How important is breaststroke?

[myermay]

Ds is 5 and is a pretty confident swimmer - he can do front crawl and back stroke. But has taken a dislike to where he's been swimming for the last term.

Anyway, found someone on a friends recommendation and took him yesterday to see what class he should be in. They said that they start with teaching breast stroke rather than front/back crawl so he'll get put in the beginners class.

I'm just worried that he'll get bored being with the kids who are learning to swim - when he already can, but he can't do breast stroke.

How important is it?

my elder niece, now 14, is a promising competitive swimmer.

she didn't do breaststroke until she was 8.

her fav competitive stroke now is the fly.

it's a very powerful kick, but it does take some coordination and can put some strain on the knee joint, so i wouldn't be in a rush to do it, tbh.

My sons do classes with Swimming Nature in London. Their programme is excellent. They teach back stroke first, then front crawl, then breast stroke. My eldest is 7 and is just learning breast stroke. He is an excellent swimmer and is in a class level with children older than him.

HTH

it just seems wierd that when i learnt, it was breast stroke, front then back crawl and then butterfly.

Perhaps i'll just keep him where he is as it seems a bit daft putting him in a lower group just to learn a new stroke?

Some children take to breaststroke quite naturally and some others find it very difficult. I'd say it's quite important to master it as it is the most popular recreational stroke and quite a good one to use in an emergency situation (falling in) as it keeps the head above the water. A variant of breaststroke action is also most commonly used when treading water. He may well not get bored in the lower group as he will be learning something new and may well get the hang of it very quickly - in which case he'll move up very rapidly as he can already do the other strokes. The knee problems are usually only associated with the narrow competitive 'whip kick' rather than the wider recreational stroke that most beginners start out with, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

Where my dc's learnt to swim that tackled each of the 3 mains strokes on alternative weeks, then started learning butterfuly when they were in improvers. Both my dc's are natural breastrokers, and it was getting them to do straight legs for front crawl which was the problem.
As snorkle says I would have thought your son wouldn't stay very long in beginners.

We use the multi-stroke approach too christy - I think I prefer it to rigidly learning one after another, though that has advantages too.

My two would never have got out of beginners if they had to concentrate on back stroke or frontcrawl DS was an underwater swimmer and even managed to do his backstroke underwater

Morning Myer, like your DC my DS is 5 and is a pretty confident swimmer - good at front and back crawl, but can only do with either the arms of breaststroke or the legs, but can't do both at the same time. I think it is probably just to do with his lack of co-ordination. I'm sure that will come in time.