I’ve been a pretty good swimmer for as long as I can remember, but I’ve never taken formal swimming lessons, neither did my sister. Our friends went to specific swimming lesson classes and would say things like “We’re Guppies now!” or a mom would say: “He’s taking the Otter course this year” and that would go up to some Bronze-level certification.
I never had any of that. There were some really basic things taught at summer camp or during a March Break activity camp held at a local Y. The day-camp programs were mostly arts-and-crafts with some playtime in the pool, that included some really basic lessons for groups of 20 kids, or in-water activities.
There are only two “swim classes” I remember. One where the lady told us to float on our backs and I sucked until the lady yelled, “Cellphone, push your belly towards the ceiling!” and another time we were doing relay races and we had to swim while wearing an enormous sweatshirt. The rest of the time I just learned how to swim on my own, just messing around under the supervision of the day-camp instructors.
I didn’t get any coaching until my late teens. ETA: and by then I was a strong swimmer.
My dad taught me to doggie paddle when I was 4 or 5 and we used to go to the pool quite often. I took formal swim lessons for 8 years at sleepaway camp (daily, for 8 weeks), starting when I was 8. Now that I think of it I had swim lessons at day camp, before that, maybe starting at 6 or 7.
I went out for swim team in high school but it was just too much work.
At my daycare they put us in the water, but I suffered from a fear of putting my head under water (probably caused by other kids rough-housing with me) and it took me a while to get over that. My mother worked in hotels, and we lived in the hotels during the summer, so I spent a LOT of time in the pool. I still remember the day I really got the hang of swimming – I was splashing around in the shallow end of the pool, and kicked off, and somehow or another I figured out how to move my arms and legs the right way. I called out, “Look Mama, look! I’m swimming!”
I don’t even think my mother looked up from her magazine as she laid poolside. “Yes, honey. Yes.”
My dad claims that I learned how to swim in a hotel pool in Acapulco when I was 4. I can’t remember this.
I’ve known how to swim as long as I can remember.
I don’t know if this is a factor, but both of my parents were born and raised in California and so was I. My parents’ idea of a really good vacation involves the beach and Mexico. So I’ve spent a LOT of time on beaches all over California and Mexico. Not swimming wasn’t really an option.
Personally, I’m not a huge fan of going to the beach myself (I can only lie around reading a book and getting sunburned for so long before I get bored) but I do enjoy swimming.
Lessons at the Y and then later at the city pool, starting at around the age of 4. I also took swimming as my phys ed class in high school. I remember a couple kids who took the swimming class in high school who did not know how to swim at all, which wasn’t really the point the class (a lot of the kids in the class were on the swim team, so we did a lot of relays, water polo games, learned water safety and lifesaving techniques, etc.), but the teacher would take them aside to try and help them. It seemed a lot harder for them to learn at that point in life than it did for me to learn when I was little.
Yeah, that was me. Day camp only showed me how to float face down and kick. The rest I sorted out by trial and error.
But my big epiphany was figuring out how to swim underwater! My sister and I were pretending to be dolphins, so we were pretending to do this, although in reality, for onlookers it probably looked more like this. So just jumping our feet off the bottom of the pool, touching our hands to the bottom, and coming up.
After doing this for awhile, I realized that—Waitaminute!—I was swimming under water!!! :eek: So then rather than touch my hands to the bottom and coming up right away, I went for a couple of extra kicks, and then a few more, then trying to see if I could make it all the way to the other side.
By the end of the week I was swimming in the Formerly Scary Deep End. Being able to swim underater for some reason made the deep end totally non-scary because it didn’t matter if I couldn’t touch bottom, I could swim without touching anything at all!
ETA: BTW, most of the time I spent in the pool as a kid was vaious forms of underwater goofing around. I was a powerful swimmer and could hold my breath for a really, really long time, but I sucked at all the technical stuff like proper front crawl strokes. My arms moved like pinwheels.
I taught myself how to swim. My grandmother tried to ‘teach’ me by just throwing me in, but that gave me a really serious fear of water. I only figured it out when I was about ten, starting off with some basic dog paddling and floating in the pool. I figured I needed to spite my grandmother and her pedagogical methods, so I did. In a year, I was like a natural, and loved the water.
Fourteen years later, I swim like a fish (and still hate my grandmother).
