About ISR: Lessons

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ISR’s unique results are achieved through fully customized, safe, and effective, one-on-one lessons with only your child and the Instructor in the water. What your child will learn, and the way he or she will learn it, is what makes ISR so different from traditional swimming lessons.  As a certified ISR instructor, I customize your child's lesson experience to focus on the ISR skills that are developmentally and medically appropriate for your child and your family's aquatic activities. Always putting safety first, ISR emphasizes competence, which leads to confidence, and provides the foundation for a lifetime of enjoyment in and around the water.

Typically, ISR Lessons are available to infants and young children 6 months to ~6 years old. Lessons are no more than 10 minutes a day, 5 days a week, Monday through Friday. In order to master these ISR Self-Rescue™ skills, the enrollment period is typically between 6 and 8 weeks. 

After the initial lesson experience is complete, ISR recommends that every child participates in Refresher lessons every 6 months to a year. This will enable your child to learn how to adjust their swimming and floating skills to their continually growing and developing bodies.
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All students, even those as young as 6 months old, learn the fundamental ISR skill of rolling onto their backs to float, rest, and breathe. Infants and toddlers who are not yet walking well will learn to maintain this position until help can reach them, and it's just as important for our older students as they incorporate more swimming skills. This skill set traditionally takes about 4-6 weeks to accomplish.

As toddlers and young children gain more physical skills on land, they are ready to learn more skills in the water as well.  Lessons for children that are solid walkers focus on teaching the ISR Self-Rescue® skill of swim-float-swim survival sequence. Children learn to swim with their head down; roll onto their back to float, rest, and breathe; and then turn over to continue the sequence of swimming and floating until they can reach the safety of the pool steps, side of the pool, or shoreline - where they can either crawl out or until they can be rescued.  This skill set takes typically 6 - 7 weeks to accomplish. 

Refresher lessons are extremely important in continuing and maintaining your child's ISR Self-Rescue™ skill development. Children grow and develop rapidly from infants to toddlers and young children. This development process represents improved strength, coordination, a change in their center of gravity, and a more finely tuned cognitive ability. Refresher lessons are designed to meet the demands of their growing bodies and will allow them to make adjustments in their float and strengthen their swim.  

In accordance with this growth, children enrolled in ISR should return periodically to participate in Refresher Lessons. These lessons are scheduled for 10 min/day, 5 days/week. Previous Swim-Float-Swim students will take approximately 2 weeks to complete. Previous Rollback-to-Float students, refresher lessons will likely take approximately 3-4 weeks.

After completing their ISR Self-Rescue™ skillset, maintenance lessons help students to maintain their skills and confidence throughout the year. Ideally, maintenance lessons should be scheduled at intervals recommended by the instructor, ranging from once or twice a week to once a month. Maintenance lessons are also a great idea if your family is planning to take a vacation and there will be water nearby (pool, ocean, bay, lake, etc). These lessons can be a quick way to check in on skills and boost confidence before traveling.