Its unfortunate that learning new things as a full grown adult is much more challenging than when you are young. Youth doesnt have all the mental obstacles in the way.

i remember jumping in the deep end (5?). i didnt even know i didnt know how to swim and i could thrash myself back to the pool's edge to only jump in again. lack of fear.

you can do this CD55.

Yep! And I will donate one furry fat rat's ass .... if ya want to give one :D

Learn to relax and float on yer back first ... then go for that Olympic medal ;)

That won't help. I only float if I'm in salt water. If I take a big breath and hold it, I float-ish, but when I exhale, I drop like a rock. Salt water adds enough buoyancy, but trying to float in the ocean sucks due to the waves.

A smart swim instructor will start you in the shallow end of the pool first. It may take some time, but he/she is helping you become less afraid of the water. It's the same with a 2 year old. We've even used large buckets for kids to practice putting their face into.

You will advance to dipping your head underwater for a short length of time....1-5 seconds. Then 10 seconds. Then 15. You still won't know how to swim, but you'll learn holding your breath under water isn't a death defying feat.

You'll then advance to floating in shallow water. If you fail you'll be able to stand up and/or hold your breath for 5 seconds. All part of the deal.

Next will be holding onto the edge of the pool and kicking your legs. Again, all in shallow water. Maybe using a kick board, maybe not. After that you'll learn the freestyle stroke while standing in shallow water.

You see what's happening here? You're learning to swim in shallow water where you aren't in any danger. You're building confidence. You'll eventually move to deeper water where you can still stand up and practice there until you're ready to go short distances in even deeper water.

It's a process. It'll take some time. It's easy and simple. You just need to work through the process.

Any Y can get it done. No rush to solo. A patient instructor is a good instructor. A willing student is the best kind.

Good luck!

We all know that turds float .... I'm so FOS it just came naturally for me :D.

When we get back to the mainland, my wife and I are signing up for lessons at the town pool. She took lessons as a kid but it didn’t take apparently. Thanks all!

Good on you, way to go.

Going forward to the town pool.
If you hear the words "Code Winnie" get out of the pool.

Make sure, they then super chlorinate and shut the pool down for two hours minimum.
If not call Health dept. E-Coli and Girardia is no joke.

Good luck.

Trivia tidbit, Harvard University requires that graduates know how to swim. My understanding is that some donor had a kid drown, and gave the endowment a bunch of dough, with the stipulation that people know how to swim when they graduate.

I could never float worth a damn. Maybe now that my body fat percentage is a little higher I could, but in the past I would sink. The instructors in basic showed us how to stay afloat with a pair of pants, or the uniform hat, bucket, a few tricks. Glad I never had to test that stuff out in the middle of the deep blue sea

Yep, it the boy scouts we learned to make a flotation device out of a pair of blue jeans. I'd have to be pretty desperate to do it, but it worked.

about the only good thing I done in my life is saving a little boy from drowning one evening. He got swept out to sea in a rip and was sinking. I thought he might drown me but I guess he had done surf life saving at school and when I told him to lie on his back he said "Like this" and did a star shape. He was hard work to swim back in but at least he couldn't bear hug me and drown me too.

Wow, Bill, that is quite something.

I am probably too comfortable in the water, ocean and rivers especially. I will say in Navy water training (Dilbert Dunker, Helo Dunker, mile swim, “drown proofing”, etc.) that being comfortable was a good thing.

Typical Navy, a call sign for everyone, called the folks in remedial swim, “aqua rocks”.

Folks got bounced for not meeting swim standards.

55, you’ll be great at this. Take your time.

I'm still an Aquanaut, read every Jacques Cousteau and Hans Hass book as a child and most of my childhood was spent in or under the water

Can still vividly remember pedalling my tricycle on the bottom of a pool from the shallow end, down the slope and all the way to the end of the pool at the deep end

Best job I ever had was teaching snorkelling at a Club Med in north west Mexico

Other than the obvious fringe benefits the most satisfying part of the job was teaching scared/nervous swimmers and non-swimmers how to be relaxed face down in the water and then taking them out into the sea snorkelling to show them a whole new exciting underwater world

I'm totally relaxed in and under the water, after a very heavy night of debauchery I fell asleep snorkelling on one trip, woke up when the waves gently nudged my head against the shoreline

Also, nearly drifted off again when laying down on the bottom of a swimming pool trying to run a scuba tank to empty to see how the regulator felt

Common practice was to never swim in public pools after the first big summer weekend.
(cough kids and uh underwater emissions)

The only time I actually got a nasty foot fungal infection which lasted years, was after a public pool actually during winter season.

