Swim England Artistic Swimming

The home of artistic swimming in England

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Starting Out

Getting into artistic swimming couldn’t be easier. Children looking to take up the sport need to:

  1. Learn the basics as part of the Swim England Learn to Swim Programme
  2. Join a club to develop and progress through their artistic swimming grades

Childen can be introduced to the sport as part of the Swim England Learn to Swim Programme while there are also opportunities for adults to get involved to improve their fitness or simply to try something new.

For more on joining an artistic swimming club go to our Find a Club page here.

Getting into artistic swimming through swimming lessons

Getting into artistic swimming can be done as part of swimming lessons. These can be delivered by a club or by your pool operator.

Ask your swimming teacher about it. It is known as stages, or levels, 8-10 of the Aquatics Skills Framework (click the images below for what you need to do to pass stages 8-10 in artistic swimming).

Sculling and eggbeater

The two most important artistic swimming moves that you will be taught in stages 8 – 10 are sculling and eggbeater. These are vital to artistic swimming:

  • Sculling is the hand movement that propels the body and is the most essential part of artistic swimming.
  • Eggbeater is a form of treading water that allows you to remain stable above the water while leaving the hands free to perform strokes. Swimmers can also perform ‘boosts’, where they use their legs to propel themselves out of the water.

Once a swimmer has mastered the basics of the Aquatics Skills Framework, they can start working towards the achieving artistic swimming grades for figures and routines.

Getting into artistic swimming through Swim England Awards

Swim England’s Artistic Swimming Grade Awards are progressive stages that introduce figures over six stages and routine skills over five stages.

This pathway is also the entry qualification for competition at all levels of the sport.

Swim England artistic swimming grade awards

The Grade Awards offer swimmers a tangible way of monitoring their progress and success as they move through each grade, collecting stickers for bronze, silver and gold levels to track incremental improvements within each grade. Each certificate also come with matching pin badges they can showcase on their bags and club kit.

Find out more about the artistic swimming grades in our artistic swimmer development pages where you can watch videos demonstrating each element for each stage of the grading pathway.

How do adults get involved?

There are an increasing number of opportunities for adults to get involved with artistic swimming in England.

Whether it is for fitness or a new challenge, you can learn artistic swimming at a number of clubs across the country.

  • Click here to find out more about Masters artistic swimming.
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