Glossary of Terms

Here at Miller, sometimes you may feel like we are speaking a different language when we talk to you about your students swimming lesson, so we’ve developed a “Glossary of Terms” to help you better communicate with us and your students about swimming! We do our best to make swimming fun and easy to learn and we believe these terms help us capture the children’s imaginations and in turn create happy, successful swimmers! We hope this helps our swimmers become familiar with our unique aquatic dialect!

Puffy Cheeks – Taking a big breath and holding it in

Elbow, elbow, tummy, knee – the sequence for climbing out of the pool

Starfish Float/Pancake – Back Float

Air Plane Arms – Front and Back Float

Jelly Fish Float – survival float/ deadmans float

Tuck Float – floating on the belly, hugging the knees, also a survival float

Duck Dive – Assisted sit dive

Rocket Arms – Front Glide

Monkey on the wall – set up for a back glide (hands and feet on the wall, head back and ears in the water)

Pat your Pockets/Pat your bottom – finning and kicking on the back

My Tummy, Your Tummy/Row, Row, Row – Beginner Stroke, reaching and pulling

Pop-Up Breathing/“Say hello” – technique used to teach students how to pop their head up out of the water and a take a breath when swimming on their bellies.

Bobs – practicing rhythmic breathing used to help develop breath control (going up and down in the water, blowing out their bubbles)

Pointy Toes – position of feet for flutter kick, entire foot is pointed

Zip, Tee, Zoom – elementary back stroke

Catch-up – modified freestyle drill, used to teach the follow through to leg/press in the water

Side glide (with or without kick) – laying on the side with ear on the arm used to teach side glide breathing used in freestyle

Thumb-up, Pinky-in – used to teach backstroke hand position (thumb comes up out of the water and pinky goes in the water)

Smoothing the sand – sculling, practicing the “catch” of the water

“Kiss your Knee” – used to teach sit dive, students must bend all the way over “kiss their knee” before diving in (rolling in the water as opposed to belly flopping!)