Swimming since I was 6. Got a lifesaving certificate as a teenager. As an adult rarely any actual swimming where I was in water deep enough I couldn’t stand without my head out of the water. Doubt I could swim very far now.
I can swim like a dead fish (I stay on top of the water).
That’s so odd to me. Fancy certificates don’t mean that you can swim.
I’ve got a lot of fancy certificates myself, but I’ve also been a Boy Scout leader for 20+ years and go to our local Scout camp every summer. The BSA safe swim defense program doesn’t care about fancy certificates. They simply want you to demonstrate the ability to swim. It doesn’t matter who you are (adult or child); everyone takes the same swim test.
They have three categories:
Blue swimmers who can go anywhere in the swim area and take boats out (with a PFD). To become a Blue swimmer you have to be able to: “Jump feet first into water over the head in depth. Level off and swim 75 yards in a strong manner using one or more of the following strokes: sidestroke, breaststroke, trudgen, or crawl; then swim 25 yards using an easy resting backstroke. The 100 yards must be completed in one swim without stops and must include at least one sharp turn. After completing the swim, rest by floating.”
Red swimmers (i.e. beginner swimmers) can go in water from chest deep to just over their head. (There are designated swim areas in the lake that are roped off.) Red swimmers have to: “Jump feet first into water over the head in depth, level off, and swim 25 feet on the surface. Stop, turn sharply, resume swimming and return to the starting place.”
Nonswimmers: Anyone who has not completed either the beginner or swimmer tests is classified as a nonswimmer. The nonswimmer area is no more than waist to chest deep.
On the first day of summer camp: everyone who wants to swim that week takes the swim test. Blue swimmers then get put in the Swimming merit badge class to refine their skills. Red swimmers and non-swimmers get put into swim lessons with the goal to pass the Blue swimmer test.
Wow!! I am seriously impressed. I bet I could do that, but it would take a lot of dedicated training. Like training for a marathon.
I’m a lot more likely to do a long swim like this than a marathon, though. I’m a terrible runner.
ETA: So the first thread that caught my attention after this one is the one about orcas attacking boats in the Strait of Gilbraltar. 
I don’t mind being in the ocean while scuba diving where I can see underwater, but I’m always a little freaked out by swimming on the surface of the ocean for long periods of time where you have no idea what’s below you.
This song popped up on my iPod Tuesday.
Yes.
Learned to swim in the pond near my home. (It was a town park with lifeguards and all, but the pond was really a water-filled pit left from excavating clay used to make bricks. There were a lot of them around town).
Later we got an 18’ pool, and later still a 24’ pool. Did a lot of swimming.
I took swimming lessons at the local YMCA. In Boy Scouts I got my swimming badge and lifesaving badge and my patch for doing the Mile Swim.
In college I passed my swimming requirement the first week (our school had a swimming requirement – even if you couldn’t swim, you had to prove you could float and stay above water. A good idea, IMHO. You also had to have passed this if you wanted to row racing shells or go in sailboats on the River, and I wanted to do both.)
I don’t swim as much as I used to or want to, but I get a hotel with a pool if I can and go swimming in the oceanm or a mountain lake at least once every summer.
The British Royal Navy has recently dropped that as a requirement !
I expect i could probably still swim… i’m just hoping i never have to find out !
I’ve done a few 10km swims and one other 21km swim in the past couple of years. I’ve been training for Gibraltar for almost 1.5 years now, but a lot of that training was also for the 21km swim. I trained for 18 weeks averaging 15km a week with a max of 22km. The big problem with Gibraltar if the swimmer can’t keep up 3k an hour there’s a good chance you will be pushed so far you’ll never reach the other side. It’s also cold, 63F/17C when I swam, one of the women in a wetsuit started to get hyperthermia.
I’ve actually not really ever seen anything swimming. The only time I have is when I’ve done swimming close to the shore. We didn’t see anything on the Gibraltar swim, though a dolphin was next to the ship on the way back.
My parents made me take swimming lessons at the local pool when I was around 7. I didn’t like it then, but I’m glad that they did, because I can swim and I enjoy it.
I swim for exercise at an indoor pool when I have time. I do breaststroke, freestyle and backstroke. Never mastered butterfly for some reason. I’ve swam in Great Lakes, Atlantic and Caribbean. Don’t think I could manage the strait of Gibraltar though.
I taught my kids to swim, with various levels of success. One did competitive swimming in high school.
Yep. Mom made all of us kids take swimming lessons at the YMCA, and we had to stick with it through one of the advanced levels (Shark or Dolphin, I forget which).
