How can one NOT know how to swim?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I understand where you are coming from. My grandparents owned property on a lake when I was born and we spent summers there. My parents had me in the water from the time I was a baby and multiple houses I lived in as a child had a pool, plus I can’t remember not having swimming lessons at the Y when we lived in a place without a pool.

It wasn’t until I dated a guy when I was in my teens and had him over to our pool did I realize there were people out there who couldn’t swim. It was a question I never asked. He grew up in a town without a Y and had no friends or close relatives with pools. The opportunity never came up.

22

I agree. But I am trained. I just had the training about a bazillion years ago.

23

And I can’t do that unless I move my arms and legs. I consider that to be a type of treading water, not floating.

24

The way I learned, you’re supposed to approach from behind so they can’t grab onto you, wrap your arm around from their neck to opposite arm pit. That way you’re not crushing their windpipe.

But here’s an article from Wiki How that says you’re supposed to approach from behind and grab them under the arm pits and pull them toward your chest.

They have the same basic effect; just one leaves an arm free and the other doesn’t.

25

I grew up around pools. I was too young to remember the first time I swam but according to my Dad, he just threw me in the pool and that was that. (Gotta love the 70’s)

Now that I think about it, maybe I should take back that innate part. But I’m fairly confident any instruction I did recieve was probably my Dad yelling from the side of the pool. And it was all over and done with inside a few minutes.

26

People don’t float well at all. In still water you can lie on your back, arms and legs extended just right, and keep your mouth and nose above water. But without some motion in the arms and legs people wouldn’t be able to keep their heads out of the water in less ideal conditions. Floating with your back up and out of the water is relatively easy, and you’ll acquire that skill shortly after you die.

This is kind of silly. People can’t swim because they don’t know how. ‘Sink or swim’ works out well for some people, but there’s an ‘or’ in there because sometimes it doesn’t.

27

Cool. I don’t think I learned to swim until I was 8 or 9, the first time my sister and I traveled alone on an airline (she was 13 months older than I was). We were visiting my dad and his first new wife (he’s had a few - all I remember of her is a blonde hair, a giant pink dog and really good pancakes) and he had a pool. My mom had been teaching us to swim, sort of, but since we didn’t have a pool there was no urgency. My dad, on the other hand, forced us to learn to swim by the end of the summer so we wouldn’t drown, which I appreciate.

28

That free arm is important – you’ll need it to swim!

29

The problem with the “everyone can float” line is that while everyone can, most people don’t know the right way to do it.

Some people take that statement to mean that no matter how they position themselves in the water, they’ll float and be fine. Then they aren’t, so they panic, move their arms and legs in completely unhelpful manner, and maybe start to sink a bit more, panic, etc…

The easiest way to float, which everyone can do, is to take a big lungfull of air (if possible, if you’re already in the midst of going under that might not be possible,) and “lean over” in the water. Your head is almost entirely submerged, and your arms and feet will dangle from your body, and the top of your back is out of the water.

You’ll float like this, but obviously it’s a big disconcerting to the untrained because yes, you have to keep your head under the water and hold your breath. When you need more air, left your head up (gently move your arms back anbd forth to help, if you need to), exhale, then inhale, then go “back under.”

Floating on your back is pretty easy, too, but again, it’s a big of an odd sensation. Like the first example, your arms and especially your legs sort of hang there in the water. And with your legs, especially, that initial feeling when they start to sink might make someone start to panic if they think the rest of their body will follow, but it won’t. You legs will just sink to a point, then stop, and if you keep a lungfull of air, your torso will stay above the water, as will most of your head/face. Which is another part that might freak some people out. Yes, some water will get on your face, so again, someone might start to think they are sinking when it’s just the natural movement of their head and water.

Edit: Obviously, it if it’s a really choppy lake, or the open ocean with waves, or any kind of decent moving river, then this might not work…but in a pool, at least, floating is pretty easy if done right.

30

Two of my older cousins drowned in childhood. As a toddler, I wandered off and was finally located near a large, fast flowing irrigation canal. My mother was justifiably concerned over the idea that she might lose me to drowning, and enrolled me in swimming lessons as soon as I met the minimum age requirement, and these continued over 3-4 summers. Basically I exhausted the “basic” curriculum, and was not yet old enough to start the lifesaving courses.

So I had been a pretty able swimmer since I was very young. When I got to high school, we did a quarter long swimming unit in PE. I was pretty much the only one in my PE class, not on the swim team, that could swim half way efficiently, tread water for a half hour, or even float.

As mammals we seem to have a dog-paddling instinct. A basic dog paddle may not keep your head out of the water if you are fully clothed, and will soon result in exhaustion regardless. This is even true of dogs. Until a dog or a human becomes comfortable in the water, they will exhaust themselves trying to use the dog-paddle to climb upward out of the water. This is an instinctive panic reaction that trained lifeguards can spot a mile away. A friend of mine worked several years as a LG, and had several “saves” and none required mouth-mouth, because he spotted the panic and pulled them out before they actually inhaled any water/drowned. The only one that even got an ambulance was due to an epileptic seizure. ETA: Once dogs learn to relax, they float low in the water and paddle at a fairly slow rate…some will even learn to use their tail as a rudder.

31

It is easy, you just have to lift your head out every now and then to take a breath. It’s called the dean man’s float. Ironic, as it’s a useful thing to stay alive.

32

MY SO does not know how to swim but I’m sure he can doggie paddle if need be. But I am surprised how the knowledge stays with you. I last swam 15+ years ago and now I am swimming again daily and it is just so…wonderful. And easy. I’m very grateful to my parents for insisting.

33

Your swim instructor is wrong.

biology of drowning

34

Fat bodies are slightly more
buoyant than thin bodies…
Sheee-it. I must be the Hindenberg.

35

I think maybe she meant “Everyone can float.” It is easier for some people, though.

36

Not everyone. I’m sure this is no longer true for her, but I had a friend at camp who had so little body fat (and hadn’t gone through puberty yet, so no breasts) who, if she was still, would sink. I watched her do it. On the other hand, she was a very good swimmer.

37

Yeah, I think so. She said that in her experience (or teaching thousands of kids) not one person naturally sank to the bottom. Every single one was teachable.

If we naturally sink, how does the dead man’s float work? Of course, in doing it you’ll have a lungfull of air.

38

I won’t call it floating if you have to use some mechanisum (i.e. holding your breath) to do it.

To each his own.

39

At one point I was lean enough that I could only keep my nose just above water when floating on my back (head back) with my lungs very full of air, and my torso was near vertical, because my legs were strongly muscled. To float, I had to hold my breath, and breath in quick in-out gasps.

Sadly I float way better now, 25 years later.

40

I used to be a swim instructor, and I used to teach swim instructors. And every time this topic comes up here, people conflate the physical property of buoyancy with the learned skill of floating.

Women are typically neutrally buoyant. Men are typically negatively buoyant. Body density can affect that somewhat.

But floating is a learnable skill That’s why we have swim instructors. Even if someone is naturally buoyant, they’ll sink if they panic in the water – usually because they’ve expelled all their breath from their lungs, thereby increasing their overall body density and they’re no longer positively buoyant.

Body position is another affector of whether or not you’ll be successful at floating.

These things are learnable, and I’d agree, necessary to learn.