Adult Swim Lessons | Great Lengths

This is Part II of a two part series. Best to go read Part I first and then come back here.

Lesson 1: More Laughs

I skipped my first class in adult 2 because I didn’t feel like going. This was a make-up class which meant a different time, different instructor, and a different pool. As you can imagine, this did nothing for my nerves. As I got changed in the locker room, I realized that I was so far up my own hole that I had forgotten a towel. That was a problem for post-lesson Joe. Pre-lesson Joe had his own shit to deal with. 

I met the instructor and it was yet another private lesson, which was my least favorite kind of lesson. No hiding and all the attention. She asked me what I have been doing so far and I made sure to set expectations about as low as possible for someone no longer in the remedial class. 

This is my first class in Adult 2. 

I only graduated to make room for someone else. 

I still can’t float. 

I’ve been working on freestyle, I guess, but mostly with paddles. 

I looked around and noticed a suspicious lack of paddles where I was expecting a dearth. How were other adults at this pool learning how to swim?

Ok, we’ll start by kicking off the wall and just swimming as far as you can with your arms by your side. 

I’m sorry, maybe it’s the Irish accent, I said, and we’re having a bit of a miscommunication. You heard what I said about paddles, right? 

Yeah, just start by kicking off the wall, hands by your side. 

I did, and we slowly introduced new things bit by bit until I was turning and twisting my body with every stroke and doing half lengths of the pool at will. I still wasn’t able to breath and, after swallowing lungfuls of water – lungs that I desperately needed for air after all that cardio – I told her I’d had enough of that and it was time for a bit of floating.

I tried starfish and sank immediately to the bottom. Coming back up we made a couple of adjustments and things improved very marginally, until she started asking me to contort myself into all sorts of weird shapes. 

Now I had been self-deprecating throughout so I could understand if she was game for having the craic but there was really no craic being had. After trying to hold my hands above my head and tucking my knees into my ample belly slightly, I sank like a stone. When I surfaced she was belly laughing. 

Ok, I’ll give you that one, thought I, but a similar thing happened after the next adjustment and she was finding my struggle hilarious. 

Bear in mind I am an adult who has gone 36 years of my life not knowing how to swim. Not only have I now admitted to this in public, but I have also just paid her to help me remedy the situation. While I am good with having a bit of fun, outright laughing at me hurt my fucking feelings and she wasn’t even the first instructor to do it. 

I have a 100% success rate of unintentionally making swimming instructors laugh at my struggle. I think if I go 3 for 3 at my next lesson, I will be asking for my money back for my remaining lessons and living the rest of my life on dry land.

Sauna watch: Today, when I entered, there was silence in the sauna. No headphones blasting loud music, no conversation. It was lovely, but five out of five of the guys in there had their heads bowed and scrolling endlessly on their phones. One of them was in a full sweat suit, which is unfortunately not that uncommon. What I had never seen before was what he did before leaving. 

He pulled the sleeve of his hoodie away from his wrist and a river of sweat cascaded down his hand to the ground below. Both hands. When he stood up, I fully expected the same to happen down his legs and into his sneakers. I looked away. I’ll never know.

Lesson 2: Progress

Okay, that was better. 

It wasn’t even that much better, I just wasn’t laughed at, which was nice, and I got some compliments which was better again. We started by back floating and that evidently wasn’t going well so we pivoted without naming the fact that it wasn’t going well. We worked on some freestyle and the instructor gave me some positive reinforcement. I’m not sure if it can be called an ego when it is as tiny and shriveled as mine, but he was definitely feeding it.

I know I’m not the best student and am remedial at best but I am six lessons in and am unrecognizable to the swimmer that arrived in lesson one. If I were making any more progress, they would be putting themselves firmly out of business due to an unsustainable business model. I have 3 more lessons to go and I plan to make the most of them. That’s not even a “I’m going to give each of the 30 minute sessions everything I’ve got,” it’s more of a “I’m now in the last class of the evening so I can use the sauna for half and hour and then go back in the pool after for a bit and no one is going to notice or care.” 

After my final lesson, I’m going to do this and go out for a couple of sensible, celebratory, quiet, school-night pints. It will be glorious.  

Sauna watch: There’s a guy in the sauna who seems to have “heard great things” about pretty much every city in America. Each time I am there, he has struck up conversation with a dude and, somehow, that dude is never originally from Massachusetts. His home town is always a place the first dude has heard great things about. He then always qualifies it by “I’ve never been/only been to the airport, but I’ve heard great things.” He listens to a real estate podcast and lives alone. The poor guy is desperate for connection and you can tell. 

