SPEED WITH STYLE: Our Story

John (JJ) Williams: Head Coach 

Dr. Nigel Williams: Business Manager, Child & Adolescent Behavioural Specialist.

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JJ started swimming when he was about 4, he was a determined little chap and my main goal was trying to keep him tired! Swimming seemed to be an obvious choice, lots of opportunities for him to expend energy and pick up important skills to keep him safe.

 

My background is not in swimming, it is in psychology, so I relied on the people I paid to be able to effectively teach the skills necessary to develop correct and efficient strokes. I was wrong! 

 

JJ went through the swimming levels quickly and progressed to squads at age 8. This was great because he would use up even more energy! However, even I noticed that he had a lot of  very obvious technical difficulties, he was fast but very inefficient as he was trying to overpower the water, as opposed 'feeling' the water and slipping through it. I enquired with the coaches and there was basically no concern for technique only fitness. They did drills but they were never explained or adequately monitored, so he basically practised his wrong technique over thousands of km. 

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Why is this a problem? Because the brain will help develop neural connections that will help further reinforce this bad technique and it becomes very difficult to change. 

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Over the years I took him to 12 different swim schools/squads, and either no one knew how to fix his technique or cared!

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JJ still became a top state surf lifesaving athlete, but he was a comparatively technically rubbish swimmer, but he was determined and strong!

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When JJ started teaching swimming he realised how poor most swim schools were.  The quality of the teaching was extremely variable, assessments for level progression was inconsistent and kids often got stuck in a level. In addition, there were often with too many kids in a class (Any more than 4 is crowd control!) where they learn very little.

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JJ completely relearnt his swimming strokes about 5 years ago using footage of Olympic swimmers, using the latest technical approaches from coaching forums around the world, and reading about exercise physiology. He is now technically excellent and much faster than he was when he was training 11 times a week at 18 years old! 

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Which brings us to our swimming school, we just want kids to have fun and learn fast with technically correct and efficient swimming. Most of our kids, if they come to us when they are 6, will be swimming 1-2 km when they are 8!

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Speed with Style swim school incorporates the latest technical advances in swimming, with the best teachers, with small classes and that is underpinned by a psychological program. This ensures that the kids have fun and learn quick!

 

Not only do we think we are the best swimming school in WA, we don't think anyone else even comes close!

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JJ & Nigel

 

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