About Us
Founded in 2009 by former world-class swimmer Gus Calado, Planet Swim is now widely recognized as one of the top aquatic educational programs in Northeast Florida. With offering a wide variety of quality Swim programs all under one “roof” (Learn To Swim; Summer League Swimming; Year-Round Competitive Swim Team; Masters & Triathlon Swimming; Lap Swim; Stroke Development & Analysis) Planet Swim is a destination for both children and adults who are eager to learn or enhance their swimming skills.
Our Swim School program is where your Swimming journey begins – from 12 months old all the way to adults, our instructors make sure to customize your classes based on age, comfort level, and ability.
Our Teaching Curriculum has two main concentrations and is divided into 7 learning stages. We focus on developing skills in a progression format where each skill is built upon skills learned in previous stages while emphasizing the 3 basic swimming principles: Floatation, Breath Control, and Displacement.
1. Survival Swimming (3 stages) where we teach the basic safety techniques through positive reinforcement while building comfort and confidence in and around the water.
Our 3 stages of the Survival Swimming can be summarized into the following key words: 1. COMFORT – 2. CONFIDENCE – 3. INDEPENDENCE.
In the beginner stages our main goal is to establish a strong comfort level as we’re firm believers that without being comfortable in the aquatic environment it is very difficult to learn any new skills. Once swimmers are comfortable, we start working on the Survival Swimming skills in more depth to gain confidence and lastly progress into swimming independently! What we envision by “Swimming Independently” is to be able to comfortably perform a so-called ‘Swim-Roll-Swim’ sequence.
2. Stroke Development (4 stages) begins when a swimmer has mastered our Survival Swimming stages and/or is an independent and confident swimmer. During these last 4 stages of our curriculum we focus on the proper technique of all 4 Swimming Strokes; Dives; and Flip Turns.
Our goal is to simplify the complex techniques of the different strokes into a seamless progression while gradually increasing their endurance load that allows any swimmer to fully develop a strong foundation into the sport of Swimming that hopefully will one day carry them onto the next step in their Planet Swim Journey – our competitive Swim Team!
Since its inaugural season, our TEAM of passionate teachers has taught over 100,000 swimming lessons to children and adults ranging from novice to Olympic level swimmers. Our goal is to foster an environment where each student can safely explore the aquatic world while building important life-skills that will help them navigate through any waters!