Adult Swim Lessons | Surviving (the remedial class)

I’ve been promising myself I would learn how to swim for years. This is the year I finally took the plunge.

Lesson 1: Being Humbled

A sense of dread threatened to overwhelm me as I packed my bag with a pair of jocks and a towel. I do not thrive in scenarios such as this. I become incredibly vulnerable, and all the insecurities that I don’t think I have come bubbling to the surface. 

Being humble and being humbled are almost antonyms – that final ‘d’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting. I had brought my daughter to swimming lessons a couple of years ago and it had gone poorly for a mixture of reasons so we stopped going. Now she is older and I am determined that she will not be like me and will know how to swim from an early age.

I had also promised myself I would learn how to swim before my 35th birthday. Having blown past that and the one after it, my daughter was now going to learn to swim before me. I signed myself up for a lesson the following day without thinking it through.

I had been under the impression that I had gone to swimming lessons every summer of my childhood. We would take the bus, driven by Paddy Conneelly-Conniilly-Connoolly-Kennelly, all summer and get swimming lessons in Ballinasloe. I got a certificate saying that I swam two widths of that pool. 

I could definitely swim once.

Looking back on this particular memory with the benefit of a critical adult eye now, I may have been romanticizing it a little. 

What I thought was every summer was just one summer. 

What I thought was summer was only 2 weeks – and may very well have actually been one week. 

What I thought was two widths of the pool was actually one width followed by me standing up and taking my goggles off and the instructor saying “Did you want to do another one? You said you were going to do two?” and me putting back on the goggles and heading off again.

What I thought was swimming was technically swimming, but I held my breath the whole way across. No breathing. Not ideal in the middle of a lake or ocean.

It’s fucking embarrassing.

It’s not at all but it feels embarrassing. I suppose that’s what embarrassment is. 

It is only in the last few years that I’ve started admitting to people that I can’t swim. Before that, I would just avoid situations where swimming was necessary as best I could. 

If step 1 is admitting you have a problem, then step 2 must be booking a lesson, and step 3 must be stripping down and getting in the pool for that lesson. 

Lesson 2: Am I Afraid of Water?

It’s been a couple of weeks since my first lesson as I was traveling. It’s given me some time to contemplate. Only for the fact that they charge you for a month at a time, I’d have already jumped ship and claimed I’d try again in the Summer. 

I could feel myself growing silent and mopey in the hour before this lesson. It’s a type of determined dread that you can only experience when you know you are doing something that is excellent for you in the long run, but endlessly uncomfortable in this particular moment. Think colonoscopy prep. Think flossing. Think filling the dishwasher before bed. 

“What would you like to do today?”

“I’d like to sit in the sauna and lock myself in so none of the meatheads in their sneakers and sweatpants can come in shadow boxing with their beer-can headphones pumping music way too loud,” I didn’t say but that is truly what I wanted at that moment.

“Probably the same as last week…?!” I actually said.

“And that was… freestyle?” 

“No, just try to float.” 

I clearly wasn’t even so bad as to be memorable, just the normal amount of terrible. What a fucking loser.

I had played lesson one over in my head a few times. I had definitely tweaked a muscle in my shoulder trying to save myself from drowning in 3 feet 6 inches of water. I’m not a tall man but I stand significantly taller than that. When I ‘came out’ to my siblings, most of whom also swim poorly or not at all, one mentioned their fear of water. I don’t have that, I thought. That’s not my issue. I love being in the water. My mother was genuinely afraid of water and would never actually get in the swimming pool. She was afraid of water.

On the other hand, I do go into a blind panic if my head goes below water for a second, immediately inhale a couple of lung-fulls of water, flail desperately looking to grab onto anyone or anything within reach, until I finally steady myself enough to stand up and the water goes just above my protruding gut . 

I’m not afraid of water.

I am afraid of drowning. 

I worked on that today.

Lesson 3: Private Lesson

No one else turned up today. There was one lady there on my first day who was apparently a long timer. At my second lesson, there were two others so I didn’t get much face time with my instructor which suited me just perfectly. She’d pop over every few minutes to let me know what adjustments I needed to make and move on again. 

Today, no one else turned up so I had a de facto private lesson. I cycle a lot but I have not been cycling at all recently. It is fair to say I had wintered well. My form in the pool is that of a beached whale – essentially flailing in place. I am unfit and my belly could be best described as protruding.

A length of the pool, complete with paddle board, takes more out of me than a 20 mile cycle. My legs ache and my lungs struggle. I can feel the calories burning in real time. My head is light and my body is heavy.

Being the absolute center of attention during a performance so intimately embarrassing is the pinnacle of my nightmares. 

I feel like a child trying to be anything-but-vulnerable in front of my younger, female instructor but internally screaming, “I’m not able to do this! I’ll never be able to swim!”

Somehow, we’re at the end of the lesson and I am a little more buoyant and a little less terrified of drowning. Looking back, I have been able to do some things by the end of the lesson that I definitely wasn’t able to do at the start of the lesson. 

My ultimate goal with these lessons is simple – if someone, for some reason, pushes me off a boat into a lake, I would like to be able to survive that. 

I am lightyears away from that but I’m chipping away.

Lesson 4: Graduation 

I am generally a very thoughtful and considerate student. I don’t like to make a splash, especially since I am in the remedial class. All bravado is washed away with the pre-pool shower, and I have no mad skills that can be traded in for a dose of acting the maggot. 

As I have done in the previous classes, I got into the pool using the ladder. 

My instructor eyed me suspiciously. Can you get in and out of the pool without using the ladder, she asked. Yes, I replied with equal suspicion. Will you? 

I did and then got back in. Okay good, she said, I have a checklist of skills I need to tick off for you. That’s one of them.

I did my warm up which was thankfully just two half lengths of the pool today as the second half was in use with another class. I was on my own again, another private lesson. I did have an unknown spectator, however, later explained to be someone who was thinking about joining. 

Next, I was asked if I could bob my head under water 5-6 times. Okay good, a couple more things and I think you’re ready to move up. 

Move up, I queried. Yeah, I think you’re ready to move up to Adult 2. The fuck I’m not, I thought. 

At least, I thought I thought, but I actually said. 

You’re ready. Can you float on your back and then get into a standing position? I did, but not before almost drowning on my back. And now on your front? I did that too. Cool, I think you’re ready. You want to practice freestyle today? Sure, I said and pulled down my goggles. 

Today’s lesson was kicking off from the wall, gliding before three strokes, and then breathing. It took a few attempts to master kicking off from the wall. A habit I have in the pool is absolutely fucking launching myself – literally – into whatever I’m doing, which is the cause of many of my main problems.

In week one, when I would try to float on my back, I would first throw myself up into the air with the faint hope of getting myself horizontal before the water fully realized what I was attempting. A sneak attack of sorts, but one that ended up with my sinking fast and flailing hard. The kick off was similarly oafish. 

I did not succeed in actually swimming but I do have a better idea of what I need to work on next, and I did manage to get in half a breath a couple of times. 

Adult 1 could not yet be considered a comfort zone and has already been cruelly snatched away from me. The post-swim sauna (that I hope the gym doesn’t realize I am making full use of) is now my comfort zone. None of them know I just spent half an hour failing at something they’ve been able to do since they were 3 years old. The unbridled nonsense talked by these bros is a comforting way to end my day.