How To Become A Swimming Teacher in the USA

If you would like to become a swimming trainer, you need to earn a swim instructor certification. This is why you are reading this.

Once you have gained advanced swimming skills, you can use them to help other people learn how to swim.

You can also work for hotels, swimming companies, and other businesses as their swimming pool lifeguard, safety officer, etc.

During the summer, so many swimming training jobs come up. Some hotels and resorts can employ you to be their lifeguard, swimming instructor for toddlers, and many more.

Once you get the right certification, it will open many doors for you. You can find employment opportunities with private and public entities.

Types of Swim Instructor Certifications

There are many types of swim instructor certifications. To choose the best one, you need to know something about several of them. Here they are:

First Aid, CPR, and AED Instructor

This first aid course is the first one that you should study when you want to become a swimming instructor. In this simple course, you will learn the basic but most important skills for saving lives.

Sometimes, when you rescue people, they might be non-responsive. You might need to resuscitate them by doing CPR and other life-saving procedures.

To get this certification, you need to have a post-high school education or training lasting more than two years. You do not need to renew this certification, and there are no oral or verbal exams.

Lifeguard Certification

This course is going to prepare and equip you with skills that can enable you to recognize water emergencies. This also enables you to identify risks before they happen and move in to prevent them from happening.

In this certification, you are going to learn how to give almost professional care for injuries, sudden illnesses, and cardiac/breathing emergencies to victims as you wait for emergency medical services to arrive.

To take the lessons for this certification, you can take some classes online and some “class-based” sessions with an instructor. There are written exams, and you must pass by 80 percent.

To take this course, you must fulfill some requirements:

First, you must be at least 15 years of age.

You must be able to swim 300 yards with breath control and controlled breathing. You must also be able to swim the breaststroke or the front crawl, but mostly both. When taking this course, swimming on the side or the back is not allowed.

You should be able to keep your hands under your armpits to tread water using the legs only for 2 minutes.

Trainees should be able to swim for at least 20 yards in only 100 seconds or do a surface dive to a depth of 7 to 10 meters and retrieve an object weighing 10 pounds without wearing swimming goggles for the same length of time.

You should be able to swim for 20 yards with the retrieved object in your hands while keeping your face close to the surface to be able to breathe and swim to the ladder.

LifeGuard Pro Certification

This course is the best for managers. The Red Cross offers this course in the USA, where there are more than 1500 trainers in different states.

Some of the things that this course is going to teach you include:

• Water safety
• First aid
• CPR
• Lifeguarding

In addition, there is shallow and deep water certification, as well as swimming pool certification. You must also complete each of the courses offered and score at least 80 percent.

The CPR, lifeguarding, and first aid courses require you to complete a written exam and pass with 80 percent or higher.

To take this course, you must be at least 18 years of age. If you are not, your legal guardian is going to have to sign for you.

YMCA swim instructor certification

The YMCA swimming instructor certification is very popular. By the time you get done with it, you are going to be a full-time instructor.

In this course, you are going to learn hands-on skills to train other swimmers. When you are done training, you can get a summer job as a swimming trainer at some resort or hotel. You can also get hired to offer private swimming lessons to adults.

Some of the ways to take these lessons include group sessions, practice, and even classroom activities. You are going to need to tread water for at least 2 minutes and swim 25 yards using the front crawl, breaststroke, butterfly, backstroke, and sidestroke.

Before you can enroll for this course, you need to complete and pass the CPR/AED for the professional rescuer and Basic First Aid & Oxygen Administration.

Infant swim instructor certification

When people take vacations, they always need someone to train their infants and toddlers how to swim. Therefore, when you train to be an infant swim instructor, you will always have a job when the swimming season sets in.

That is not all. You can also open your infant swimming school. Working with infants in a warm pool is one of the most rewarding jobs. Seeing the little ones take to water and have their fun is very rewarding.

Infants cannot swim instinctively. They have to be trained. They are more delicate than adults, and they require more attention. Therefore, it is best to have a trained instructor teach them.

To qualify, you have to take and complete the infant swim instructor certification. This includes knowing how to teach children to kick, roll, and maintain the correct posture.

