Probably not. But there is an important difference between remembering how to swim and being the same swimmer you were three or four months ago.
After a break, children may still remember the skill.
What often changes is everything around it.
Breathing isn’t quite as automatic.
Timing gets messy.
Endurance drops.
Technique gets a little sloppy.
And skills that were only beginning to click may need more work when they return.
So the question isn’t really:
“Will my child forget how to swim?”
A better question is:
“What happens to the skills they’re building right now?”
Because after more than three decades of teaching swimming, that’s the part we care about.
Strong swimming doesn’t disappear overnight
Swimming is a motor skill.
Like riding a bike, skating or playing an instrument, practice matters. Stop practising and some of the sharpness starts to fade.
But that doesn’t mean everything disappears.
A large 2025 meta analysis published in Psychological Bulletin reviewed 457 studies examining what happens to motor skills when people stop practising them.
Depending on what researchers measured, it took roughly 6.5 to 13 months for half of the original improvement to be lost.
Before anybody starts counting exactly 6.5 months from their child’s last lesson, don’t.
The research covered many different motor skills and populations. It was not specifically studying children taking winter off swimming lessons.
The useful takeaway is much simpler:
Motor skills tend to fade gradually. They don’t simply disappear the moment practice stops.
Swimming skills can stick around for a long time
There’s some reassuring research specifically involving swimming too.
Researchers followed 3,603 people in rural Bangladesh who had learned survival swimming as children through a program called SwimSafe.
More than ten years later, 84% could still swim 25 metres and float or tread water for at least 30 seconds.
About 70% reported swimming less than once a month after completing the program.
That’s pretty remarkable.
It’s also important to understand what it does and doesn’t tell us.
These swimmers had already developed established survival swimming skills. The research was conducted in a completely different environment from a Canadian swim school, and it doesn’t tell us exactly what happens when your child takes December through March off.
But it reinforces something we’ve seen at Back to Basics for decades:
Once a swimming skill is truly established, there’s something there to come back to.
And that word established matters.
A lot.
There is a big difference between learning a skill and owning it
Imagine two children learning to float on their backs.
One gets into position independently, relaxes, finds their balance and holds the float comfortably.
The other can almost do it.
They still want an instructor’s hand under their shoulders. Their chin comes up. Their body folds. Then they remember what they’re supposed to do and try again.
Both children are learning the same skill.
But only one has really made it their own.
Take both children out of the pool for several months and we wouldn’t expect them to return in exactly the same place.
That’s why consistency matters most while skills are still being built.
Established skills can get rusty.
Developing skills can lose momentum.
Those are not the same thing.
What tends to look different after a break?
When children return to swimming after time away, they don’t normally arrive having forgotten what water is.
They look rusty.
A child may still know how to swim freestyle, but their breathing isn’t happening as naturally.
They may still know how to kick, but the kick isn’t as efficient.
They can still swim the distance, but they’re tired sooner.
They remember the pieces. They just aren’t putting those pieces together as smoothly. And that makes sense.
Swimming isn’t one skill. Your arms are doing one thing. Your legs are doing another. Your body needs to stay in position. Your breathing has to happen at the right moment.
And somehow you’re supposed to do all of that while continuing to move forward.
Practice is what turns all of those individual instructions into something a swimmer can do without thinking about every piece.
What about fitness?
Fitness can change during a break too.
Studies involving trained young swimmers have measured performance changes after relatively short periods away from regular swimming.
One found roughly a 2% decline in 100 metre freestyle performance after an 11 week break.
Another found young competitive swimmers were 3.8% slower over 400 metres after four weeks.
Another study found no measurable change in a 25 metre sprint after six weeks.
Annoyingly, research refuses to provide one beautifully convenient number for a swim school blog.
These studies involved trained swimmers rather than children learning basic swimming skills, so we wouldn’t use those percentages to predict what will happen to your child.
But they illustrate something useful.
Knowing how to swim and being in swimming shape are different things.
A returning swimmer can remember the skill while needing time to regain some conditioning, efficiency and rhythm.
So why keep swimming through the winter?
Winter is time they could spend getting better.
Think about four months of weekly lessons. That’s roughly another season of opportunities to practise.
