What is the Skill Set Guarantee?

At Guardian Aquatics, we want your child be fully competent in the water. We understand that it is a big commitment to attend daily lessons for 4-6 weeks. We also understand that illnesses happen, and schedules get complicated. We are confident in our approach to guarantee your child will acquire the Skill Set in an average of 4-5 weeks. As long as you are diligent in attendance and communicate any illnesses promptly, we will offer as many lessons as needed... even if it requires a 6th or 7th week. (That rarely happens!)

 

Survival Swim “SKILL SET”

At Guardian Aquatics we offer two survival swim programs:

SOMA SWIM ™ and ISR Self- Rescue ® . Both designed to offer your child a skill set. They are not based on

quantity of lessons. The skill set for completion will include:

 

Students of All Ages: ( 4 months for SOMA, 6 months for ISR,  through 10 years old … and even Adults!)

• Competence and keen awareness of water interactions and age specific limitations.

• Mastery of breath control in water, and in response to water levels.

• Body Orientation in varying water depths and finding the surface from any position.

• Ability to execute and maintain a life-saving float and breathe posture.

• Achieve drowning-prevention skills through a neurological, somatic level, bypassing cognitive responses, and achieving nervous system tolerance that can circumvent panic in an emergency situation.

• Achieve eyes open, mouth closed underwater tolerance.

• Ability to float, and hold a float unassisted for a minimum of 1 minute.

• Ability to orient themselves in water to find the surface, float, rest, and breathe.

• Ability to execute their float and rest from multiple presentations in the water. This will include face down, vertical drop, off the edge, etc.

• Ability to execute survival presentations while wearing summer clothes and winter clothes.

• Ability to demonstrate self-timed breath control.

 

Additional skills for OVER 14 months and walking well through ANY AGE:

• Execute face-in horizontal swim posture.

• Fully Independent forward crawl swim, strong kicks and varied levels of arm strokes.

• Head turn to float for rest and breath (foundation for side-breath in free-stroke head movements).

• Ability to swim to the steps, pool ledge, and ladder independently.

• Swim to and from someone in the pool.

• Ability to execute an independent swim, transition to a float to rest and breathe, then return to a swim to reach safety.

• The length of independent swim will be based on age.

              Toddlers 1-2 years old generally swim 3-5 feet.

              Age 3-4 swim 10-12 feet.

              Age 5 and up is often able to swim the entire length of the pool (32 feet).

                     Many students who start young exceed these age parameters. These

                     are offered as a general guideline. Check our our instagram so see 2-year olds             

                     swimming 16 feet! And 4 year olds swimming the full 32 foot length!

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What is SKILL BUILDERS™?
SKILL BUILDERS™ is designed to support and advance the skills learned in a survival program. Length, Strength, and precision is the key to this program. Here you will see little swims get longer in distance, the strength and power of kicks and arms pulls will increase, and the execution of rolling between a float and a swim and back again will become smooth, seamless,and precise.
SKILL BUILDERS™ is also focused on FUN. Here we will work through any fear or resistance. We will use goggles, dive toys, and fun games to enhance swim time and bring your child to a full sense of confidence in the water, while maintaining the integrity of their respect for the water and their ability to maintain and use their survival skills.
Underwater diving, mini obstacles, real time problem solving and strokes will all be introduced in this program! Please reach out to us for the full program curriculum and breakdown of levels. As children advance Skill Builders will bring them all the way to competitive swim team ready!

 

 

Maintenance vs. Refresher vs. Swim Intensive…

What’s the difference?

 

Maintenance lessons are recommended at a minimum of once per month and will help your child maintain the skills learned from the survival swim program. Maintenance lessons are drop-in only. You may schedule a maximum of two maintenance lessons per month. For ongoing lessons, please book Skill Builders.

 

Refresher lessons are booked for 1-2 weeks; your child will attend lessons 4 days per week. Refreshers are designed to help students who have gone more than 3 months without a maintenance lesson regain and resharpen their skills. A refresher follows the same completion markers as the survival programs.

 

Swim Intensive lessons are 2 weeks, 4 days per week. This is for our infants who have started walking since completing their survival program and are ready to swim. This is also for any student who completed a survival program, did NOT continue onto to Skill Builders, and is now ready to swim at a more advanced level. In the swim intensive, we will increase independent swim length, reinforce the swim-float-swim, and overall advance the skills from the survival session. Many students then choose to stay on in Skill Builders to advance to obstacles and strokes. 

 

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Guardian Foundations:

The methodology at Guardian Aquatics is different than any other swim program. This quickly becomes apparent by the fast results; students coming from other swim schools see their stalled out progress explode in just a matter of days. This is due to our core structure based on neural pathway creation. Our curricula is based on extensive neurological research. To this end, no matter how advanced your child may be coming from another swim school or method of instruction, there is a baseline of stimulus and response, nervous system cues, and skills tailored to our lesson structure that your child will have not seen before. Guardian Foundations is the program we offer on a case by case basis for students who have has significant previous experience and whose parents feel they do not need an initial survival program. After an intake meeting, should we offer the foundations program, we always reserve the right to advise for a full survival program. For experienced students over age 4, Foundations is often all you need to move on to our other programs. Ideally, Foundations is scheduled as a 2-week intensive, however we are able to accommodate complex scheduling needs and get your child up to speed in just 8 lessons. From here, your child will be able to advance to the Skill Builder program for weekly lessons.