Yes. I’m a strong swimmer. I mainly do freestyle and backstroke, occasionally breast stroke. Can’t do a flip turn to save my life, though. I also do skin diving, and did SCUBA for a while; I like being under water better than on top of it.
I was actually a sissy in the water until I was nine. I didn’t like to get my face wet. My parents made me take lessons, but I learned nothing. Then we put in the swimming pool.
I worked as a lifeguard and swam competitively in high school.
Which is not any kind of statistical survey. The respondents are not a generic slice of the population; they’re people who responded because they have a specific interest in the thread topic.
Stranger
I think I first made it across width of the pool at age 30 months. In college, I could swim 50 yards underwater. Can’t imagine not being comfortable in the water. I can swim every stroke, but my butterfly runs out of gas pretty quick.
Just google something like “percent of people who can’t swim”. Here is an excerpt from an NPR report of a USA Swimming study:
For the record, while swimming isn’t my strong suite in a triathlon, I can probably swim until I get hypothermic, dehydrate, or starve, depending on conditions. All 5 slowlets are on a swim team. I’ve never seen Mrs. Slow swim, and I don’t think she could swim 50 meters.
Yes… I’ve been able to swim all my life (that i can remember).
I’m not a great swimmer. However, i’ve no fear of the water, and i can get around just fine out there!
Thanks. I promise I won’t use it in my doctorial thesis.:dubious:
Yes, I can swim across an olympic size pool length or width. When I started on canoe in high school, we had to swim something like 20 lengths before we were allowed to go on a canoe trip.
I know and use backstroke, side stroke, front crawl, breast stroke and I can tread water.
I’m not afraid of the water. I do put my face in, but I’m not very efficient, and I haven’t yet found that ideal rhythm that allows people to swim really well. I have gone to a ‘stroke improvement’ class, but it’s at a terrible time for me at my local Y. Fortunately, I’ve found the lifeguards are all really helpful when it comes to working with aspiring swimmers.
Yes,
I was on the swim team in Jr. High but wasn’t very good. I can do freestyle, breast, backstroke, sidestroke, and butterfly. I am a pretty strong swimmer but not terribly fast. I can dive ok.
I love to swim. I love to swim so much, I go swimming in the rain. I can actually remember the moment (some 40+ years ago), when I let hold of my dad and dog paddled on my own. It was sweet!
I took junior lifesaving lessons around grade 7 or 8, but I dropped out because I was bored with the repetitive lap swimming the lifeguards made us do while they flirted with each other on the pool deck. I can tread water for a long time, am not afraid to get my face wet or swim under water. I can’t butterfly, but can do most of the others; I prefer breast stroke.
I also love to dive. I can’t do anything fancy, but I don’t look too bad. I can stand on my hands underwater, do a front or back somersault underwater, and my cannonball makes a great splash.
I have a pool in my backyard and summers off from work, and am absolutely fantastic at lolling on a float while listening to a baseball game on the radio. As a matter of fact, that’s the happy place I go to in my head when I am at the dentist.
Yes. I can do crawl (rather slow and not for long), breast (ditto), back crawl (ditto), but the elementary backstroke just about forever. I swam about a mile in the ocean off Barbados in February, all backstroke.
My wife swims but is uncomfortable in water over her head. Obviously that is psychological. All three of my kids and all my grandchildren above the age of 3 swim. The 2 1/2 year old is comfortable in the water but not swimming.
I learned how to swim when I was - I don’t know. I remember doing the crawl in the lake around age 5 or so. Since we had a place on a lake learning to swim was a requirement.
I joined the high school swim team in 7th grade. My strengths are the backstroke, crawl, and breast. I suck at diving.I could never get the timing down on the butterfly, and I didn’t want the massive shoulders that our butterfliers had, although just by nature being in the pool 3 - 5 hours / day almost year around I still ended up with linebacker shoulders.
When we lived in the condo we had daily access to the pool and I was in it every chance I could. Being in a pool is the ultimate relaxation. I cannot go to the pool and “lounge”, though. I must swim, even if it’s just a lazy breaststroke.
I would rather swim in a pool than a lake - not a fan of weeds and fishies. I discovered the hard way that little perch love biting anything colorful that moves - including tattoos on ankles. I also strongly dislike the not knowing what’s on the lakebed. More than once I’ve sliced a foot open in a lake.
No, I’m not afraid of the water and yes, I do submerge my head.
I’ve been swimming as long as I can remember, but I had formal lessons as a kid, too. I know all the basic strokes, but only usually use the crawl and the breaststroke.
As further data points, both of my kids and my husband also know how. My son was afraid to put his head in the water at first (he was about 3 or 4 when he started lessons.) It may have had something to do with his ears, though. He still had a tube in one of them when we started and had to have a special earplug made. He loves the water now, though–ocean, pool, bath, whatever.
Fair enough. Just realize that the percentage of positive respondents here far outweighs the swimming ability of the general population by any reasonable estimate.
Stranger
Yes. I can get across your pool and back, probably multiple times, but I can’t remember which stroke is which.
I can tread water, or swim on my back or, …the regular way. 
Formal swim lessons before first grade, swim team as a young teenager, Mile Swim in the Boy Scouts. My best competitive stroke was the backstroke, but swam/can swim the Butterfly (not well), American Crawl, Breaststroke, Side Stroke, Dog Paddle, underwater, and any other conveyance stroke I may be forgetting, plus survival swimming. I spent my first 18 years living on islands (Oahu, Parris, and Port Royal).
[quote=“Ro0sh, post:45, topic:494029”]
Yes I can swim. Freestyle, Backstroke, doggie, and Butterfly I think, the froggy looking. I always confuse it with Breast… But I can’t do the crazy one that Phelps is good at. /QUOTE]
Michael Phelps is famous for butterfly. The froggy one you can do is breaststroke.
I’m surprised at the people responding who can do butterfly but not backstroke. I thought butterfly was way more advanced than backstroke. Anyway, yup, I can do the major strokes except for butterfly. I haven’t know many people who can’t swim.
Is sidestroke an actual stroke, or might I know that by another name?
Free swimming for kids is only at certain times of year in certain boroughs, and doesn’t apply to all council-owned pools. My borough only just reintroduced it after having paid swimming for a couple of years for kids. True about basic swimming being required; it’s not the best way to learn (the kids spend an awful long time travelling to the pool and back, and standing on the side of the pool waiting to get in), but it’s better than nothing.
Yup! I was about 3 or so when my parents started taking me to the local pool, and I took 2 years of swim classes in high school. I’m slooowly getting back into lap swimming now to add on to my doing water aerobics twice a week. I can do all the swimming strokes, but I prefer the crawl and backstroke.
Well, not properly, but I can cross a pool. I prefer swimming underwater to surface swimming, which I never really learned to do well.
Yes. I swim pretty well. Had to since I used to surf every day. I’m able to hold my breath (just tested myself) for approx 2:15. I used to do underwater swimming drills every day. Haven’t done so in a few years so my capacity is a little lower than usual.