Nothing to add except to say that I worked on a golf course in high school and quickly developed a theory that one of the leading causes of divorce in this country is men trying to teach their wives how to do something.

Good luck!

I'm going with either 1) get someone else or 2) just give her a few pointers but don't go excessive. Maybe show her some youtube videos and just say "this person explains it better than me". Give her a workout or two or do (simple ones), like 10x100m or something like that.

My father tried to teach me to golf in high school, that was a terrible experience. Even now with my daughter, she is four and I'm teaching her sight words, how to write letters/numbers. Its terrible, but hearing from pre-school she is doing amazing and is very good.

Just say that you would love to enjoy your time with her swimming, but that the initial learning would be best from lessons/a professional.

And that such learning would optimize your time together and enjoyment together.

Say something like "well, a pro lesson person can identify really personal swim differences I probably can't".

I'm the 1% I suppose, I took this plunge and lived to tell the tale. Since she decided to race tri with me, we focus primarily on freestyle. Here's a recap.

First session was an hour or so and was a lot of standing, bent over at the hips face in the water practicing bilateral breathing while doing the freestyle stroke with her arms and not actually swimming, breathing on every third, getting used to the motion and finding the pocket. 1 minute down at a time, then a short break. Once she felt fluid in the motion I had her doing 25 yard pulls with a buoy between the thighs so she didn't have to think about legs at all, just use arms and focus on breathing. I swam along side her, same speed, and encouraged her effort and progress at every wall, asking questions in the process on how she felt about what we were doing (digging for worries to focus on later).

The following week was a lot of pulls and kicks, getting used to the water. But then we started moving off pulls to actual freestyle with a light kick. Then tacked on the yards per interval. Then started in on some different drills to promote good form, real basic stuff. One day a week was endurance day with the longer yards per interval, other days would be drills. I would swim with her 1 time a week, the other sessions she would execute workouts I wrote up for her.

A few weeks later, we started in on 100 yard speed intervals.

Here's the important part!!!!! (how I survived this)

She recognizes that I have raced for a while now, therefore has faith in what I say. That was helpful. However.... Once that first session was done and she was swimming freestyle solo, I would provide the workouts but would NOT pick her apart. This is the slippery slope. Questions are great, suggestions are helpful, but a critique is what gets you in the dog house. "You know, you wouldn't be so slow if you would X instead of Y with your Z", this is a bad idea. BAD idea... She would eventually ask me or say something like "I just can't seem to pick up my speed on the 500's" which opens the opportunity for a form critique suggestion... These are the open opportunities where you can really get a point across without sleeping on the couch!

She went from brand new to first tri in 2 months, first OWS tri in 3 months, first Oly in 5 months, then this year she's done a couple races and is doing her first half. And I didn't die in the process. And bought a new bike. Success.

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Regards,
J. Smith

No. You're the same as all the rest of us schmucks. She's a fucking unicorn!

Just becuase you are good at doing something or know how to do something, doe not mean you can be good at teaching other how to do it. YES even if you are a talking about a professional athetle. This COULD work ONLY if you are good at teaching people stuff among other necesary conditions. Otherwise pay her the lessons.

do you know the principals/proper techniques for swimming?

if you do - teach one or 2 aspects of proper technique at a time.

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I would agree to this but also add one thing. Ive taught exes how to do lots of sports (they are exes on my doing and it had nothing to do with the learning process - just on record) but the critique is key. I have found you can offer up suggestions.

"Ok so your pull form is pretty good and it definitely works, but try extending a bit more. It might help to lengthen your stride. It might feel goofy at first, but I think it will make you more efficient"

(I just made that example up but you get it). I always respond to coaching that way. Ok you are doing well and it looks good but try this, might help, might not. But try it for a week and if it doesnt then go back to the way you were. Every human body functions differently.

As a wife to a triathlete who is ~5 min faster than I in a 70.3 swim, this is probably the best of the suggestions. Whatever you do, don't attempt to teach her yourself :)

My hubby and I have the most fun swimming together when we share a lane at Masters...on any repeat that is 100 (maybe 200 on a good day) or less I can usually hang with him in the pool though a) there is gratuitious drafting and b) a lot of red lining for me lol but I like that. Masters coach typically has different feedback for each of us, so it works out well.

