In this instructor forum we discussed how to teaching finning, we focused on teaching frog kick but discussed some other finning techniques as well. If you want an in depth explanation of the science behind finning, buy John a pint and he explain the engineers view of whats happening. If you want to keep it simple, the goal in finning is to efficiently propel ourself forward in the water.
For a novice diver they need to use some kind of finning technique to begin moving around in the water, but we can only successfully teach frog kicking once they have mastered the basic trim position. Make sure your student is ready for this lesson, if the student hasn’t got B&T technique it would be better to focus on that before progressing.
One of the tricky thing with teaching finning is that students can’t see their own feet so they can’t see whether they are doing things right and making it harder to correct underwater. As the instructor you often need to turn away from your student to show them your own feet too. The pre-dive brief becomes critical for getting the student to understand how they need to position themselves and move using the frog kick. A few suggestions were made for the demo, John uses ballet and M opts for something closer to armchair yoga, so experiment and find what works for you. Whichever you use, you will find it beneficial if the student can see their feet while learning how to move them correctly.
The ballet demo involves standing at the pool edge and holding on in the wall in the way a ballet dance would hold a bar. From here you can practice turning the ankles so feet are in a v-shape, and from standing the student can look down and see their feet. You can then build on this to bending knees and bringing feet together. Including arms, tutus or a bit of flamboyance is optional!
If your prefer to have a little down during the demo, then maybe the armchair yoga is the demo for you. Here you start seated, knees slightly apart and with feet flat on the floor. From here you can work on the ankle rotation so feet are pointing out while flat on the floor which gives the ability for students to look at their feet and feet the 90 degree position of the feet. Progress to doing this while lifting feet a few cm off the floor. The next step is to bring feet together with the different ankle rotation. If the chair allows you can lean back so the student is effectively in an upside down finning position (on their back rather than front). As a final step you can see if the student can find trim position while lying on the chair (a recap from the b&t lesson) and then incorporate frog kicking leg movement.
Once your ready to move onto the in water elements of the lesson, begin lying on the bottom and adjust buoyancy so you can finger push off the bottom to fin. You could position facing a wall so student fins into the wall and uses their hand to stop themselves, this will allow them to feel the push forward when they get the kick right. Alternatively allow time for them to practice swimming around the pool.
Look out for them not moving too quickly or chopping through the water and make sure they don’t cut out the glide part of the kick. It’s very common for knees to drop below the hips so you may need to physically correct the students position, so as always make sure you brief this because consent is key. Video or photos can be really useful when teaching finning as it allows the student to see what their feet are doing once they’re in the water.
Back finning and helicopter turns are progression from the basic frog kick, so only progress once the student is ready. A frog kick with one leg keeping the other still will turn the diver. For a tighter turn a forward kick followed by a back kick on the opposite leg is needed. You can also look at a high leg flutter. As always make sure your personal skills are up to standard before you attempt to teach any of these skills.
