About Nisha Millet
Nisha Millet is India’s first woman to qualify for the swim team at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. She has won over 600 gold medals at State, National and International Meets such as Asian Age Championships, SAF and Afro-Asian games. Her list of prestigious awards include the Arjuna Award and Prime Minister’s Best Sportswoman award at National Games. Having retired from her 16 year career, she is involved in several activities and is the Director of the Nisha Millet Swimming Academy. The academy conducts swimming programs for adults and children across Bangalore and has trained more than 10,000 swimmers so far.
Summer is the ultimate season for children to learn swimming. But with the enthusiasm comes the daunting task of finding the right academy, coach, timings; all without buring holes down our pockets. Nisha Millet, India’s Olympic level swimmer, dives straight into our questions and puts us at ease by telling us all we need to know about swimming coaching.
In our previous article we covered Nisha Millet’s advice on getting your child started with swimming. In this post, Nisha delves into the details of coaching and shares some of her personal experiences.
What to look for while selecting a swimming school?
Safety is of utmost importance, hence it is recommended that you always examine the school or academy before enrolling your child for swimming classes. Make sure that:
- The water is clear and chlorinated.
- The pool should be free from adults during an ongoing kids batch.
- The coach to student ratio should be less than 1:10.
- And the coach should be approachable and friendly so that your child can enjoy his/her learning experience.
Water familiarisation takes a few days at the start of the camp. So it’s important for the duration of the swimming course to be a minimum of fifteen days. Otherwise it is unlikely that the child will learn much. If your child takes longer to learn, has slight fear or is keen to continue, then you can enrol him/her for a follow up course. A mere 3 weeks of swimming in summer, may cause the child to forget the skill after a year. It is therefore vital for them to get back into water every once in a while.
Nisha, being a parent yourself, please share some of your personal experiences of swimming with your kids.
I have twin baby girls who are 1.4 yrs old. I got them into the pool when they were just 5 months old. My hubby and I are always with them. We don’t use floats, so that they learn to walk in the baby pool, splash, kick their legs and play with their swimming toys. In winters, at home in our balcony, we fill our small inflatable pool with lukewarm water. They love swimming so we make sure they enjoy it throughout the year. We are looking forward to this summer and have even bought them infant kickboards to use.
What’s your coaching style? How do you make it fun and interactive for kids?
The motto of our academy is “Don’t Worry, Swim Happy!” As a child, I had a bad experience. I was thrown into the deep end of the pool, on the second day of my class, without even being taught the basics of swimming. So when I started my own academy I vowed to help kids and adults enjoy the water and thereby learn to love swimming. We believe that if you can explain techniques to the students, swimming becomes super easy and enjoyable. We also do a lot of relays and games for kids once they learn. That adds to the fun and encourages teamwork. We do a 1:8 ratio of coach to children so we ensure each child gets more attention than other academies.
With this article, we conclude our interview with Nisha Millet. We are extremely grateful to Nisha for taking time off and sharing detailed information with us. We hope you find these articles useful in taking informed decisions about swimming coaching classes and make this summer even more enjoyable for your tots.
For more details on Nisha Millet Swimming Academy and the Summer Camp 2015 click here.
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