So, I can swim, in the sense that I’m perfectly drownproofed and can cheerfully make my way across a pool with reasonable speed using that same modified breast stroke your aunt Edna uses after she had her hair washed and set because she doesn’t like getting it wet.
Which doesn’t cut it when it comes to swimming for fitness or especially for cross training with running. I’d like to be able to swim like regular people swim. But I’d have to put all my oxygen-loving parts in the water then.
My goggles always get water in them, my nose always gets chlorine up it unless I hold it (especially this) and my ears always get that thing where they’re weirdly pressurized and I just do not like to put my head under water. Partly it’s a perfectly rational fear, as I HATE getting water up my nose and I always do. Partly, though, it’s sort of like claustrophobia.
(Plus I can’t stand a cold pool and pools for fitness are always really fucking cold. What’s up with that? I don’t like to get in if it’s colder than 86. I’m not sure I can get used to that, although I’m a bit more padded than I used to be. Tried to take swimming lessons in college. I weighed about 95 pounds at the time and never stopped shivering. I had to withdraw. Since then I’ve had that mid-20’s metabolism change though. So now I don’t want anybody to see me in a bathing suit.)
So, has anybody here successfully gotten over that? With classes or what? (Don’t tell me “just jump in!” I bet you get a real kick out of splashing me when we get in the pool together, too, and trying to duck me, and you can’t understand why I just kicked you in the balls and went inside and locked the door behind me, because you’re an asshole. Don’t let the doorknob hit you on the way out of this thread, because that’s an inadequate answer and there is no way in hell I’m just jumping in unless the pier is on fire. Also, did you never notice what a douchebag you are?)
Is there a technique I don’t get that I can learn without getting water up my nose? Did you get over it with classes or willpower or guidance or what?
When I was a kid, I got water up my nose so I hated swimming. You’ll laugh when I say this, but I learned how not to get water up my nose from watching Saturday morning cartoons. There was a Tarzan cartoon. When Tarzan swam underwater, he would occasionally exhale a bit from his nose, just a few bubbles every now and then. I had a “Eureka!” moment.
The next time I went swimming, when I ducked underwater, I blew a bit of air out of my nose, and that kept the water from coming in. I guess it pressurized my nose or something. I still do that too. WHen I was a id I just “took extra air” for the purpose of blowing a bit out my nose as I swam. When I swim for any good lengths underwater, I always have too exhale a bit of stale air anyway. It goes out the nose. Water stays out.
I’ve tried that, but I always end up with water up the nose still. I think maybe I have a nervous reaction and snort some up there while I’m trying to blow out water or something.
When I was a kid I had goggles and nose plugs. That was the only way I could stand swimming with my head underwater, and I still generally don’t like getting my face wet.
If I remember correctly, I ended up combining it with my sense of motion. Like if I decided to swim down to the bottom of the pool in the shallow end, I would exhale until I touched bottom. I also sorted out that when I go under water, it works out best to go head first, so the opening of my nose is not “going against the current”. If your feet are on the bottom and you just dunk yourself, your nose is acting like a little wee cup, scooping up water. You want to go the aero dynamic way so, your nostrils are in the lee of your nose.
I didn’t learn this from Tarzan, but I agree it was the key to proper swimming for me.
I hated to put my face in the water for the reasons given in the OP. But at about age 8 I decided that having to keep your head out of the water was simply too much work, and none of the competent swimmers I observed did this - so the secret was to figure out how to be comfortable with my face in the water. I’d never seen or heard of goggles, but it didn’t take long to learn that exposing eyes to water is no big deal. The idea of slowly exhaling seemed like it might solve the water-up-the-nose problem, and - with some practice - it did.
I can still remember the day when I struck out into deeper water and actually swam. It was satisfying to have worked out the solution by thinking about it.
I don;t know what to tell you except the best thing is just to give into it. It isn’t the most pleasant sensation but I’ve never found any method to keep water out of my nose – I’m an utter failure at the nose-blow trick (and nose plugs make me claustrophobic). I will say that water-in-the-goggles is more anxiety producing than water-in-my-eyes. I would honestly try swimming without the goggles.
“just jump in” is stupid advice but like most things anxiety related, one is generally cured by repeated controlled exposure, rather than avoidance. At the end of the day you have to decide how much you want to swim. Do you want to swim more than you hate water in your nose? If water in your nose is just part of the package, is that acceptable?