The ocean is your friend.
Breathe deep and float on your back and absorb and listen.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TPxiXGr9nFM" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

....I am 66 and just learning how to swim....so far I can dog paddle across the pool and more or less not scare myself.

....just need to learn to be confident in my treading water capabiity (can sort of do it.....) and proper breathing (the crawl I believe it is called).

Its never too late...

D.

Going through Coast Guard boot camp I was appalled how many recruits showed up who couldn't swim a stroke. Day one at the pool, this King Kong body builder rescue swimmer would have all the prior life guards step foward. He'd dive in, swim out and pretend to be drowning. The other instructor would yell at the "life guards" to go save him. It was ugly, that giant rescue swimmer just destroyed those kids LOL. Why nobody just chucked a life ring out is beyond me. Guess we were to scared to think outside the box? I think that was the whole lesson, don't be dumb he-he. I could swm but I wasn't a life guard, The kids who couldn't swim at all had to take night training to learn. Its kinda mandatory to know how to swim in the CG. Eventually almost everyone get's to be a surface swimmer. This is were you are geared up and swim out and save folks off the beach or off the boat but you are teathed with a 100 yard rope tied to your back. So you just need to grabb'em and you get hauled back in by your team. Or tied off to a GV and they drive back up the beach hauling you in at great speeds. -WW

Same here. That was the hardest test for me in boot. Divers in the water kept asking me if I was a smoker, ha! I’ve always floated like a rock. Took lessons as a kid and still, I’m a terrible swimmer. Naturally, I joined the Navy!

I knew where all of my buddies surf boards were and my shop was just off the catwalk next to Crash and Salvage. Had the plan all worked out, lol:D

I’ll snorkel in the ocean but, it took me awhile to learn to relax in the water.. My ancestors crawled onto land for a reason.

Sucks because I’d love to learn how to surf but, I know I’d die doing it. Regardless of the added buoyancy of a suit and the salt. Surfing with a life vest on ain’t a cool look.

I body & board surfed my whole life in SoCal, never hurt once, finally get to go to Hawaii.
Nearly drowned due to wave power factor X 10, stepped on sea urchin and had to pee on my foot to stop pain, got cut up by the coral reef bad. Lesson learned.

Watched the local kids in monster surf using Mickey D food platters to catch waves, they are all naturals, gene pools matter.

My dad never really knew how to swim. As kids we'd be in the water fooling around as we all knew how, but his stroke doing the crawl was very mechanical looking. Guess it was the mechanical engineer in him coming out.
My uncle told me about Dad being in the Navy during WWII and how he'd had to jump overboard from the LST he was on during D-Day when it got stranded on the beach. Can't imagine what was going through his head, other than this is how to stay alive. All this while only being 19 years old. I miss Dad, especially now that I'm a granddad.
I told my daughter I'd like to teach her girls how to swim, but so far it's been too hot out in the desert for them so they're here with us in the OC. She got some kick boards to use in the pool and the oldest is feeling more confident with it and her ability to float and stay above water in the shallow end. Maybe next weekend when we go back out I'll get some more pool time in with them.

Seriously?
















































Me too. lol

Good for you...swimming is one of those skills that can save your life. Guess I was fortunate...one of those took to water like a duck kids. Loved it...

Me too...hope they still teach it. Also, it's much easier to swim without pants on...the trick is breath control while taking them off. Good survival skill to know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNTSoKg6xHM&ab_channel=America%27sNavy

You tie knots in the pants legs and get them wet, trap some air in them and they will keep you afloat, just have to keep them a little wet or you start sinking.

We did it in boot with pants and white hats... Every little bit.

It's great that you are determined to learn to swim. I understand how you feel.
My mother thought the way to keep her kids safe was to teach us to be afraid of everything, so I grew up with a lot of water phobia. I have tried, but never got over it.
I took swimming lessons in high school, never got in the water after the last class.
Tried again in college, again, once the class was over I never went swimming again.
Technically I CAN swim, but I have zero confidence because I have to force myself to do it and so I never practiced.
I tried snorkeling, thinking it might be fun. Nope. Only went once.
I tried SCUBA diving. Went once in open water - never again. I have a total bypass-the-brain-go-straight-to-panic, stupidly irrational panic instinct that I've never been able to kick. The time I went diving I looked up and saw the bottom of the boat (it was a big one - there were at least 25 of us on the dive) and panicked, for no reason at all. I stuck with the group for the rest of the dive just so I wouldn't embarrass myself. I got by by never looking up until I got to the top of the anchor chain at the end of the dive.
Try as I might, I cannot get comfortable in water.
Good luck, keep at it and you just might get good at it.