- To make breathing automatic.
- To strengthen a kick.
- To improve body position.
- To turn an assisted skill into an independent one.
- To build endurance.
- To clean up a stroke.
- To learn what comes next.
If your child stops for winter, they may come back in spring, shake off the rust and continue.
Fine.
But while they’re getting back to where they were, the child who continued swimming has spent those months building on what they already knew.
Continuing lessons isn’t only about preventing regression.
It’s about building stronger fundamentals.
And fundamentals have been our thing for quite a while. Since 1992, actually.
We may have committed to the name a little too aggressively.
When does consistency matter most?
If your child is still learning to swim independently, we’d generally encourage you to keep going if your family can.
Not because missing lessons causes some aquatic catastrophe.
Because developing skills need repetition.
If your child is finally putting their face in comfortably, beginning to float independently, learning to breathe properly or swimming their first unassisted distance, they’re in the middle of building something.
Every lesson gives them another opportunity to practise it correctly. Then practise it again. And again.
Eventually, they don’t have to think about it.
That’s when a skill starts becoming part of their swimming rather than something they’re simply attempting during lessons.
Fundamentals first.
Everything else has to stand on them.
When might a winter break make sense?
Sometimes it does.
Maybe your child is already a capable, independent swimmer.
Maybe hockey, skiing, school or seventeen other activities have taken over the calendar.
Maybe the family budget needs some breathing room after December.
Maybe your swimmer simply needs a break.
One useful reference point is the Lifesaving Society’s Swim to Survive standard.
It includes three skills:
- Roll into deep water.
- Tread water for one minute.
- Swim 50 metres.
The Lifesaving Society describes these as minimum skills for surviving an unexpected fall into deep water.
Passing that standard does not mean your child is finished learning or that nothing will change during a break.
But a child who can independently perform those skills has a more established swimming foundation than one who is still working toward basic independence.
If that’s your swimmer and your family needs the winter off, taking a break may be a reasonable decision.
Expect some rust when they return.
Rust isn’t starting over.
If we stop for winter, should we still swim?
Yes, when you can.
Go to a family swim.
Play.
Let your child use the skills they already know.
Keep activities appropriate to their ability and supervise closely. You don’t need to become their replacement swim instructor.
In fact, please don’t turn Saturday afternoon at the pool into:
“Your elbow was three degrees too low. Again.”
Nobody wants this.
The point is simply to keep your child comfortable using the skills they already have.
Formal lessons build the skill. Recreational swimming gives them another opportunity to use it.
What happens when children return?
Usually, we figure out what stayed and what needs attention.
Some skills come back quickly.
Others need reminders.
Breathing may need work.
Endurance may need rebuilding.
A technical habit might need correcting again.
A skill that was only beginning to develop before the break may need more practice.
Then we continue.
A study of 126 preschool aged children found that children returning with previous aquatic instruction performed at a more advanced level than children beginning without that previous experience.
In other words, previous learning does matter.
They aren’t necessarily starting again.
They’re returning to a foundation they already built.
So, will my child forget how to swim over winter?
Probably not.
But that’s also not the standard we’d use when deciding whether lessons are worth continuing.
“They probably won’t forget everything” is a spectacularly low bar.
The better question is:
What could they build during those months?
If your child is still developing the fundamentals, winter gives them months of repetition that can turn uncertain skills into independent ones.
If they’re already swimming independently, those months can be spent improving technique, endurance and efficiency.
And if your family genuinely needs a break, take one knowing that established swimming skills are more durable than some frightening marketing claims suggest.
There may be rust when they return.
We’ll deal with it.
We’ve been doing this since 1992.
Before you decide, ask one question
After your child’s next lesson, ask their instructor:
“Which skills have they made their own, and what are they still building?”
That’s the information I’d want before deciding whether to stop.
Because winter doesn’t only present an opportunity to lose something.
It presents an opportunity to build something.
And strong swimming is built the same way it always has been.
One skill.
Then another.
Then another.
Until the fundamentals don’t require much thought anymore.
Keep building this winter.
If you’re considering swim lessons for your child, come experience Back to Basics before making your decision.
See how we teach. See what your swimmer is ready to build next.
Then decide.