The water safety skills kids learn during swim lessons will stay with them for the rest of their lives! But that’s not the only benefit they’ll see. Here are 16 ways swim lessons help kiddos see extraordinary results in the pool and beyond!

1. Teaches Water Safety

At Goldfish Swim School, everything we do revolves around helping kids learn how to be safer in and around the water. That’s why we practice water safety during every lesson and begin teaching kids life-saving swim skills as early as four months of age!

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drowning remains the number one cause of death among children ages 1-4, and the second leading cause of death for children ages 5-14. And while drowning prevention requires layers of protection, swim lessons have been shown to reduce the risk of drowning by 88%!

Even if you think your child “knows” how to swim, make sure you can say “yes” to all 10 of these questions when determining whether they would benefit from taking swim lessons.

In an effort to ensure more families have access to water safety information and resources, we recently launched Goldfish At Home, a series of free, virtual dry-land swim lessons on YouTube. Many of our swim schools also offer free, fun and interactive W.A.T.E.R. safety presentations for local elementary schools, daycares and other community organizations.

2. Provides Physical Exercise

Swimming can be a fun way to keep your kids active and healthy all year long. While most people know swimming is a great low-impact cardio exercise, it also provides a whole host of other health benefits, like improving strength, endurance, flexibility, balance and more!

Goldfish swim facilities offer the added bonus of having indoor pools, which allows for winter swim lessons. This means that kids can get as much exercise in the winter as they do in the summer!

3. Aids Cardiovascular Health

When it comes to cardiovascular health, swimming is one of the best activities because it helps condition your heart and lungs to work together more efficiently. As a result, your heart doesn’t have to work as hard to pump blood and oxygen throughout your body.

4. Strengthens Lung Capacity

One of the biggest things swimmers are taught early on is how to control their breath, which in turn helps increase their lung capacity. This allows oxygen to pump through the body and provide energy more efficiently.

5. Improves Endurance

Swimming is a sport that exercises every muscle group while building cardio strength. This translates to better endurance and stamina, and actually sets the stage for extraordinary results in any other sport!

6. Builds Muscle

During swim lessons, your little fish will use muscle groups they may not have had a chance to strengthen otherwise. Each swim stroke they learn will have them using different muscles to pull, kick and glide their way through the water.

7. Aids Digestion

Not to get too specific, but our digestive system needs us to move for it to work optimally, too. Swimming provides the movement to open things up and aid digestion in kids. Imagine food like a marble, and your child’s intestinal system as the tight, winding hallway the marble needs to roll down.

8. Improves Sleep

Kids seem to have endless amounts of energy, and while you’d think they’d burn it off during their day, kids need to exercise ALL of their muscles in a productive way, which swimming is perfect for!

9. Increases Energy

It may sound counterintuitive that swimming can improve sleep and increase energy, but it’s true! As we learned in science class: An object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion. When your child is sitting around playing on their tablet or watching TV all day, it seems like that’s all they want to do. But, get them moving for a bit and they’ll want to continue doing something active.

10. Reduces Stress & Anxiety

Not only does swimming benefit the body, it’s been shown to help reduce stress, too.

Whether it’s the relaxing feeling of floating, or effortlessly gliding, being in the water has a calming effect for most people. But that’s not the only reason why swimming is said to be a stress-relieving activity.

When people are active, they tend to be happier and healthier. That’s because exercise releases endorphins (the brain’s natural feel-good chemicals), and reduces cortisol (the stress hormone).Therefore, swimming back and forth across the pool a few times gets the blood pumping and naturally floods your body with a happy feeling.

And taking swim lessons at Goldfish Swim School gives kids even more reasons to be happy! Our award-winning tropical atmosphere and shiver-free pools provide a fun backdrop where kids do some incredible growing. And when children have a hobby that brings them joy, they will likely be happier outside of the pool, as well.

11. Improves Memory

Exercise also helps strengthen the part of the brain that is associated with memory and learning. So, as your kids master the backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle and butterfly, think about all the good it’s doing, not just for their bodies, but also their minds.

12. Supports Academic Performance

The foundation for a child’s cognitive growth is rooted in two key factors: a safe environment and learning through guided play. According to a study by Griffith University, kids that begin swimming at an early age achieve physical and mental milestones before their peers. It is believed that the type of instruction and sensory learning kids are exposed to early on in swim lessons translates seamlessly into the type of learning they’ll do in the classroom.

13. Develops Motor Skills

Swimming, especially at an early age, has been scientifically linked to an increased performance in visual motor skills and oral expression in kids under the age of five. In fact, a Norwegian University of Science and Technology study revealed that infants who participated in swim lessons demonstrated better balance and motor skills from the start of their lessons up to the age of five.

14. Improves Concentration

Swimming takes a lot of coordination, not only physically, but mentally. There’s focus on leg kicks and arm pulls, and breath control, which doesn’t leave much space to focus on anything else. As a result, kids become focused on improving their swim skills and start seeing extraordinary results, realizing that concentrating really does make a difference in their ability to succeed!

15. Builds Character

You already know water safety is a lifelong skill kids learn during swim lessons, but did you know swimming can also teach your kids other valuable life lessons? As they learn various swim strokes and water safety techniques, they’ll also learn about hard work, perseverance, resilience and more!

16. Builds Confidence

We know children can be a little nervous about the water, and new experiences. It can be intimidating for new swimmers to let go of the wall and take those first few pulls and kicks toward the other side of the pool.

That’s why we’ve created an inviting and safe place where kids overcome their fears, learn to swim, respect the water and have lots of fun while doing it. With every kick, stroke and breath, kids gain confidence in themselves and their abilities, because every small win adds up to a BIG sense of accomplishment.

After all, life is one big pool, filled with lessons that challenge us, change us, and push us past our comfort zone. We’re here to give kids the confidence to dive in, while helping them build life skills they’ll use to make waves in the pool and beyond!

Sign Up & Experience Extraordinary Results

At Goldfish Swim School, we inspire children to reach past their comfort zone, discover new possibilities and become safer, more confident swimmers. Find a Goldfish Swim School location near you (we have over 100 locations across North America!) and enroll your child in swim lessons for toddlers, infants, and pre-teens today. Our confidence-building curriculum, tropical atmosphere and WOW!

Customer Service are just a few of the reasons why parents and children love Goldfish Swim School!