to his belly. Okay. If you're having troubles rolling to your back, another tip I can give you to help will be to lower your kick in the water while you're still on your belly, right before you rotate. Lower the kick in the water so it's kicking you up towards the surface more, and then do the roll. You might find yourself fall back into the water, or if you kick fast enough, you'll be able to lower your head back in the water on your back. And we're good. Yes. That looks incredible. Amazing amount of progress from being able to, or not being able to, roll on his own without me assisting in some way to get his body to come back up to the surface. Now, even after I think we did it 12 times, he's already got it on his own. The power of 21, not 12. 2-1, not 1-2. But, when you've got an instructor, sometimes 12 is enough for now, so you can move on to the next step. Alright, the last step we're going to teach Quinton today, on day 1. He's made a tremendous amount of progress. We've got him bouncing around in the water, feeling comfortable. We got him breathing with a circular breath, in through the mouth, out through the nose. We even got him kicking a little bit bigger on his belly, a little bit smaller on his back, with floppier ankles. Then we got him rolling onto his back, all on his own, to get his own breath. And then, we're going to teach him how to roll back to his belly. When you roll back to your belly, it's very simple. All you do is take an arm, either one. You'll take it across your body and behind your body. So, you're reaching for a spot somewhere between your shoulder and your ear, and you're going to put your hand right there. That'll roll your body back to its belly very easily. Watch me. Once you've got back to your belly, bring the other arm up, to join the original arm out in the superhero position. Whenever you're ready, which arm are you going to use? Right. Okay, go ahead. And stand right. Awesome. So, like you saw, when you roll back to your belly, that step's actually much easier than the roll to your back. And that should tell you something. It's harder to roll onto your back than it is to roll onto your stomach. From belly to back, much harder than back to belly. Oh, he did his left arm that time. Did your left arm that time. I don't think he had enough speed to roll back. Yeah, okay. So, right there, he was able to roll back successfully, but he felt like there was too much water around his face and all that. And that's probably because he wasn't going fast enough. If he goes a little bit faster, like he will in this next one, you'll probably be able to get rid of that trouble if you're experiencing the same thing. Come on. Use your mouth. Good. And whenever you're ready, boom! Boom! Boom, he got it. Sometimes you will feel like you took a step backwards whenever you add another step on to whatever you're practicing. Like today, we're practicing the pineapple and how to be self-sufficient with your breathing. And we just added a step, right? We added the arm back in. Well, now all of a sudden, sometimes when he rolls to his back, he's already thinking about the next roll, so the back roll may not be as successful as it once was before. But the more you practice it, of course, it comes back really quickly. He might only have two or three mistakes, and then all of a sudden the back roll will be fine again, and the belly roll will come together. He's only done this three times, and on that one, he did it all by himself, so we're already pretty much there. Pull. But yeah, adding another pull or two into that rotation, it gave him more momentum so he was able to get back onto his belly and back up to the surface a little quicker than he was before. I like that. That's good stuff. Kick faster, stretch your belly out, paddle. Legs underwater. Got behind you. My bad. Well, that's all I have for you today. 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