Deciding when to serve dinner around a swimming lesson can be a tricky one to balance. They’ve just come out of school and they’re hungry. Swimming is quite soon and if they don’t eat now, they’ll be starving when they get out the pool. Yep, we understand the struggle, so here’s our advice to make it easy for your wee one.
With almost 20 years experience in delivering swimming lessons, we’re often asked when and what is best to eat before and after swimming lessons. We’ve also experienced what happens when the eating schedule doesn’t quite go to plan!
In the past, we’ve found that children who eat just before swimming will often be a bit more tired and can actually find it harder to perform certain physical tasks. We’ve also encountered children being sick in the pool which has resulted in pool closures; costly for us and the parents!
To make it easier for your child, we recommend a light snack straight after school, rather than a main meal. This will allow your child’s stomach to feel settled, but not full before they go swimming. Remember, there can be a lot of activity in the lesson, from jumping in to somersaults and tumble turns and doing this on a full stomach would make anyone feel sick. We suggest that the light snack should be eaten 45 minutes before the lesson. After the lesson is the perfect time to have a main meal, to replenish all the expended energy.
Get the most from each lesson by being clever about when you are feeding your child.