You can also learn how to teach kids to float and swim face-down in the water without swallowing pool water.

If teaching young ones how to swim is your kind of thing, PediaSwim is what you need.

BSI (Basic Swim Instructor) Certification

If you intend to look for a swimming trainer job at a resort or a hotel facility, the BSI (Basic Swim Instructor) is the course that you need.

After taking this course, you will be able to teach newbies the following things:

• Introduction to the water/swimming
• Basic water skills
• How to develop swimming strokes

Please note that this certification trains you to teach newbie swimmers from levels 1 to 3 only. You will have to take another, more advanced certification to train on different levels.

WSI: Water safety instructor

If you would like to train people to swim at a more advanced level, take the water safety instructor course.

With this one, you are going to teach all swimming skill levels. That is not all, because, as the name suggests, you will also learn about water safety.

You will teach your students about water safety in different places, such as lakes, ponds, rivers, and others.

To learn this course, you can take it online or through person-to-person interaction with your instructor. The course usually takes two days, but many trainers and institutions offer a recertification at a fee.

After taking this course, you will be equipped with the skills to teach children how to swim at an advanced level.

ALTS: Adults Learn To Swim

In the population, millions of people never learned how to swim at a young age. The ALTS course is specifically designed for such people.

When you take this swim instructor certification, it will equip you with the skills to teach adults how to swim. You will also learn how to teach adults with minimal swimming skills to build on them.

This is a popular course for swimming instructors. You can find it in different places, but the best one comes from USMS. They have put together a very useful resource for teaching adults how to swim.

Swim Lessons University: Entirely Online swim instructor certification

This is an online-based swimming instructor certification course. This program, and others, are the brainchild of Jim Reiser, who was a college swimming instructor for more than a decade.

Since this is an online course, it is very flexible. You just get on the Swim Lessons University website, create an account with them, choose the course that you want, and email them your swimming resume.

You will be required to watch DVDs for instructions on different courses. Some of these DVDs are on:

• How To Teach Children How To Swim
• Swim Strokes
• Swim 101
• Life-saving Strokes
• Butterfly and Breaststroke
• Foundations Teaching
• Parents & Tots DVD

Once you complete the course you are taking, you can email SLU with your certificates and resume, and they will issue you a license.

Please note that every swim course costs a fee.

Swim Instructor Certification FAQ

To become a swimming trainer, you need to take a certification course. There are so many of them, with some designed to teach you how to train children. Here are some frequently asked questions that can help shed more light on this topic:

How do I become a swimming trainer?

Take one, two, or three instructor-led courses. These can be:

• Lifeguard Certification
• First Aid, CPR, and AED Instructor
• LifeGuard Pro Certification
• YMCA swim instructor certification
• Infant swim instructor certification
• BSI (Basic Swim Instructor Certification)
• WSI: Water safety instructor
• ALTS: Adults Learn To Swim

Some of these courses are available online only, and some you can take online and through physical classes.

What does a swimming coach do?

After getting a few certifications of your choice, you can become a swimming coach. Your work will be to help newbie adult, infant, and toddler learners know how to swim. You can also help people with basic swimming skills build on their skills.

What’s it like being a swimming teacher?

This is one of the most satisfying jobs in the world. If you teach toddlers how to overcome their fear of water, how to float, and how to kick, the delight on their faces will be everything you can ever ask for. Teaching older students how to develop their swimming strokes is a lot of fun.

How much does a swim instructor in the United States make?

Swimming instructors can make more than $50,000 in the USA, with the national average being $53,497. This differs from state to state.

In the UK, swimming teachers can make up to £24,000 per year, while in Canada, they can make $33,321 to $58,500 annually, depending on experience.

Conclusion: How to get a swimming instructor certification

You need to earn a swim instructor certification to train other people how to swim. Even if you want to train infants, toddlers, and older children how to swim, there are certifications for the same.

Choose a course that is offered online as well as in classroom setups. Most of these courses take a maximum of two days, and some allow recertification.

The cost of these courses can run into a few thousand dollars. However, this is money well spent because you will get the full value of it.