Learned swimming at school from when I was 6 till I believe 10. Swimming was a required lesson for every student once a week. I damn well hated it at first, but after the first year or so I could swim. After that I loved it. I even did water polo and competitive swimming for a bit.
I hardly go swimming anymore; I prefer cycling, but I can still swim well.
ETA: In high school we also had a few times we went swimming instead of regular PE. I think everybody could swim. When I was growing up, it was practically mandatory to learn how to swim (not that amazing if you’ve ever been in the Netherlands).
My mom took me to Mommy and Me swim classes when I was a wee child. Then, when I was in very early elementary school, I took swim classes at the local college (they had programs for kids, obviously :p). When I was 7 or 8, I started doing triathlons and had professional swim coaches.
We had moved back to the US from Germany and were living on a military installation. There was a lake with a swimming area and the deep end had all the cool stuff (slides, diving boards, etc). However, in order to go to the deep end, I had to show the lifeguards I could swim the length of the swimming area and back. So, in the space of about two weeks, I practiced every day, then asked the life guard to test me and passed.
I already knew how to dog paddle, but taught myself the crawl. Dog paddling was not considered “advanced” enough to go to the deep end.
My father took the Talmudic injunction that a father is obligated to teach his children to swim fairly seriously, and taught us how to backfloat, backstroke, and doggy paddle (enough that we wouldn’t drown if dumped in a lake) from a fairly early age - five-ish? I learned how to do a basic crawl and basic diving in day camp, although I was a slow learner, taking at least three summers to get that far.
I was one of those ‘sinks like a rock’ kids so while mom put me in swim lessons a few years in a row they did me no good since all they wanted to teach was the front crawl. When you’re not buoyant you swim under the surface of the water not on top of it making the whole ‘turn your head for a breath’ move impossible.
So summers were spent at the public pool playing tag with friends and using a modified front crawl where my head stayed above water the whole time.
I was bummed since I couldn’t go in the deep or off the diving boards (swim test the length of the pool).
Then I saw kid doing the swim test using the head above water crawl. “Seriously, you can do the test with that style? Well I can do that.”
Immediately took the test and spent the rest of the summer doing canopeners off the high dive.
I got tossed into Lake Ontario when I was 6 months old … to my dad =) I paddled around in the water from then on. I know that we spent a month in western NY at one family cottage, and another month in Canada at my grandparents summer house every summer from birth until I was 12, so I have always had swimming access to fresh water. From the age of 5 until 14 we also spend a couple weeks in the winter in Florida except for the year I was 8 because I was stuck in hospital with pneumonia. I am not as fond of ocean swimming, the salt feels icky on my skin when it dries.
If there was the SFional option to get gills grafted in so I could be amphibius, I would SO be there. I love swimming. Diving is a pale shadow of being water converted
I was signed up for swimming lessons at the Y or somewhere similar every summer through grade school. We went to the pool occasionally in the summer, but it was too expensive for a regular outing. I got serious about actually being able to swim when I wanted to be able to take diving lessons around 6th grade or so. I was on the swimming and diving team in HS and college, but I still can’t swim especially well. (My HS coach learned after one relay that I should stick with diving.) My college had a mandatory swimming requirement and I was mighty relieved that members of the swim team were exempt. Not that I would drown or anything during the 100 yd test, but it wouldn’t have been pretty.
Vacations always involved going to places with a pool (Napa Valley Ranch Club) or a lake (Lake Shasta) from the time I was little. I don’t remember not being in the water. I took formal lessons from the Red Cross starting when I was probably 7 or 8 and later taught swim lessons for them in city pools. Now it seems kind of strange, growing up in San Francisco, but at the time, it was a normal summer activity.
I started lessons when I was about five. I immediately mastered the basics like staying afloat and treading water, and I also easily learned the backstroke and breaststroke. It took me until high school to learn to breathe during the front crawl, though. I couldn’t quite figure out that you don’t start inhaling until AFTER your mouth is out of the water!
I’m from Florida. I don’t remember learning to swim any more than I remember learning to walk. I do remember wearing water wings in a pool, but we used to put them on our ankles and try to walk on water, so I suspect they belonged to another kid who wasn’t as comfortable in the water as my sister and I.
So then rather than touch my hands to the bottom and coming up right away, I went for a couple of extra kicks, and then a few more, then trying to see if I could make it all the way to the other side.
