Basics of Swimming

Question
Hi , How are you ...

I'm from Syria :

I have to learn swimming , because I'm Muslim !
Our prophet Mohammad (Peace be upon him) said :
( Teach your children : Javelin throwing  , Swimming and Horse Riding )
So I have to learn swimming and teach it for my children ..

So please can you give me some advices (or general info) about the basics of swimming , and are the required fitness ..

And Thank you very much

Answer
Hi...

Swimming is a great sport and a great form of excercise.  I think that your religion/culture knows what its talking about.  

To start swimming I would say to begin slowly.  Get in the water and start wading around.  Make sure that you feel comfortable.  Start in the shallow end and then go to the deeper parts of a pool or body of water when you can hold your breath and know that you don't have to touch the bottom to stay afloat.

When you feel comfortable in deep water, practice floating on your front and back.  Kick a little up and down the pool.  After this put some arm motions into it.  If you can get a video of some sort or watch some more competitive swimmers in your area that would help.  You need to visualize the stroke first.  If you can get a book on the subject that would be good too.  Visualize the stroke and then try to imitate what you see.  You want to start with what we call the crawl stroke.  Put your arms in a frontward motion pulling through the water and try kicking at the same time.  When you feel comfortable with this, you can go to other strokes.

Once you can do the crawl stroke and other strokes, start swimming for fitness.  Try to keep improving how many times you can comfortably go up and down the pool/lake etc.  After you can do this a number of times you can bring a watch out and start doing what we call intervals.  Watch the min. hand on the clock and see if you can do 1 or 2 laps in a minutes time.  Do that a number of times and you will be training.

When you get to this point you will be ready for more advanced stages.  You can write me back or start looking more into books about competitive swimming.

I hope this helps.

Thanks!

LM