The Swimming Teacher’s Phrase Book

Quick Cues and Alternative Phrases for When Swimmers Get Stuck

By Mark Young

Sometimes the swimmer does not need another drill.

They need another way to understand the one they are already doing.

The Swimming Teacher’s Phrase Book gives you hundreds of short, practical coaching cues and alternative phrases to use when your usual explanation is not working.

Instead of searching for the right words in the middle of a busy lesson, you can quickly find direct instructions, reassuring language, imaginative cues, rhythm prompts and feel-based explanations for the skill you are teaching.

Say it differently. Help it click.

£19.99 GBP (converted to your local currency when you click through).

Instant PDF download from the Swim Teach Store.

Preview the Book First

Created for real poolside teaching

You know the moment.

You have explained the skill, demonstrated it and tried again - but the swimmer is still confused, tense or unable to translate your words into movement.

It can happen with a nervous beginner who cannot let go during a float. It can happen with a child who cannot picture a streamlined shape. It can happen with an adult who is overthinking their breathing or a developing swimmer whose breaststroke timing refuses to connect.

The Phrase Book gives you another way in.

It is not a book of lengthy theory to study away from the pool. It is a practical phrase bank designed to help you find language you can actually say during a lesson.

What you will find inside

For each teaching moment, the book provides a selection of:

• Direct coaching instructions
• Short poolside cues
• Gentle and reassuring phrases
• Child-friendly imaginative language
• Shape and visualisation cues
• Feel-based prompts
• Rhythm and timing phrases
• Alternatives for nervous or confused swimmers
• Quick guidance for common teaching problems

The complete edition contains more than 400 pages of practical teaching language.

Skills and lesson areas covered

The book includes phrases and prompts for:

• First water confidence
• Face wetting, bubbles and submersion
• Floating, balance and recovery
• Push and glide
• Front crawl
• Backstroke
• Breaststroke
• Butterfly
• Deep-water skills
• Dives, underwater skills and object recovery
• Survival skills
• Rescue and water-safety language
• Situations where the first explanation has not worked
• Quick reference by common teaching problem

See how it works

Imagine that you want a swimmer to create a more effective streamlined position.

You could tell them:

• “Hands together.”
• “Squeeze your arms towards your ears.”
• “Make one long line.”
• “Turn your body into an arrow.”
• “Reach your fingers away from your toes.”
• “Hands together, arms squeeze, body long.”

Each phrase works towards the same outcome, but approaches it in a different way.

The Phrase Book gives you this flexibility across the full range of skills you are likely to encounter in a swimming lesson.

View the Free Preview

Who is the book for?

The Phrase Book is designed for:

• Newly qualified swimming teachers developing their poolside confidence
• Experienced teachers looking for fresh ways to explain familiar skills
• Teachers working with nervous children or adults
• Instructors supporting swimmers who learn in different ways
• Swim schools seeking more consistent and effective teaching language
• Coaches who want shorter, clearer cues for technical corrections
• Trainee teachers building their own bank of practical phrases

This book will help you to…

• Respond more confidently when an explanation is not working
• Avoid repeating the same instruction again and again
• Adapt your language to different swimmers
• Make technical corrections shorter and clearer
• Reassure nervous swimmers without dismissing their fears
• Give children images and shapes they can understand
• Improve rhythm and coordination through concise verbal cues
• Build a broader and more flexible poolside vocabulary

Written from more than 30 years of teaching experience

I created The Swimming Teacher’s Phrase Book after repeatedly seeing how a small change of wording could transform a swimmer’s understanding.

A new phrase cannot replace sound teaching knowledge, careful observation or professional judgement. But when those foundations are already in place, the right cue can create the breakthrough both teacher and swimmer have been working towards.

This book gathers those alternatives into one structured resource that you can return to whenever you need another way to explain a skill.

Choose your edition

Instant PDF ebook - £19.99 GBP (converted to your local currency when you click through).

Download the complete digital book and keep it on your phone, tablet or laptop for quick poolside reference.

Printed edition

Prefer a physical reference book? A printed edition is also available through Amazon.

View the Printed Edition on Amazon

When your usual words are not working…

Don’t immediately abandon the activity or assume that the swimmer cannot do it.

Change the cue. Change the image. Change the rhythm. Change the way into the skill.

Say it differently. Help it click.

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