I’m thirty years old and I’ve never been able to learn to swim. Each year from the age of 4 or so I got dragged to swimming lessons by my mother, but each year I came away as unable to swim as before, and not for lack of trying. After a while it got embarrassing for everyone involved so we all just gave up. At one point, an instructor told my mom that some people are just not suited for the water, and will never know how to act in it. Also, instead of floating, I just kind of sank like a rock. I’ve never even been able to tread water. I’m not fat, and definitely wasn’t as a kid.
The odd thing is when I was really little, I was quite adept at swimming underwater. Maybe that had to do with not being able to float.
I’m not a spaz or anything. I’m fairly well-coordinated in other physical activities. I had no trouble learning to walk or ride a bike, etc.
My questions:
Is being able to swim a natural part of human physiology? Is my lack of ability some kind of aberration?
Are some people just physically denser than others?
The most terrifying day of my life was my first day of swimmig lessons, when they kept forcing me to do the dead man’s float. See, I don’t have the proper buoyancy to float, so it was really just the dead man’s sink like a rock and start drowning… If I’m moving my limbs, I can stay afloat, but oh no, we weren’t ready for limb moving. We had to master floating first, and the instructors kept claiming I wasn’t doing it right, that’s why I was sinking. All day long, all I was allowed to do was nearly die. Strange how I can’t go in large bodies of water to this day.
When I was a young lad in short trousers I hardly had an ounce of fat on me but I was a pretty good swimmer and even had the right swiming qualifications to be a lifeguard at a swimming pool, so don’t think body fat is that big a factor.
I think it’s more likely psychological as in general any non-swimmer will sink to the bottom when out of their depth because their natural reaction is to try to stand up.
While I don’t know for sure, it seems to me that it is possible for a person to be simply too dense (meant in the nicest possible way of course!) to swim.
I’m rather well suited to water, you might say… I’m certainly well insulated. I just barely float.
In my case my bouyancy is very closely tied-in to my lung capacity. If I have full lungs (ie a deep breath) I can float at the surface on my back indefinitely, but I have to breathe ‘at the top of my lungs’, taking only shallow breaths.
If I want to sink to the bottom, I empty my lungs completely, and sink. Of course, this means I can’t stay down very long.
I can’t imagine that, sometime during this process, a swimming instructor hasn’t had you experiment with this. But then again, I’m not a swimming instructor, and it’s been a very long time since I last visited one.
Do you have access to a pool, preferably with a lifeguard on duty? Go find one that you can wade into without getting over your head, find a step or somewhere to sit in the water, and practice floating.
If you can take a very deep breath, hold it, and STILL sink, then yeah, I’d say you’re unable to swim. Otherwise… well, find a better instructor maybe?
They fired him for an ignorant comment made on national television, about why blacks are great athletes in which he explained it was due to old south masters breeding their biggest slaves together, but I don’t think he made any comments about black swimmers.
The inability to float with ease does not translate to an inability to swim. I can just barely keep my face above the water if I have full lungs, but I can tread water fairly easily. Swimming is not a passive like walking; you can stop walking and just stand around, but when you are swimming you must keep moving at all times. You are either moving in a particular direction or constantly pushing yourself to the surface.
I do not swim very often because of my problems with floating (not too fun to just work all day), but I am quite capable of swimming. Let me be clear that treading water is not easy. If you have not been swimming recently you will be working very hard to stay afloat, but it is possible. Being able to float will allow you to take a break without leaving the water.
astro- correct. It got Al Campanis fired for saying blacks couldn’t swim. Of course, he also said they " lacked the necessities to be big league managers." Sorry, got my racially improper comments mixed up.
BTW, females do very well in swimming very long distances in the cold ocean. The English Channel & LA to Catalina-26 miles- the hypothesized reason is more fat keeping the body warm.