It's impressive that you kept going back to try, and managed to complete all of the stuff. Fortunately, you don't HAVE to swim, but if you did, you could.

When is that? Have you signed up, started, or finished yet?

Don't feel bad. My wife doesn't swim and we have a pool.

To help her with her fear of the water, I had her wear a waterskiing jacket. It still allows you to move quite well and keep you afloat.

But you need shallow end work on getting your head under water to get over the fear before a stroke is taught.

And tell the wife: No makeup and her hair is going to get wet!!!

I learned as a kid, and was quite confident as a young adult. I'd singed up with the Navy Reserves as a aircrewman, which meant I had to pass the Navy's "First Class Swim Test." At bootcamp in Orlando, about week three, me and a guy named Jones were pulled out of line and told to report to the pool. We arrived and a First Class Petty Officer ordered us both in the water, and started barking out instructions. It was clear Jones was struggling to finish most of them, and the PO1 pulled him aside. He looked at me and said, "Stand by, Coats!" So I started a quiet slow backstroke/float. My ears were below water level, so it was quiet, and the sun was bright and clear; my eyes were fully closed. But you know, that feeling when you're at the beach, and a cloud passes over the sun, and you feel it in your eyelids? That was me, but there was no cloud, just the PO1 screaming at me (which I could only tell from his flapping jaw and spewing saliva). I leapt out of the water and he shoved my signed off paperwork to me and told me to beat feet back to my company. Poor Jones was shuffled off somewhere, his aircrew or other swim-necessary job dashed. :(

I was stationed on Oahu in 2010. Technically all new arrivals had to go to the pool and take some course but the higher in rank the easier it was to get out of that requirement.
Edit: the class consisted of jumping off the 10 meter platform and treading water for some period of time.

We had a couple of people drown together in my second year. I remember the more senior people (CG and CSM and others) saying, "well didn't they go to the class?". Answer was yes but they were non swimmers to begin with and there was no follow on course.

Then came the inevitable questions about the floatation with uniform pants made into a PFD. Honestly, for a minute I thought the CG was going to make an order that any time you went to the beach you had to take and swim with your pants.

We missed the sign ups for adult private swim lessons at our town pool so we’d either have to be in group lessons for all ages or go to the next town over and sign up there. I haven’t decided what I want to do yet. Yes, there’s vanity involved.

Understandable. Bummer that you missed the sign up.

I guess we’re not the only adults needing swim lessons!

Here is the secret: You don't have to actually swim in a pool.

-Wade in the shallow end and lightly jump off the bottom. This is great excercize for the knees.
-Lean against the sides and stretch the back and hips.
-Float and twist out the tired back and feet. Everything clicks into place.
-Duck under and practice your breath control. Useful for getting through times of dust smoke and chemicals.

I suspect that there are a lot more folks that can't/don't swim than most folks realize.

Your error is almost certainly that you are trying to hold yourself too high in the water. To swim, almost all of you needs to be under the water. Even your mouth and nose can be under most of the time, and you just bob up to inhale.

Nobody sinks like a stone, but it requires enormous effort for anybody to hold even 10% of their body above the waterline, which can make it feel like it's hard work just to float.

Practice being under the water at the level your body effortlessly sits in the water and just bob up enough to take a breath.

Once you learn this, swimming is effortless.


Sent from my SM-G988B using Tapatalk

Thanks that's a great tip.

Sent from my SM-G988B using Tapatalk

It is better now than never. Best of luck!
I've been always dreaming to learn how to dance salsa and always thought it is not the right time in my life.
Here we go, time had come, choosing a dance class for myself https://www.skillcourses.com/best-free-dance-classes-online/. Any tips?

I lost the swimming skill somewhere along the way. I had it when I was a kid, we had a 12' deep pool when I lived TX, even had a solar heater on the roof back in 1980, so a long season. I was swimming with some friends in a lake in Austria about 30 yrs ago and they decided to swim out to an island in the middle. No prob. I started getting tired halfway there, but knew I could make it. But then I'd have to make it back. I was really beat by then. Now I have a pool at home, but it's only about neck deep on me. Three yrs ago I jumped right off a dock at another lake in Austria and it was about 20' deep. There was a rope from the dock and I felt like I always had to be near it or holding onto it.

My folks decided to get me swimming lessons for my next b-day. It's a lot easier to find lessons for kids than for adults. But it worked and I have a lot more confidence now. I was in that lake in Austria again two weeks ago and some of my skills and confidence had atrophied, but it was a lot better than three years ago. I'm sure I'd be better if I had a deep water pool and weren't so used to always being able to stand up in my pool.