Lesson 3: Back Stroke Week

This lesson was with the same instructor as the previous one so I had high hopes. They were dashed quite quickly as I spent most of the class completely submerged. It was me and an older lady today. She was more comfortable in the water than me but didn’t have the technicals down. It had been decided that it was ‘back stroke’ week and it didn’t seem to matter how comfortable or uncomfortable we were with that fact. We were told to do each drill anyway.

The first drill was to swim on your back with your hands connected in a V. This caused me to sink like a veritable vault. After a couple of half lengths, the instructor was like listen you don’t need to join your hands if it means you’re going to spend your whole time under the water. Just try keeping your arms somewhat above your head. I tried that with strikingly similar results which was followed by a very similar request. 

Hands by your sides this time. Ok that’s better, now I need your head back even further. Ok, that’s good but you need to keep your hips up. Push your belly up further. 

Okay but if I could do that, then we wouldn’t have a problem, would we? 

Time wore on and I didn’t feel any improvement. It felt like I was going backwards – which I guess I was technically attempting to with the backstroke and that was the problem.

Sauna watch: The sauna was quiet today. Almost too quiet. As I was changing after, the “heard great things” guy was extolling the virtues of Tucson, Arizona.

Lesson 4: Cool, okay

Another make up class, another private lesson, another new instructor. This new instructor looked like he was hoping with every fiber of his being that I would tell him:

“No, you’re fine, don’t bother getting in the water. It’s obvious you have a thing for the other instructor who doesn’t have a class right now. You just work on that and I’ll teach myself.”

I didn’t fully pick up on that signal until he very slowly got into the water and stood in the corner as close as possible to the other instructor. 

So what do you want to do today? 

Well, I am on lesson 8 and I still can’t float so I’d sure like to do that, and maybe a bit of freestyle?
Freestyle cool, okay let’s do that.

Okay but I can’t breathe.

Cool, okay, go ahead.

So I did and I swallowed the pool. When I got back, he asked me if I had ever tried freestyle and then roll on to my back when I needed to breathe, and then rolled back when I was ready to swim again. 

I had not but I said I’d give it a go. He was still standing in the same spot as he first got into the pool. 

I tried the back roll and it actually worked pretty well. I did it back the way and I was panting heavily. The instructor told me I did great. I said I’d do it again as soon as I caught my breath. I did and got a little further and then went back. 

Good job. 

I think I’m going to try that once more. 

Okay cool, he said and he stood in the same place in the pool. It was only at that point I realized he had no intention whatsoever of moving for the entirety of the class. 

I swam again, rolled on my back twice and made it all the way to the other end of the pool without stopping. What an achievement for the day! 

I insisted I’d also do it on the way back to prove that it wasn’t a fluke. I did and it wasn’t. The static instructor would have been impressed if he possessed any emotion other than boner for his colleague. I had enough time to try again and I did another length. I swallowed a lungful of water on the fourth length and didn’t make it all the way. 

Thanks very much. I’ve had enough. 

Are you sure? He seemed absolutely crestfallen that I was giving him 4 minutes of his Sunday back.

Sauna watch: Nobody wants to be in a gym sauna on a Sunday afternoon so I had it to myself.

Lesson 5: Final Flounder

It felt like today was the day it was all going to click. I’d warm up my upper body exactly like Phelps did before his Olympics races. Same wingspan. Jump in the pool, do a few bobs. Then for the warm up and just kick off the wall and casually swim a length of the pool. Instead of the back roll, I would just do a half one, find my head above water and breathe like everyone else who knows how to swim. 

I might even get brave when I reach the far wall, attempt a spin, and swim the length back again. As I touch the wall and surface at the other end, I would look to the instructor who is the Graham Norton clapping gif from the airplane episode of Fr. Ted.

He wipes a tear from his eye and says I have no more left to teach you. He hands me $40.

None of that happened because it was breaststroke week and it went very similar to backstroke week in the previous lesson. Tell me to try something I will obviously not be able to do. I fail miserably. I get told to try it again with no improvement and we move on to the next stupid drill. 

Since this was the instructor who I had my breakthrough with in lesson 2, it was strange that he was so bad in lesson 3 and now 5. It was then I noticed an older man in a shirt belonging to the swim school, tidying away some chairs. His fucking boss. He was making him stick to the pointless curriculum that helped nobody. 

It was a deflating end to my 9 weeks of lessons but I did end on a high note by swimming a length during the warm down, albeit with the back roll. I went for my celebratory pints too and they were equally disappointing. 

I do have two seemingly contradictory takeaways for anyone considering adult swimming lessons: 1, try as many different instructors and you possibly can, and 2, get private lessons. The hardest part of the whole experience, aside from everything that I wasn’t able to do vis-a-vis swimming, was embarrassment around not being able to. If you have thicker skin than me, you shouldn’t have any issues. 

Sauna watch: I skipped it in favor of a couple of quiet pints. I’ll never know what city Mr. Heard Great Things was all about that evening.