So… if you swim without the goggles, how do you not swim into the side of the pool? Or are you that magical kid (there was always one) who could open his eyes under water and it didn’t bother him?
I don’t find opening my eyes under water to be bothersome. I mean, it burns a little, but I’ll live. (when I was a kid I could easily swim underwater with my eyes open for ages, but not anymore). But opening your eyes underwater isn’t necessary. The lanes have floaty dividers, right? And when you turn your head to the side in the crawl, you can open your eyes out of the water and see where you are.
I’ve never swam in an undivided pool, except for “free swim” style romping as a kid. Is your pool really a big undivided rectangle?
Well, I haven’t got a pool. But were I go to the city’s pool, which I’m sure has dividers, surely it’s not the most efficient lap swimming technique to swim into them? (Or into other people? And you can’t apologize because one of you is probably under water? Oh, god, a whole other branch of etiquette.)
I’ve never been able to swim enough of a real crawl to try opening my eyes while doing it. I guess it’s obvious once you do it? Once at Girl Scout Camp I got sick and tired of being a Flamingo. You had to go under to be a Frog and jump in to be a Sunfish. The Frogs kept getting splashed from another class because of location, so I actually jumped into a lake once so I could get away from them and be a Sunfish. Once, and the pier was not even on fire.
ETA - and of course my parents’ pool down in Florida, where I swim the last few times I’ve swum (swam?), is a small rectangle with no lanes. With a little robot in it with a tube running out of the pool. My dad calls it the “little man” and tells my niece and nephews that the little man will tattle if they pee in the pool.
You are, um, WAY overthinking this. The best cure for your fears and worries is swimming lessons from an instructor VERY experienced with adult students. Practicing putting your face in the water is part of any sensible regime of swim lessons.
You can look up every other stroke in the crawl (when you breathe) and let’s just say my crawl lacks the propulsive power to fling me willy nilly into the ropes in that time frame. Once you have a more or less correct stroke, unless you only have one arm or are similarly wildly imbalanced in strength between your left and right arms, you will go more or less straight. Even on my back, when I can’t see where I’m going, it takes 5-10 strokes to angle across the lane.
And anyway the point is not to be efficient. In fact, rather the opposite is true.
We have a pool in our backyard - and my SO, despite learning to swim in his late teens, still cannot put his head underwater for a millisecond!
Mind you, he goes into the water almost every day from May to late September - does the breast stroke back and forth, and will lounge on the air mattress - but no way is his head going underwater. We have lived in this house, with the pool, for over 10 years.
I think the chances of him ever learning to put his head underwater are now zilch.
I have tried, oh I have tried to teach him - but might as well convince him he can flap his wings and fly.
In that abortive swimming class in grad school, there were, let’s say, eight of us. The first couple of days, we partnered off. So it’s me and the other female. All the guys were there for an easy A (I don’t know why - it’s, what, one credit?) and the other girl was TERRIFIED of the water. (Not that no black people swim, but a lot of black people don’t swim and she, good for her, was trying to learn as an adult obviously without the extensive “spend the summer in the pool” experience that even non-swimming kids I grew up with had.) So anyway, I didn’t learn a thing before I realized I was never, ever going to stop shivering. What I did learn is that if somebody is really, really scared of the water, they literally can’t float. And if it’s your responsibility, because god knows what the teacher’s doing but he isn’t doing this, you end up with a stranger climbing you out of a pool. Because she won’t lean back into your arms - she does what my cats would do if I threw them in a pool. Luckily she doesn’t have the claws my cats do or I’d bear the scars to this day.
In other words, I’m a little hesitant to take a class, because it seems like the people who take them either don’t need them or REALLY need them and I’m afraid I wouldn’t get what I need out of it between the two extremes.
Just my experience, but there is a huge difference between classes taught by pro instructors and the casual one credit TAs who usually teach at the university rec programs. Try the YMCA – they are “somewhat” known for their swimming programs. It sounds like the teacher you had was not in any way on the ball. Your partner could easily have killed you, even in a shallow pool, if she was panicked like you say when the instructor was not paying attention (“climbing” a nearby person and drowning them is not unusual behavior for a panicked swimmer). If you are certain you cannot find level appropriate group lessons, which I find rather unlikely, then get a couple private lessons. Swimming is something you should NOT attempt to self teach, if you have anxiety about it and no clear idea what you should be doing.
First, find a better instructor. I spent three years teaching swim lessons under a lady who had been teaching for about thirty as her sole profession so I know good what instruction and that was not good instruction. Someone like that should have had the teacher’s personal attention and not been left to a fellow student. As someone said before terrified people and water can be dangerous combination.
