How did you learn to swim?

[naomi 356]

Curious about this..

Did you learn by simply getting in the water, moving your body, and intuitively adjusting to what worked...

OR, did you learn by formal instruction...seeing/hearing technique, mentally banking it, and following steps?

I imagine it's probably a mix of those two for most people. But, I also imagine many people just figure it out for themselves.

[Hawkeye21 2,382]

I think I figured out the basics on my own and from my parents.  Then I took swim lessons for a few years.

[weepaws 3,158]

In the water. 

[TommyGavin 790]

The hard way

[TheNewGirl 1,357]

Pretty sure I had lessons as a young child (4 or 5 years old). But this was mainly to get to safety if you fell into a pool or something. Back then, there were no laws around needing a pool to be fenced in, etc.  So, getting to safety, not panicking, etc. 

 

As an adult I had a coach to teach proper form, stroke, breathing and all of that. I started doing triathlon, so learning how to have good form and not expend extra energy was the focus there. 

[Strike 5,233]

Couldn't tell you.  Grew up with and around pools so just always knew how to swim.  My form probably sucks but I'm not drowning and can get from point A to point B in the water.

[MTSkiBum 1,620]

My kids are in lessons.

My 8 year old daughter just finished her lessons last week and I am working on practicing with her. She can swim across the deep end without panicking although it will be a while before I will trust her in the water. 

My 6 year old son still has 2 lessons but I think I will need to work with him after his lessons are over.

[edjr 6,578]

Grandparents owned a pool. I spent most of my summers there as a wee lad. Nana taught me. My uncle also taught me how to play hide the pickle when they weren't around. 

[DonS 3,292]

When I was in elementary school swimming was part of the annual PE curriculum.  We would be bussed to the high school which had a pool.

For our kids we enrolled them in summer swim lessons at a nearby park. 

[DonS 3,292]

Btw, I'll see you down in Arizona Bay. 

 

 

[TommyGavin 790]

2 minutes ago, edjr said:

Grandparents owned a pool. I spent most of my summers there as a wee lad. Nana taught me. My uncle also taught me how to play hide the pickle when they weren't around. 

Hmmm. I’m always interested in new games. How do you play hide the pickle?

[MTSkiBum 1,620]

3 minutes ago, TommyGavin said:

Hmmm. I’m always interested in new games. How do you play hide the pickle?

You get a jar of pickles and then you have 10 minutes to hide them around the house. once the timer is up the other team has to find all of the pickles as fast as possible.

 

 

[DonS 3,292]

1 minute ago, MTSkiBum said:

You get a jar of pickles and then you have 10 minutes to hide them around the house. once the timer is up the other team has to find all of the pickles as fast as possible.

 

 

And if you fail you get molested.  Everyone wins!!!! 

[BeenHereBefore 1,471]

My Dad taught me in the ocean when I was around 6, was doing the public pool thing a few years later. I remember me and friends use to go on our own to public pools around ten years old.

[supermike80 1,812]

Wow...Seriously I don't remember.   No idea.

[edjr 6,578]

9 minutes ago, DonS said:

And if you fail you get molested.  Everyone wins!!!! 

Never understood why vaseline was needed.  

[jerryskids 6,579]

16 minutes ago, DonS said:

Btw, I'll see you down in Arizona Bay. 

 

 

When I saw this thread and that you had posted in it, I bet myself a bazillion dollars that you posted about this song.  I'm rich!   

To the OP, like others it was a mish mash of on my own and lessons.  I know I took lessons when I was around 5 yrs old, and I was afraid to open my eyes until the very end of the last lesson:  the instructor surprised me and dunked me as he lifted me out of the pool, and my eyes were open.  After that I realized it was no big deal.

But also, my aunt had an in ground pool (fairly rare for my section of podunk PA) so we went there a lot.

All 3 of our kids did lessons, because drowning deaths are unfortunately quite common in Phoenix.

[DonS 3,292]

1 minute ago, jerryskids said:

When I saw this thread and that you had posted in it, I bet myself a bazillion dollars that you posted about this song.  I'm rich!   

 

[Alias Detective 1,389]

Mom chucked me in the pool and I was supposed to float to the top like all kids apparently are supposed to do.  I didn't I was told, just sunk right to the bottom.  After that, I would jump and try to swim to her...I think that's how it went anyway.

