£44 the week · Five lessons for the price of four
Intensive courses
Monday to Friday. Half an hour a day. One week.
Half an hour in the water every day for a week.
That's it. And it does something a weekly lesson can't.
Not better than weekly lessons. Different.
We'll say that plainly, because plenty of places won't.
Weekly lessons are for consistency — steady progress, week on week.
An intensive is for acceleration — a concentrated push on one thing.
Plenty of our stronger swimmers do both: weekly lessons through the year, and an intensive in the holidays.
Why a week works
Being in the water every day means there's no time to forget. A child comes back the next day still holding what they had yesterday, instead of spending the first ten minutes of a weekly lesson getting it back.
The body remembers movement far quicker when it's repeated daily. Five days of that is a lot of learning.
Which is why it suits a nervous swimmer particularly well. There's no gap long enough to lose your nerve in.
What parents tend to notice by Friday
- A stronger kick
- Better body position
- More confidence
- Swimming more independently
- A more refined stroke
Sometimes it's the difference between a child teetering on the edge of a milestone and sailing straight through it.
The repetition, the movement learning and the confidence a child needs to properly move up a level. It's fascinating to watch the shift happen in such a short space of time.
When it's the right choice
If your child is working on one particular thing — a stroke, a technique, a milestone they're nearly at — a week of daily practice will do more for it than five weeks of Tuesdays.
And in the school holidays it stops the long gap. No six weeks off, no coming back having lost ground, no starting again.
Right for
- Nervous swimmers
- Working on one stroke or skill
- Close to a milestone
- School holidays
- Alongside weekly lessons
When they run
- The summer holidays
- May half term
- February half term
Mainly the summer holidays, with courses at May and February half term most years. Exact dates go up as they're set. They fill, so it's worth asking early.
What to bring
A costume and a towel. Goggles if your child likes them.
Bring
- A swimming costume
- A towel
Nice to have
- Goggles, if your child likes them
Don't need
- Equipment — it's all ours
Water does two things nothing on land can
It takes your weight
Nothing jars and nothing pounds. Joints that have started complaining about a hard floor don't complain in water. For a lot of people it's the one kind of exercise still properly open to them.
And it pushes back
Water is far harder to move through than air, so every movement meets resistance — steady, even, and from every direction at once. You don't need weights; you're already working against something.
Which is an unusual combination: something that asks a great deal of your muscles and almost nothing of your joints.
It also means you can work harder in water than you can on land. Nothing is braking you — no impact to absorb, no landing to brace for — so you can push further than your knees would ever let you push on a pavement.
It's also one of the few things that gets more useful as you get older, not less. Plenty of people come to us having given up on exercise that hurts.
If you're swim fit, you're fit for anything.
People don't learn in cold water.
A cold child isn't learning anything except that they want to get out. A cold adult is holding their breath and bracing. Warm water is the first condition for teaching anybody anything in a pool.
You step in and there's no shock, no standing on the steps working up to it, no sharp breath. Ours sits at 33 degrees. Most pools run around 28, and five degrees is the difference between bracing yourself and just getting in.
We've babies in there, children, and plenty of women well over sixty. Our teachers are in the water for hours at a time. It has to be warm.
For a nervous swimmer that matters more than anything else on this page. The first thirty seconds decide how the rest of the lesson goes.
Price
- Full week
- £44 — Five lessons for the price of four
Ask us whether a week would help
Ring us on 01422 247500 and tell us where your child is up to. If a weekly lesson is the better answer, we'll say so.
Ogden Hall
24 Causeway Foot, Ogden, Halifax, HX2 8YB
There's a large car park on site, and it's free. You won't be hunting for a space.
Before you book, our Parent & Carer Code of Conduct, Safeguarding & Child Protection Policy and General Terms & Conditions are all published.