I can swim, but not particularly well.
I was quite frightened by the water as a kid and in spite of swimming lessons it wasn’t until I was 10 that I was comfortable enough to pass my swim test at camp and able to do all the water activities.
I didn’t find out until I was an adult that I fell into a swimming pool when I was about 4 and had to be pulled out. My parents neglected to tell me about this little incident, but it obviously left me with lasting effects.
I don’t remember learning to swim/float/doggie paddle I just know I’ve always been able to swim. We did t have a pool and no there were no swim lessons in my household. I’m pretty sure our trips to the sandy beaches of Fla were where we all learned swim. It came naturally I guess, playing in the shallows with itty bitty waves pushing us up and down floating and eventually swimming.
Growing up in the PNW my mom took my sister and I to the Y to learn and that was a lost cause. We moved to SoCal and had a house with a pool and she and I were great swimmers in about 2 weeks.
Like a fish. LOL
Learning to swim requires regular access to a swimming pool (or other body of water). Someone in a poorer area might have access to a community pool of some sort, but that costs money, lessons cost money, they take time, and parents who are motivated to see that the kids get to learn.
I think it’s QUITE plausible that someone would answer no to this question.
Me: that was all we did in the summer: Mom would drive us to the pool, and would hang out with her friends. Pretty much every day. We all had swim lessons at a young age (I do not remember those). We all swam on the swim team - which I was bad at, and loathed, and finally one day when I was 12 or so, got out of the pool on a cold day and said to my mother “I don’t wanna do this any more”.
She simply said “Okay”. I was gobsmacked. Being on the team had not been presented as an option, it was something I was TOLD to do. I didn’t realize that refusing was even within the realm of possibility.
Anyway: I am not graceful. I LOATHE doing the freestyle / crawl, and any attempt to do the butterfly basically overcomes all my body’s natural buoyancy and sends me straight down under the water. But breaststroke or sidestroke, I can handle. I can float for as long as I need to in calm water.
We made a point of taking both of our kids to swim lessons during the summer - offered by our neighborhood pool. We didn’t do the “every day” thing (pesky jobs…) but they won’t instantly drown, at least.
My mother claims she learned to swim by being tossed out of a boat in 90 feet of water. Likely a slight exaggeration - but her uncle owned a cabin in a park near a quarry, and she probably DID swim in that part more than once. She and I went there one day, when I was in high school / college; there was a designated beach area (where it was nowhere NEAR 90 feet deep) so I got to see the place, at least.
That’s a shame. A more adaptive instructor would have shrugged, and gone with the approach of teaching you methods that let you swim WITHOUT putting your face in the water. Better to be able to do the sidestroke, or breast-stroke without dunking the face (for racing, you are supposed to do so until you need to come up for air), than to drown. Or even elementary backstroke, which is sort of like breaststroke but on your back (and with different arm movements).
I did learn to do all the various moves that involved putting my face in water. I could even open my eyes underwater. But over time, I grew to loathe both of those things. I can do it, if I need to, but I do try to avoid it.
Born and raised in SoCal. High school water polo/swim team varsity letter (x2), Life Guard certification, SCUBA certification and I used to spend my summers surfing Orange County beaches.
Yeah, I can swim.
I can keep myself from going under. I can propel myself in the water. But I doubt anyone would call what I do swimming. When I was a kid, I went to lessons for a while, but I never did get beyond kickboards. In the Navy, I did a 1-mile survival swim - it was a modified backstroke sorta thing - floating and moving my arms back and forth for an hour. It wasn’t pretty, but I did the mile… twice!
When I was a kid I was a real scaredy-cat when it came to bodies of water and swimming, so my parents kept enrolling me in swimming classes to try to ‘fix’ me. One basic maneuver to pass the class I refused to do was the ‘Dead Man’s Float’, where we were supposed to float face-down in the water for a certain amount of time- maybe 10, 20 seconds? I was terrified I would drown if I tried it. The name certainly didn’t help! Then one day I realized I could hold my breath underwater for much longer than I thought I could, and after that I finally mastered the Dead Man’s Float, and eventually became a decent swimmer (though no Michael Phelps).
Must be one of those non-rectangular pools. Like a kidney-shaped pool. Or those guitar-shaped pools some rich musicians have.
Not by choice. I can float, if necessary. And I understand the fundamentals of swimming. I had to learn rudimentary swimming in boot camp in order to make it through. But it’s not an activity that I engage in on purpose, and if it was life or death, I’d drown. My history on the water is not a good one, so I stay a healthy distance away.