The Shanghai French School places a strong emphasis on swimming as a key aspect of child development, offering them far more than just the simple enjoyment of being in the water, starting as early as first grade. From its myriad benefits to its potential for competition, let’s delve into this article to uncover how we approach this discipline within our school.
The 1,001 virtues of swimming for children
Swimming offers many benefits, regardless of your child’s age. Among them:
❁ Water safety: Knowing how to swim ensures better safety around water, reducing the risk of accidents.
❁ Physical development: Swimming promotes muscle development, flexibility, and coordination in children, while also preserving their joints. Despite engaging all muscles of the body, swimming carries very little risk of injury.
❁ Cardiovascular health: Regular swimming strengthens the heart and blood circulation, reducing the risk of cardiovascular diseases.
❁ Stress management: Swimming helps children manage stress and anxiety, promoting relaxation and well-being.
❁ Self-confidence: Crucial in a child’s development, self-confidence grows through mastering swimming. This encourages them to tackle specific challenges and surpass themselves. Furthermore, swimming offers a vast margin of progression compared to many other sports.
❁ Socialization: Swimming classes encourage socialization and teamwork, strengthening children’s social skills.
Our coaches incorporate all these elements when designing their sessions, starting from elementary school, whether as part of the school curriculum or extracurricular activities.
Swimming in ASC: perfecting skills and shining in competition
The journey into competitive swimming unfolds through two progressive levels: Starter and Elite.
Starter: introduction to their first competitions
The Starter level focuses primarily on developing the three primary strokes, then progressing to four (breaststroke, freestyle, backstroke, and butterfly), while also introducing children to their first official competitions. These events bring together hundreds of swimmers and include timed and ranked races, with medals up for grabs.
This competitive platform offers them a unique experience by exposing them to the richness of high-level swimming. They compete against teams from other international schools during tournaments organized by official swimming leagues, of which the Shanghai French School is a part: SSL and SSSA.
Elite: path to expertise and excellence
Once a Starter becomes “advanced,” they transition to “Elite”: mastering the regulations associated with the four strokes, associated swimming techniques, and having already participated in several competitions. It’s then time for them to double or even triple their weekly training time and fully immerse themselves in the competitive world by participating in all the competitions where LFS fields a team, approximately ten per year, in Shanghai and its surroundings. In this program, self-improvement and the pursuit of performance further propel the development of our young swimmers.
Swimmers also take part in our annual championship organized by LFS: The Euro Swimming Championship (ESC), which is organized in 3 rounds, from November to June. It includes short-distance events for Round 1, long-distance events for Round 2, and relays for Round 3, with teams mixing students from all international schools for a truly unique experience.
LFS Hosts the Southeast Asia French Schools Swimming Championship: CAPN!
Our top swimmers will even have the chance to be selected to participate in our prestigious annual PROZAP: the CAPN, a championship where all French schools in the Southeast Asia region compete. This year, right here in Shanghai, we will have the opportunity to host this highly anticipated event in May! Our electronic timing systems with large-screen displays will be in place to ensure everyone has an unforgettable experience. The Yangpu campus pool is expected to be ready for operation by early May for this occasion, pending regulatory approvals from local authorities.
At LFS, we take swimming seriously and see it as a crucial element in a child’s development and overall well-being. That’s why we’ve chosen to invest in modern, ever-evolving resources, firmly set on the path to the future. Are you ready to watch your child become the next rising star of swimming in Shanghai?