Sculling is an essential skill in all swimming strokes yet many swimmers lack a good technique. You teach your participants a basic sculling technique during your sessions, but we are here to show you how to take it further with a more efficient sculling technique.
Artistic swimmers are sculling experts so who better than us to show you how it is done!
As a swimming instructor you would have learnt how to teach basic sculling, however, from our research, many of you feel you would like to learn how to teach this invaluable life preservation skill in more detail.
During the summer we created a series of 'Live From The Pool' episodes to demonstrate to you first hand how certain artistic swimming skills are taught. The first of these episodes is sculling where we show you different forms of sculling, corrections and new drills to help your participants in your swimming lessons.
Within this episode we show you how to teach sculling to enable your participants to move around the pool, create whirlpools with their hands, and support their bodies in the water.
Basic sculling technique
Watch the episode to see how it is done but the basic teaching points are detailed below:
This technique can be practiced standing on poolside. Cup your hands around your face to get the hands the right shape for sculling and keep your fingers together
Place your arms in front of you and move them side to side from the elbow, with some wrist movement, slightly turning out as you push your forearms arms away and in as you bring them back in
The motion is similar to washing the floor and the arm moves from the elbow to create a long rudder from your elbow to the tips of your fingers
Once you have the correct technique look for whirlpools. If they aren’t appearing then look closely as to why not. Perhaps your participant needs more pressure downwards on the water in the movement, perhaps they need to turn hands slightly more, fingers aren’t closed or their hands are too cupped.
The episode also features sculling drills and progressions that will help to propel them around the pool and increase their safety in the water.