You’ve made it to the home stretch of the Swimming merit badge! If Part 1 was about water competency, strokes, and rescues, Part 2 is where you prove you can handle yourself in real survival situations and demonstrate true water confidence. These are the skills that separate a Scout who can swim laps from a Scout who can actually keep themselves and others alive in the water.
Knowing how to float for five minutes, dive safely, and understand cold-water survival could genuinely save your life someday. Requirements 6-9 will give you hands-on practice in all of them, and by the end, you’ll have earned one of the most practical and potentially life-saving merit badges in all of Scouting. 🙂
If you have other Eagle-required merit badges to earn, I’d recommend checking out my Difficulty Ranking Guide to Every Eagle-required Badge. There, you’ll also find the links to my other merit badge guides, as well as a description and summary of each badge’s requirements. I’m certain this resource will be helpful to Scouts on their road to Eagle!
If you haven’t already, make sure to finish Part 1 (Requirements 1-5) first. That guide covers swimming ability, rescue skills, first aid for aquatic emergencies, and the BSA Safe Swim Defense.
Swimming Merit Badge Requirements 6-9 (Part 2)
- Do the following:
a. Float face up in a resting position for at least three minutes with minimal movement.
b. Demonstrate survival floating for at least five minutes.
c. While wearing a properly fitted U.S. Coast Guard–approved life jacket, demonstrate the HELP and huddle positions. Explain their purposes.
d. Explain why swimming or survival floating will hasten the onset of hypothermia in cold water. - In water over your head, but not to exceed 10 feet, do each of the following:
a. Use the feet first method of surface diving and bring an object up from the bottom.
b. Do a headfirst surface dive (pike or tuck), and bring the object up again.
c. Do a headfirst surface dive to a depth of at least 5 feet and swim underwater for three strokes. Come to the surface, take a breath, and repeat the sequence twice. - Following the guidelines set in the BSA Safe Swim Defense, in water at least 7 feet deep, show a standing headfirst dive from a dock or pool deck. Show a long shallow dive, also from the dock or pool deck. (If your state, city, or local community requires a water depth greater than 7 feet, it is important to abide by that mandate.)
- Explain the health benefits of regular aerobic exercise, and discuss why swimming is favored as both fitness and therapeutic exercise.
Swimming Merit Badge Requirement 6: Floating and Cold-Water Survival
6a) Float faceup in a resting position for at least three minutes with minimal movement.
The faceup resting float is the simplest survival skill in this badge – on your back, arms out, lungs full, letting the water support you. The goal is three full minutes with minimal movement, just your body naturally bobbing with the water. Three minutes sounds short but feels longer when you’re trying to stay still!
I’d highly recommend watching this video (3:59) to see the proper technique for floating on your back before your counselor session:
Scout Tip: Relax your muscles completely – tensing up causes you to sink. If you feel yourself starting to drop, one gentle scull of your hands is all you need to recover without losing the float. Freshwater is harder to float in than saltwater, so don’t get discouraged if it takes a few tries.
6b) Demonstrate survival floating for at least five minutes.
Survival floating (also called the “dead man’s float” or “jellyfish float”) is the most energy-efficient way to stay afloat for extended periods. Rather than constantly treading water, you rest face-down between breaths, only lifting your head just enough to take a breath before returning to the resting position.
This technique can keep a person afloat for hours with very little energy expenditure – it’s what you use if you’re ever in open water waiting for rescue and need to conserve everything you have. Here’s a great demonstration of proper survival floating technique (1:40):
6c) While wearing a properly fitted U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket, demonstrate the HELP and huddle positions. Explain their purposes.
Both positions are designed to slow down how quickly cold water pulls heat from your body. Water conducts heat away from you up to 25 times faster than cold air at the same temperature – so in a cold-water emergency, these positions can be the difference between surviving and not.
IBefore you try it out yourself, watch this video (3:07) on PFD HELP and Huddle positions. It clearly shows both techniques in a real pool setting:
The HELP Position (Heat Escape Lessening Posture)
HELP is a solo position. In your life jacket, draw your knees up to your chest and cross your arms tightly over your chest. Stay as still as possible. The position protects the three areas of highest heat loss: the groin, the armpits, and the chest and abdomen.
The Huddle Position
The huddle is the group version – used when two or more people are in the water together. Everyone presses their sides together, wraps arms around each other, and interlocks their legs if possible. The huddle shares body heat between group members and also makes the group much easier for rescuers to spot compared to scattered individuals.
6d) Explain why swimming or survival floating will hasten the onset of hypothermia in cold water.
Cold-water hypothermia has a counterintuitive twist that your counselor will definitely ask about: movement in cold water actually accelerates heat loss. Here’s why:
When you swim or even survival float, you move your muscles, which causes your circulatory system to pump warm blood from your core out to your arms and legs. Those extremities are exposed to the cold water and rapidly cool that blood before it circulates back to your vital organs. Every stroke sends warm blood out and cold blood back in, progressively lowering your core temperature faster than if you stayed completely still.
When in cold water with a life jacket, the best tactic for survival is the HELP position – stay as still as possible to keep warm blood in your core. Only swim if you can reach safety within a short distance. Otherwise, stay still, signal for help, and await rescue near a large object if you can find one.
Swimming Merit Badge Requirement 7: Surface Diving
7) In water over your head, but not to exceed 10 feet, do the following: (a) Use the feetfirst method of surface diving and bring an object up from the bottom. (b) Do a headfirst surface dive (pike or tuck), and bring the object up again. (c) Do a headfirst surface dive to a depth of at least 5 feet and swim underwater for three strokes. Come to the surface, take a breath, and repeat the sequence twice.
