I’m in good shape, but can’t swim. I signed up for private swim lessons at my grad school, six 30-minute lessons for $100. How long does it take to be able to adequately learn how to freestyle swim – controlled breathing, enough technique to swim 200 meters nonstop?
I plan on taking the 30 minute lesson, followed by 30-60 minutes practicing every other day for the next week and a half. Has anybody else tried to learn to swim as an adult, and if so what was the experience like for you?
I learned to swim as a child, so my experience may be irrelevant. Keep in mind that you can swim in two or three feet of water. If you have difficulty, you can just stand up. It isn’t difficult. Your body floats if you have lungs full of air. If you struggle, all you have to do is stand up. I can certainly understand your concerns, but you’ll do fine. Relax and enjoy.
Enjoy the weightlessness and play splashy games.
I taught a good friend (aged 22) with an intense phobia about getting water in her eyes how to do a backstroke in one session of under an hour. (Her university had a swim test required for graduation, and she’d put it off until spring semester of senior year.) She was able to do three lengths of an Olympic-sized pool just fine in the required time (ten or fifteen minutes, I don’t remember.) I have no other swim teaching experience. Trust me, if she can do it, with a teacher like me, I’m sure you can do it too.
That said, learning the crawl (your classic swim pose, with face-in-the-water, arms following a somewhat windmill-like pattern) will probably take you several sessions. If you’re willing to practice on your own, and don’t have a fear of water or other barrier to learning, you should almost certainly be able to do it over the six sessions.
I tried to teach someone how to swim in college. It didn’t work, mostly because he had no faith in his ability to be less dense than water – he’d go horizontal, sink into the water a little bit, then panic, flail his arms, and exhale. :smack:
So, I guess my advice would be to get a sense of how buoyant you really are. When you first get into the pool, hold your breath (and maybe your nose) and lie still, or curl into a ball. You’ll bob up and down, but basically you’ll float. Hopefully this sensation will help you avoid panic when you go into a doggy-paddle and your chest sinks into the water a bit.
As for how long it takes, I’m not sure, but a few solid hours of practice should be enough if you keep your head about you and watch how other people do it. I guess. As a 9 year old, I just splashed around my grandmother’s pool until I figured it out. How hard could it be?
I took a basic swimming class at college because I couldn’t (and unfortunately still can’t) swim freestyle.
Because we covered a number of strokes, we didn’t spend that much time on each style. Maybe one or two days of two-hour classes.
I already knew most of the rest of the strokes (breaststroke and backstroke), and we didn’t learn the butterfly. Most people got them without too much trouble.
Learning freestyle isn’t that hard. I can do all the breathing and can move forward, but only by arm power. When I try kicking I get no forward motion. Holding onto a float with my arm and kicking only keeps me drifting, unless I kick really hard, which sends me slightly backwards.
The coach didn’t have time for personal instruction, which private lessons would have been much more useful for correcting problems.
Do you not swim at all? How comfortable are you in water? Can you hold your breath underwater, etc?
The first part of the classes was just getting people used to being in water. From there we went on kicking and arms, etc.
Unless you are a particularly strong fear of water, I don’t see why you can’t learn in six lessons.
I’m 30 and can’t swim, either. I don’t really see myself learning at this point but I guess it would probably be a good idea. Usually when I’m near water, I just make the people I’m with promise to save me should anything happen 
small hijack: OP, Death Cab for Cutie fan, perchance?
If by “freestlye” you mean “crawl”, I spent several childhood summers trying it and couldn’t.
On the other hand, breaststroke took me a couple seconds with no teacher, once I figured out that I actually floated.
I am 38 years old and have never learned to swim.
I have tried to in the past (it was compulsory at my school to take lessons) but it just wasn’t working. I have a fear of water, so that pretty much scuppered it.
But it’s not been an issue for me, I just keep away from situations where drowning may be a likelihood, and it is apolicy that has served me well.
Just wanted to offer solidarity. I’m in my mid 20s and can’t swim either. (I’m terrified of sinking.) Good luck. It’s something that I’ve got to force myself to learn before I have kids, and I am not looking forward to it.
Here’s a nice exercise if you are convinced you will sink.
Get into the deep end (using whatever safety precautions you need, of course). Hang onto the side. Notice where your feet are. Now take a deep breath and put your face in the water. What happens to your feet?
Ain’t that nifty?
I’m older than all those who have stated their age and I never really learned to swim either thanks to a traumatic near-drowning during a swim lesson when I was a child. For the record having a bunch of kids hold hands and go underwater together is a stupid ass idea for a swimming lesson. Who would have thunk that a bunch of 5 year olds could keep a death grip on you?
