My husband, who was a competition swimmer in his younger days, tells me only a small percentage of the population knows how to swim. I was shocked to hear this and, in fact, I don’t believe it.
I know how to swim. Everyone I know knows how to swim. I’m not a great swimmer, but I can get from here to there alive in summertime water.
Can you swim across an olympic size pool (short side), without holding onto the side? What strokes do you know/use? (Boys, behave, now)
Are you afraid of the water? Do you put your face in the water?
Yes, I know how to swim. I learnt as a child. We had an Olympic pool just a few minutes’ walk from my school, and we went there every week for PE during summer.
Strokes: either freestyle or breaststroke. I put my face in the water.
Learned as a child (can’t really remember a time I couldnt swim)…Competitive from age 8 or so through college, swim all strokes (backstroke only when necessary), and currently training to make it into Air Force Pararescue, so still swimming daily…
I can swim, learned as a child.
I can do a front and back crawl and a sloppy breaststroke. Im pretty sure during swimming lessons I was taught to do the butterfly but I was never able to hang of it, so i probably couldn’t do it today if i tried.
I’m not a great swimmer, despite being on the swim team in HS and college. (I was a diver - only had to get to the side of the pool!) My general preference is to dog paddle, but I’ll swim free or breast if I must.
Yes, and yes. Tread water, dogpaddle, (also the one where you are on your stomach and both arms go out at the same time) whatever you call it when you swim on your side but haven’t been taught a form, whatever you call it when you swim on your back but haven’t been taught a form. I swim underwater just fine, don’t need ear or nose plugs either. I open my eyes sometimes underwater too. As a child I used to often spend the whole day swimming (open to close) at the swimming pool, taking breaks when they were called, and sometimes more often. I learned by doing, and imitating.
yes, my parents put me through a “water babies” thing where I started swimming (or at least floating) as an infant. Can’t remember a time where I didn’t know how to swim.
Yes, backstroke, crawl, breaststroke.
Not at all, yes.
Yup.
Breaststroke, sidestroke, crawl and butterfly (underwater breastroke with butterfly leg movements being my favorite - I hate swimming on the surface). Backstroke I can do too, but only if you pay me a lot because I know I’m going to smash my head in the side of the pool sooner or later.
Not afraid of water in the least, and like I said I like it better when I’m totally submerged so that’s a yes for the face in water.
Same here. My father tried to teach me to swim many times when I was a child. Didn’t work. I was enrolled in several swimming classes, where I showed excellent skills in sinking.
I’ve finally learned how to swim. Step 1: put on a lifejacket…
I spent every summer growing up in one pool or another. I didn’t really learn to swim until high school, though.
I never swam competitively. But I took to swimming a lot in college as a form of stress relief. I eventually took classes and qualified for lifeguard certification and lifeguarded two summers.
Didn’t really swim again until a couple years ago. Now I can swim a mile at a clip. Freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, plus a back stroke I don’t remember the name of (looks like a frog lying on his back).
I’ve never been afraid of the water or putting my face in. But I am a wuss about submerging in cold water.
The only person I know who absolutely cannot swim is my mom.
Does your husband mean “Most people don’t know how to swim (for real)” ? Then I’d probably almost have to agree with him.
I’ve known how to swim since I was a, uh, let’s just say very young. Crawl, backstroke, breaststroke, sidestroke, butterfly, etc… Both my siblings know how to swim. Both my parents. My wife. Her two brothers. Her two kids. Her parents . . .
Yes, since I was but a wee twickster (4 or 5). I was staying with some people who had a pool while my parents were out of town and hated the lifejacket, so I taught myself to dog-paddle.
Mostly breast stroke and side stroke, my crawl is pretty funky (never got the hang of the breathing every other stroke thing down too well).
Yes, I can swim. I can’t swim well, but I could swim across a pool.
I know most of the basic strokes, in that I could demonstrate them - crawl, breaststroke, sidestroke, backstroke, that other kind of backstroke and I could probably manage one stroke of butterfly. If I actually needed to swim across a pool, I would probably choose to dog paddle. I mean, why rush, right?
Writing this out makes me realize that I swam a lot as a kid, and it seems odd that I don’t swim better now. During the summer, I am in the lake all the time, but I am mostly floating and relaxing.
I learned as a child and also had to pass a swim test to graduate from university. Was that just a weird thing that only Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute required or do other schools also do this?