And if we have an OWS outing, I get the wetsuit handicap and we can swim together and normal effort ha ha

We hit the pool for the first time tonight at her insistence. She was totally underestimating how hard the technique was going to be. Luckily we were the only ones there and the life guard was one of the swim instructors....and I may have rushed out to the pool deck ahead to talk with her alone. So I think the two of us may have convinced her she should take legit lessons

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sometimes you just have to eat the cake

I have a lifetime background in swimming and swim fast. Coaches will say I have a classic technique and great form. But never taught anyone how to swim until I taught my wife.

She was an ABSOLUTE beginner. Afraid of the water. We started with just floating; she got water up her nose and nearly choked. Spent a lot of time just letting her feel comfortable in the water; started each of the early lessons exactly the same way. Float around, get the feel, get relaxed.

Started with getting her core activated with kicking. She could hold a kick board and felt safer. This got her a fairly good body position.

Now for the stroke. She took it fairly naturally, but COULD NOT/WOULD NOT breath. Sunk her body each time as she over-rotated. Never critiqued her. Your job as the coach is to figure out something practical that will help fix the problem you observe, not tell the student to just do it correctly.

We fixed the breathing by floating--she would hold her head up because she felt it would keep water out of her nose. That's also why she over rotated. Got her comfortable with her head down--voila, she could breath and she could swim 25m.

Encourage. Encourage. Encourage.

Then ask her how it feels, what does she want to change.

She's never going to be first out of the water, but she is going to be able to do her first HIM in the next 12 months.

We really grew from this. Humility from both sides and realistic expectations helped a lot.

What I learned from the experience is how excellent you have to be at something to coach it. Swimming is a zillion very subtle motions orchestrated at once. Without all the hours in the pool throughout my life that make this second nature, I wouldn't know where to start in showing someone else how to do it. It made me listen to my friend who is an excellent runner and really helped me improve that aspect of my tri.

I love how tri is becoming a family sport in my house and fully encourage everyone to help their partners get out there too!

It is definitely a trap.

My wife does triathlons. She tells everyone that she knows that her husband is a triathlete junkie. Not many people know more than him. I tried to give her advice one time, and it didn't go so well.

Now, I just nod when she comes home and says so and so said she should be doing this. I'm like that's interesting. At one point she wanted to break 2 hours in a half marathon, so she went and got a running coach. Great, let's waste more money. All I could think is you're married to someone who can run a 1:20 half. Not that a 1:20 makes me someone to give out coaching tips, but whatever.

Side note, I've been cycling for almost 20 years and have spent many group rides doing my fair share of rotating through a pull. I'd rate my bike handling skills as pretty good, however every single time she and I go ride on the bike trail she's over there telling me what to do. I give up.

She also has a much nicer bike than I do. So, yes, it's a trap!

Great post. The worst that can happen is that the "teaching process" will amplify issues that are already there. If you want a real relationship, then you don't want to avoid anything.

I'm surprised at all the 'don't teach your wife!!' comments above. While I understand where they are coming from, and I am sure there are quite a few couples for whom this is 100% absolutely true, it would make me sad to think it is true for everyone.

My wife and I are by no means ideal, but so long as she expresses an interest in learning/doing something, or me the same, we absolutely teach each other, and it's been great. I taught her tons of stuff as she went through science graduate school (I was more advanced than her at that point), she taught me tons of stuff about everything else, and we ended up happily married.

I will admit that I won't force my interests onto her - when she is in 'running training mode' she loves my advice, but I know that it's not her style to train hard enough to race hard for AG wins - her interest is more in dance/yoga, and she also doesn't force me to do her dance/yoga classes.

I'll also definitely acknowledge that I've been lucky in that I've mainly focused my teaching on stuff my wife is REALLY interested in learning. There are some situations where a militant HTFU style bossy coach is needed to keep the athlete going, and if that military-style authoritarian teaching style is what your spouse wants or needs, then, yeah, don't coach your wife! (My wife does TERRIBLY with military-style teachers/coaches - actually backfires big time on her/them.)

Can you buy and assemble something from IKEA without issues? Then you can probably coach her.

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The point is, ladies and gentleman, that speed, for lack of a better word, is good. Speed is right, Speed works. Speed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.