Review: Aquaplane
In our family, if you’re three months old, you get to go swimming.
Seb is currently quite a lot older than that, which means he has been swimming for several years now. In the last year, he’s been confident enough to swim in the ‘big pool’, but what he really needs to work on is his technique – swimming in the correct position, getting his strokes right, becoming a stronger, more confident swimmer generally so that he can manage a whole half hour in the deep end of the pool in the next stage of lessons.
D, on the other hand has pretty much no confidence at 4 years old – and told me the other day that she wants to be ‘orange hat til I’m tall’ because if she demonstrates to the teacher that she CAN swim the required 5m (I know she can if she wants to) she’ll be moved into yellow hats, and that means lessons in the bit of the teaching pool where she can’t touch the bottom.
So both Seb and D need to improve their confidence to be able to move on and really get the most out of their time in the pool.
Then, along came the Aquaplane.
It’s a swimming float, and it’s shaped like a plane. There are four different bright colours available, and each has slots that you can thread two Velcro straps through, so that the Aquaplane can be strapped to your child. This gives their back an extra bit of buoyancy, meaning they can swim easily in the optimum position to build on their technique. Previously, the kids have always had float jackets that we use when we go on holiday or visit the pool as a family just for fun. They do help in the sense that they keep them afloat, but I find that it’s difficult for them to swim effectively in them because they restrict arm movement (particularly when they were smaller) and also promote a kind of ‘bobbing cork’ position – far more vertical than horizontal. Little B in particular is not keen on the float jacket concept, as every time she tries to flip herself forward to ‘dig her arms’ she tends to spin around instead.
Immediately, Seb was won over by the design of the Aquaplane, as it feels a lot more ‘grown up’ than a float jacket too. He got lots of comments from other kids who thought it looked amazing, and before long he was happily racing me up and down the pool, regardless of the depth. The Aquaplane supported him perfectly, giving him just enough help to keep him afloat in a great swimming position, with the freedom to move his arms to really work on his stroke technique.
He loved how it helped for swimming on his back too (and it obviously did support his stroke development there too because at his next swimming lesson his teacher remarked how much better it was looking). One hour of front swimming, back swimming, twirling and jumping later and I was ready to leave the pool but Seb would have quite happily continued for a lot longer!
D got to use the Aquaplane next, and having heard from Seb how much fun it was, she cheerfully strapped it on and was confident enough to jump straight in to the pool, even though it was too deep for her to touch the bottom. I’d been more dubious whether she would get on with it but she absolutely loved it too – again we were swimming for about an hour with lots of jumping in and ‘digging and kicking’ going on. She insisted it was so much fun that I should give it a try – but unfortunately it seems I’m too big for a kids Aquaplane, well in the strapped on sense anyway.
What you CAN do as an adult with an Aquaplane (or as a more confident child) is to take the straps off and use it as a float in front of you, to help develop kicking technique. Seb was keen to try that out too, and really enjoyed swimming with the Aquaplane straight out in front of him.
In fact, it went so well that – having been swimming with it a few times – Seb’s teacher has now said he can be assessed at his next swimming lesson to move up a level, as he’s really improved in all the required areas. Fingers crossed for him, and thanks a lot, Aquaplane! [EDIT: he did it!]
We will definitely be buying a second one so that D can continue to improve her confidence too 🙂
Leave a Reply