Teaching the Shaw Method for me is an incredibly interesting and rewarding way to earn my living. One of the things I love the most about my work is enabling people to move beyond what they ever thought possible.
I have taught many clients who are so afraid of the water it is difficult for them to even have a relaxing bath, their goal is to feel comfortable and at ease in the water. This is usually achieved in a much shorter time than they imagined. And once the initial fear is overcome I am often staggered about how fast they progress in learning the strokes. In fact they often learn faster and perform the stroke better than those that have been swimming all of their lives. This may have a lot to do with the fact that someone taking up swimming for the first time doesn’t have to battle against deeply ingrained habits.
Another example of this phenomena is teaching a sustainable enjoyable butterfly. Here again many adult learners 40+ believe that learning the butterfly is beyond them. They believe that the butterfly is only for younger fitter people with strong and flexible shoulders. My experience is that its never to late to fly and I have many pupils in their 60’s and 70’s who can swim long distance butterfly in an efficient, sustainable and enjoyable way. Like the non-swimmer most people are unable to swim butterfly for more than a minute without feeling totally exhausted. So they are able to approach learning the various stages of the stroke in a relatively fresh way which clearly makes the learning process much easier.
I often say if you teach someone to swim the front crawl they will shake you by the hand and say thank you, but if you teach someone to do a sustainable and enjoyable butterfly you have made a friend for life.