I’d suggest recommend watching this video (3:15) on surface dive techniques. The instructor demonstrates all three methods clearly so you know exactly what to expect before you get in the water:
7a) Feetfirst Surface Dive
The feetfirst dive sends you underwater feet-down, which is the safer technique in unfamiliar or murky water. Use a strong simultaneous downward scull of both arms to thrust your body up and out of the water, then stop kicking and let your body weight carry you straight down. Once submerged, use your hands to steer to the object.
7b) Headfirst Surface Dive (Pike or Tuck)
The headfirst dive is more efficient and lets you reach depth faster. For a pike dive: tuck your chin to your chest and sweep both arms forward and down, bending sharply at the hips like a jackknife. Your legs rise into the air above you, and the weight of your raised legs drives you down. For a tuck dive, pull your knees to your chest as you go under instead of keeping legs straight – easier to execute but slightly less momentum.
7c) Headfirst Dive, Three Underwater Strokes, Repeat Twice
Requirement 7c is the endurance version: headfirst dive to at least 5 feet, swim 3 underwater strokes, surface, take one full breath, and repeat the entire sequence two more times (3 total). Take a controlled breath between cycles – rushing the breath between dives is how people hyperventilate near a pool bottom.
Swimming Merit Badge Requirement 8: Headfirst Diving
8) Following the guidelines set in the Scouting America Safe Swim Defense guidelines, in water at least 7 feet deep, show a standing headfirst dive from a dock or pool deck. Show a long shallow dive, also from the dock or pool deck.
Both dives are performed from a standing position on a dock or pool deck, into water at least 7 feet deep. If your state or local community requires a greater minimum depth, you must follow that requirement instead. Check out this video (1:04) to see a proper standing headfirst dive demonstrated before you attempt it:
Standing Headfirst Dive
Stand at the edge with toes curled over the lip. Arms extended overhead, hands together, head tucked between your arms looking at the water. Bend at the hips, lean forward, and let gravity rotate you in – you’re not jumping up, you’re falling headfirst. Enter the water fingertips first at roughly a 45-degree angle, body fully extended and streamlined.
Long Shallow Dive
To do a long shallow dive, simply push outward instead of down, aiming to skim just below the surface rather than diving at an angle. Lean forward from the same position as the headfirst dive, but aim horizontally rather than downward. Point your arms slightly upward at the moment of entry to prevent yourself from going too deep. You’ll cover more horizontal distance and stay close to the surface throughout.
Scout Tip: The most common mistake on the standing headfirst dive is hesitating at the last moment and entering the water flat. Pick a spot in the water to aim at, lock your eyes on it, and commit to the forward rotation. Hesitation causes belly flops. Commitment makes a clean dive.
Swimming Merit Badge Requirement 9: Health Benefits of Swimming
9) Explain the health benefits of regular aerobic exercise, and discuss why swimming is favored as both fitness and therapeutic exercise.
Frequent aerobic exercise can lead to many health benefits such as increased stamina, decreased stress, and an overall boost to your vitality. However, many types of physical activity can strain or otherwise harm your body. Swimming provides a great option for regular exercise, as being in the water means your joints don’t bear the full burden of your weight – reducing the likelihood of any accidental strains.
There are also many different types of activities you can do while swimming. From intensive sports like water polo to restful types of exercise like aqua Zumba, swimming offers a pathway to many fun kinds of aquatic activity! Here’s why swimming specifically stands out as both a fitness and therapeutic exercise:
- Low impact on joints: Water supports roughly 90% of your body weight, eliminating the joint stress that comes with running or court sports. This makes swimming accessible to people with arthritis, joint injuries, or chronic pain conditions.
- Full-body workout: Swimming engages nearly every major muscle group simultaneously – arms, legs, core, back, and shoulders all work together with every stroke.
- Natural resistance: Water provides about 12 times more resistance than air in all directions, building muscular endurance without weights or equipment.
- Cardiovascular and muscular training simultaneously: Unlike most exercise forms that are primarily aerobic OR strength-focused, swimming trains both at once.
- Therapeutic applications: Aquatic physical therapy is widely used for rehabilitation after joint replacements, surgeries, and stroke recovery. The water’s buoyancy allows patients to move joints through ranges of motion that would be impossible or too painful on land.
- Accessible at any age: Swimming can be safely performed by children, elderly adults, pregnant women, and people recovering from surgery – groups for whom most other intense exercise is off-limits.
Congratulations on Finishing the Swimming Merit Badge!
Congratulations! If you’ve made it this far, you’re practically qualified to earn your Swimming merit badge. Being a strong swimmer is incredibly valuable if you want to be prepared to help others. In addition to the lifesaving skills you’ve learned in this badge, first aid will also be extremely useful for treating victims in aquatic accidents.
If you haven’t yet earned your First Aid merit badge, I’d recommend checking out my complete guide to the First Aid merit badge! The skills from both badges work together extremely well – and if you’re going for Eagle, you’ll need First Aid anyway.
Thanks for reading along! If you’re still working on your Eagle-required badges, check out my Difficulty Ranking Guide to Every Eagle-required Badge for your next move. Bookmark ScoutSmarts.com and check back regularly, as I’m always putting out new merit badge guides to help you succeed in Scouting! 🙂