The acquisition of aquatic skills in preschool children: deep vs shallow water swimming lessons

Introduction: There are several variables involved in the swimming teaching-learning
process, most of them related to the particular characteristics of the water environment.
One of the key factors seems to be the variation of water’s depth. To our knowledge,
any rigorous studies have already investigated with a controlled program how deep
and shallow water may influence the development of preschooler’s aquatic skills.
Methods: Twenty-one Portuguese school-aged children (4.70 +/- 0.51yr), inexperienced
in aquatic programs, participated in this study. The children were divided into two
groups performing a similar aquatic program but on a different water depth: shallow
water (n=10) and deep water (n=11). Each participant was evaluated twice for their
aquatic readiness using an observation check list of 17 aquatic motor skills: during the
first session and after six months of practice. The aquatic proficiency on each skill was
compared between the groups and a stepwise discriminant analysis was conducted to
predict the conditions with higher or lower aquatic competence. Results: Results
suggested that swimming practice improved several basic aquatic skills in both groups.
Though, the results showed that shallow water group managed to acquire a higher
degree of aquatic competence particularly in five basic aquatic skills (p<0.05): breath
control – face immersion and eye opening; horizontal buoyancy; body position at
ventral gliding; body position at dorsal gliding; leg kick with breath control at ventral
body position, without any flutter device. The discriminant function revealed a
significant association between both groups and four included factors (aquatic skills)
(p<0.001). The body position at ventral gliding was the main relevant predictor
(r=0.535). Conclusion: Shallow water swimming lessons seemed to allow greater
aquatic competence in preschool children after a period of 6 months of practice.