Swimming Game – Statue Master

Category: Personal Challenge (in groups)

Core Skill: Body position, body control, mimicking

Name: Statue Master

Statue master is an interesting game that at first looks like you are wasting time or doing nothing. We first played this game with our beginning developmental age group swim team using the formula found in the book, How to Create Fun and Effective Swim Games. You can break down learning to swim into its most basic parts. One of those parts is asking participants to mimic what the coach demonstrates. This game practices mimicking body movements and poses. We assume that learning to swim is also about learning to move your body in a very specific pose and motion. If swimmers play games and practice making their body do specific things, then when we ask them to mimic and do swimming specific motions they’ll be better able to do them. Statue master is a simple fun game that works on breath control, body poses, body position, and balance.

How to play:

Form partners. One person is the “statue master.” The “statue master” goes underwater first and turns into a statue holding any pose. If it is a swimming pose, that is even better.

The partner counts to “two one thousand” not looking at the “statue master” and then goes underwater. The partner then has 3 seconds to match the “statue master’s” pose.

This must be done underwater.

If the “statue master’s” pose is not exactly mimicked in 3 seconds, then the “statue master” gets a point.

If the partner can mimic the “statue master’s” pose, then they get a point.

Partners should take turns switching who is the “statue master” back and forth where everyone goes 3 times each (6 rounds).

We generally only play this game for about 3-5 minutes and use it as a reward at the end of a long practice.

From my experience the swimmers seemed to really enjoy the game. On repeated opportunities to play children were excited and loudly happy about playing the game again.

Have you played this game? If so, share your experience in the comments or connect on twitter, facebook or email.