[RogerDodger 797]

Every kid went down to the public pool and took lessons back then.  

[posty 2,613]

Leonard Hofstadter : Well, uh, remember when you tried to learn how to swim using the internet?
Sheldon Cooper : I *did* learn how to swim.
Leonard Hofstadter : On the floor.
Sheldon Cooper : The skills are transferable. I just have no interest in going in the water.

[Cloaca du jour 2,147]

Ymca classes when I was little

[DonS 3,292]

2 minutes ago, Cloaca du jour said:

Ymca classes when I was little

It sure is fun there, young man. 

[Pimpadeaux 2,404]

John Wayne threw me in a river.

 

[BunnysBastatrds 2,321]

 Cool pops ina a lake.

[seafoam1 2,812]

My dad would row a short ways out into a small lake and throw us in the water at a certain age. We had to get back to the shore somehow.

[lickin_starfish 1,893]

My friends and I would throw a quarter into the deep end of the public pool. Everyone jumped in at the same time and fought to be the one to bring the quarter to the surface. I'm talking sleeper holds and arm-bars ten feet underwater. I'm surprised nobody drowned.

[Mike Honcho 5,124]

I grew up on a lake and the first year we lived there(I was 4, brother was 3), we started taking swimming lessons. 

[thegeneral 2,955]

Grew up on a lake and access to pools. How we spent all day, all summer. I am sure my parents taught me some basics before I can remember.

[TBayXXXVII 2,485]

4 hours ago, naomi said:

Curious about this..

Did you learn by simply getting in the water, moving your body, and intuitively adjusting to what worked...

OR, did you learn by formal instruction...seeing/hearing technique, mentally banking it, and following steps?

I imagine it's probably a mix of those two for most people. But, I also imagine many people just figure it out for themselves.

I was very young, around 5, and we belonged to a community pool.  My parents signed my brother up with lessons there.

[TommyGavin 790]

3 hours ago, Cloaca du jour said:

Ymca classes when I was little

Explains a lot 

[HTH 93]

Yacht Club...

Diving as well.

[wiffleball 4,788]

Seriously, my mother's birth canal? Makes the Panama canal look like post nasal drip. Mark Spitz couldn't make it through there with floaties and a friggin paddle board. 

[MDC 7,154]

On 7/5/2023 at 3:45 PM, seafoam1 said:

My dad would row a short ways out into a small lake and throw us in the water at a certain age. We had to get back to the shore somehow.

I bet he was disappointed when you made it back.  

[seafoam1 2,812]

4 minutes ago, MDC said:

I bet he was disappointed when you made it back.  

7/5 post. You spending your night looking up my posts. 

[Cdub100 3,850]

No lessons just swimming at my friends pool and they lake. Really learned when I joined my high school swim team

[Gepetto 1,292]

Swimming, pfft. I grew up on a lake. We played tag in the water, so had to figure it out; took lessons too, but figured it out myself. I learned to slalom water-ski at age 9 give or take, can't remember exactly my age.

[easilyscan 870]

Swimming lessons. A.k.a. white privilege. At least in my state. 

 

DFL Rep. Clark says bill requiring swimming instruction in schools is "a civil rights issue"

By Aaron Rupar Tue., Apr. 22 2014 at 1:45 PM
113 Comments


Rep. Karen Clark
A bill authored by Rep. Karen Clark, D-Minneapolis, would make Minnesota the first state in the country to require swimming instruction for public school students.

The bill comes on the heels of two recent incidents where Somali students drowned in school pools, but Clark says it's intended to address a problem that goes back decades.

"The racial drowning disparity is a civil rights issue when you come right down to it," Clark tells us. "And one of the reasons African Americans drown is because swimming pools were closed to African American people for many decades. It's a legacy of drowning that's not okay, and we can do something about it."

 

Thankfully, it never became law.

Karen Clark was pretty typical for a Democrat in Minnesota. Total whack job who thinks it's the government job to be everything for everyone, from cradle to grave. 
 

[listen2me 23 1,831]

I was thrown into a pool.  You learn quick.  My uncle is a marine.  His kids could swim young.   He just threw me in.  

[listen2me 23 1,831]

Lessons.  Lmao.