I could dogpaddle and tread water and for years that was fine by me. I could even go underwater if I held my nose or wore noseplugs, but I really couldn’t swim. After moving to Florida where we have lots of water in beach or pool form, I taught myself to go underwater without holding my nose over many years time. Basically though I was an adult before I had any confidence in myself in the water. Didn’t stop me from living at the beach when I was younger but I always stayed where I could touch the bottom. I taught myself the basic strokes, back stroke and breaststroke just by watching other people swim, but I wouldn’t put my face in the water. I’m still not great going underwater sometimes I still get water up my nose but I did manage to get to the point where I could swim underwater for the full length of a pool.
Anyway, you can do it if you have the incentive, just don’t go into the deep end until you feel confident enough and don’t go underwater unless there are other people around in case you panic.
I can manage to get from one end to the other, but I’m absolutely out of breath because I can’t breathe properly using a crawl. Otherwise water doesn’t intimidate me, but I usually stay out of the deep end. Like most posters, I lived in the city, and never really had the need to know how to swim. However I’m going to australia and want to learn how to scuba dive. One of the requirements for certification is to swim 200m and tread for 10 minutes. So my immediate motivation is to be able to pass that.
But longterm I want to be able to say, “I can swim well” - -enough that if I wanted to could swim as a workout routine.
It’s frustrating seeing 5 year olds and 80 year olds swim in the pool so effortlessly and I can’t get it at all. Hopefully the swim instructions will provide a structure so I’ll have a technique.
I’m fairly proud of myself to finally get around to doing this though.
I’m in my late 40’s, live in the land of 10,000 lakes, and I still can’t swim due to a traumatic near-drowning like Wile E. mentioned. I still have hopes of one day learning to swim, but I have a few things to take care of first.
Take my advice–learn now. It does not get easier to do these things as you get older.
That said, there’s no reason you (or even I) can’t learn to swim. I imagine it’s a physical skill like riding a bicycle, and once your body gets the memory down it will be second nature. My only suggestion would be to try daily practice for shorter sessions rather than the alternating days to get the rhythm of it well ingrained.
I was going to start a similar thread about treading water.
I can swim, sort of, using the front crawl, but I can’t do the breast stroke, and I can’t tread water.
It looks ridiculously easy but whenever I try, I get tired very quickly. I’m moving my arms and my legs but I think that I’m relying too much on my arms. FWIW, I’m in pretty good shape, certainly in better shape than many of the people that I see treading water effortlessly.
What’s the key to treading water?
To treading water, and to swimming in general, the trick is that you don’t need to use as much force as you would when doing opposing-force-meets-object on dry land. In fact, you shouldn’t.
You want to use only as much force as is required to get enough pushback from the water around you to bob you up in the water. You should bob up enough that you aren’t pulled under when your foot reaches extension and starts the up part of the stroke.
Regarding your question about arms – Arms and hands are definitely subordinate and should be used mainly for counterbalancing the force that your feet are putting out as you kick.
Remember, you float to start with. The important part of treading water is to get you the necessary inches above water to breathe, not to get clean out of the water (unless you play water polo and need to lunge out to hit the ball, but that’s a different subject). You should be conserving energy as much as possible when treading water, not expending it all at once.
That’s an issue that I see often with beginner swimmers, flailing hard at the water without figuring that physics in water *does not * match physics in air. Once you’ve got that down, you can work with your body’s instincts and mechanics to determine the motions that work for you to create the stroke that you want to use.
like lizardling said, less effort is the key. Also, if you are in super great shape, you may be at a slight disadvantage due to low body fat. Even so, just relaxing and allowing your shoulders to sit under the surface of the water as your arms fan slowly back and forth will do the trick.
Can you float on your back? Treading water takes that same kind of controlled relaxation- constantly aware of what your body is doing in the water, but trusting your natural buoyancy.
Yeah, it’s counterintuitive, which leads to my motions being counterproductive.
I think the problem is that I’m afraid of being in deep water, and I find it difficult to practice treading water in shallow water. The pool that I’ve used has a steep transition from shallow to deep. Maybe I need to try another pool, or a lake.
Thanks for your suggestions. 
Yes, I can float on my back, but I think you’ve identified one of the issues: I’m not relaxed enough to trust my natural buoyancy when my eyes get close to the water’s surface, ***and * ** when I know that I can’t stand up to keep my mouth above water.
Relax … relax … relax … :eek:
Thanks for your help.
Well, in my case, my entire body drops even lower into the water, until it stablizes well below the surface. And if I weren’t really comfortable in water, that would freak me the hell out.
Luckily, I’m not afraid of water.
steadierfooting, if you’re not afraid of water and it’s a matter of learning technique, I re-learned how to swim when I was 25. (The first time I’d gotten in the water, it took me 1/2 hour to do nine-lengths of the pool and I was exhausted at the end.) About 4 months later, I could swim 1/4 mile non-stop and definitely do laps for exercise.
I agree. I think I’ll work on treading water tomorrow at my pool and getting into that relaxed state.
That’s encouraging news, of course I lave to learn and not relearn – but I feel confident that endurance isn’t as much an issue as technique. I’m hoping that would speed up the learning curve – that I won’t get tired kicking down 1 lap.