Second, lap pools are made for laps so they tend to keep them colder so people exerting themselves a lot don’t feel uncomfortable. If your standing around in them they can be rather cold. We used to teach in a lap pool and all of us had wet suits to help us stay a bit warmer as we weren’t physical exerting ourselves much. The suits also helped keep the female instructors from loosing their tops to frighted students, but the warmth was the major reason. If your bothered by the temperature maybe look into getting yourself one.
I swim without goggles, and I usually find that I don’t need to open my eyes. If I do, I can open them just a crack and peer through my eyelashes. Keeps most of the water out and I can see well enough to avoid running into anything.
I used to be afraid of the water, then I got over it, and I love the water.
So let’s take this is stages:
Getting your face wet. When you are in the shower, does it bother you to put your face into the shower stream, or are you a strictly a washcloth type of person?
If you only use a wash cloth, try sticking your face into the shower stream. I promise you won’t explode or dissolve. At first you will probably be squinting you will have your eyes shut so hard. Try relaxing and leaving your eyes closed, but not slammed shut. When you get to the point where your face is relaxed as the water runs over it, we can move to the next stage.
the next part assumes you have access to a bathtub, or a kitchen sink that you can fill up.
Rub a tub full of nice warm water and hop in. Turn on your side, take a deep breath and put just your nose underwater while blowing bubbles out of your nose.
Assuming that you did not explode or dissolve, repeat until you are comfortable doing this. then put more of your face in. Continue and notice that you don’t have to exhale at full speed to keep the water out. Bit by bit you will find that even the smallest trickle of air out of your nose will keep it dry.
Once you get to the point where you can put your entire face underwater, try not exhaling. You will find that since your nose is down and your sinus cavities are above, that the water will not flood into them.
Continue to practice this until you can stick your face into the water and feel comfortable doing so.
Go to the pool and practice the same thing. Once you are comfortable putting your face in the water there, we can move on.
Try opening your eyes under water in the pool. You will not go blind I promise. It may sting a bit at first, but you will get used to it just like you got used to putting your face into the water.
Now comes the big step, getting water into your sinus cavities.
Have you ever used a neti pot? If you have, this step should be no problem, if not the first time water goes into your sinus, it will feel strange. But very quickly it becomes totally normal.
The way I got used to it was to swim underwater. So when you get to the point that you can feel comfortable with your face in the water try this.
Push off from the side of the pool and glide under the surface until your forward motion almost stops then angle up for the surface.
When you are comfortable with this try turning onto your side to look up while you are underwater. Water will run into your nose. DON’T freak, you won’t drown. Just exhale through your nose. After many repetitions you will find that you don’t notice the water entering your nose any longer.
By now you should be very comfortable in the water.
I used to teach adult swimming classes years ago when I was a lifeguard. Learning to swim isn’t the sort of thing you can teach yourself. (Although there are certainly skills you can practice on your own that will make it easier.)
The trick to swimming with your face in the water is letting a slow trickle of air escape from your nose to keep the water out. Once you’re good at it you hardly have to blow at all – you eventually get a sense of just how much pressure you need to maintain to balance the water pressure.
What can make it difficult is that many people naturally experience a panic reaction when they put their faces in the water. Part of learning to swim with your face down is gradually getting used to the sensation of water on your face and realizing that you can control the situation. As you become more and more familiar with doing it, the panic subsides and you start to relax. Usually this is done by taking small steps: Start by just blowing bubbles with your mouth in the water but the rest of your face out. Then blow bubbles with your nose with your eyes still above the water. Then blow bubbles with your whole face in. And finally you practice blowing bubbles and turning your head to the side to breathe. All of this is done in the shallow end holding onto the side. The whole idea is to become comfortable with all the mechanics of breathing WITHOUT having to worry about moving your arms and legs and staying afloat. Once you can do breathing easily and automatically while holding onto the side, THEN you can start combining it with the other motions of swimming.
It sounds like the teacher you had was not in any way on the ball. Your partner could easily have killed you, even in a shallow pool, if she was panicked like you say when the instructor was not paying attention (“climbing” a nearby person and drowning them is not unusual behavior for a panicked swimmer). If you are certain you cannot find level appropriate group lessons, which I find rather unlikely, then get a couple private lessons. Swimming is something you should NOT attempt to self teach, if you have anxiety about it and no clear idea what you should be doing.