I can swim. During the summer, if I happen to be up in the very early morning (just pre-dawn) I like to go for a long swim and watch the sunrise from the water.
I prefer open water instead of a pool.
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I (German, male, 37) learned as a child and later made an exam as a lifeguard. A little later the mild chlorine allergy I always suffered from became much worse and prevented me from practicing (as there were almost no unchlorinated pools or lakes in the area). I can and do still swim when I come around visiting the beach, but I clearly lack practice.
My mother never learned to swim, she was born shortly after the end of WW2 in the Ruhrgebiet (at that time an improtant but largely leveled industrial area). Lacking pools, teachers and probably idle time, most girls her age and location didn't learn to swim (seimming in the natuaral bodise of water in the Ruhrgebiet would have been ill advised due too chemical wastes...) and she never came around learning to swim in her adult life. She still says she regrets it but doesn't want to start anymore.
My father could swim, he learned in the Hitler Youth.
My brothers and sisters (6, all older than me) alearned to swim, three of them are examined lifeguards, one worked as a lifeguard for about a year. All of my nieces and nephews have learned to swim, two of the are doing youth competitions.
Last year, the indoor pool that was used for sprt training for six schools in my hometown was closed down, but sports is pretty important in this town (despite being pretty small with only around 36.000 people living here it is home to one of two - soon to be the only one milityra sports academy (that provides most of Germanys olympic swimmers) and the national olympic committees for pentathlon and hrseback-riding) it is pretty easy to find affordable or free ways for children to learn to swim - on the other hand: if in a city like this there is no more way for a kid to learn to swim at school, you can let your imagination run wild how it is in other rural and even urban areas.
I love swimming.
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Learned to swim at age 4, trained swimming then water polo. Quit after high school.
I honestly cannot fathom that a person doesn't know how to swim, and I just recently found out that my best friend can't. (We don't go to pools or lakes, ever)
Then I found out that a massive number of people I know can't swim.
I don't get it.
I suppose to add where/why I learned...
I live in Minnesota, lots of lakes. My earliest memory as a child (so early it feels more like a dream) is riding in a canoe at age 3 during a camping trip. Canoe trips have been a pretty regular occurrence throughout my life. My grandparents owned a cabin on a lake. I was in the Navy for 7 years. I still take solo canoe trips where I don't see another human for days at a time, so knowing how to swim is a survival skill in case of emergency.
I've always spent a lot of time on/near water.
Two years ago I taught my friends kid to swim, she was 5. We went once a week for 9 weeks. She started off being completely afraid of the water, by the end she was fine in water over her head and if she had something to hold onto, she could pull herself to the bottom in 8ft water and collect rocks. I'm not good enough to teach her good mechanics, I just wanted her to be comfortable in water.
I have met many people from the Caribbean who cannot swim despite living near the ocean for most of their lives.
we laugh at them. Swimming is a way of life.
Just like my younger brother and sister, I learned to swim as soon as I was old enough for my dad to hurl me from a pier into the water and expect me not to drown.
I love swimming.
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I'm part witch from my mother's side, so it's easy for me to float along. It sort of looks like i'm swimming, but more like a beach ball being pushed by the wind.
I can swim - we had monthly lessons in school.
I learned swimming at 3 or 4. I loved swimming at 9. I swim very well.
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A darker post than those so far:
My parents insisted that I take swimming lessons until I passed the "Intermediate" exam, leading to perhaps 12 years of swimming lessons and the ability to swim 2-3 miles nonstop through a body of water, or swim across a pool with a 70-pound child on my back. (You'd be amazed how hard that actually is.)
So yes, I'm a very strong swimmer.
I have also lost three friends to drowning, so I have a *VERY* strong opinion that everyone needs to learn to swim.
In spite of this, my kids have only had 2-3 weeks of swim lessons per year, plus a couple of weeks in friends' pools, so they're definitely in the "I can stay afloat for 10-15 minutes until someone saves me," boat.
Hopefully this summer I can put them through more lessons now that they're reaching teenagerhood and learning that swim lessons = members of the opposite sex in swimsuits.
I learned swimming around 9 at school but I wasn't very good at it - I was only able to swim on my back - anything else ended with me choking on water (seriously, how I am supposed to breathe? no matter how much I tried turning head to the side and up like they showed us, every time ended sucking in water instead of air as I was unable to lift the head above water enough). For some time afterwards I was able to swim on my back and had no problem with floating but when I got older I lost ability to float with my legs and torso sinking and dragging the head down somewhere around middle teen years. I haven't been swimming since that time.
I swim like a fish.
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My parents insisted that I take swimming lessons until I passed the "Intermediate" exam, leading to perhaps 12 years of swimming lessons and the ability to swim 2-3 miles nonstop through a body of water, or swim across a pool with a 70-pound child on my back. (You'd be amazed how hard that actually is.)
Damn, what the hell do they make you do for the advanced class?
I worked at a very busy pool. ~20 times per weekend the rescue log would read "jumped off diving board, couldn't swim, jumped off diving board, couldn't swim". Had to send the lifeguards a memmo about the importance of natural selection in human evolution...
Had one incident where the kid jumped off diving board, couldn't swim. Lifeguard jumps in to save kid. Parent jumps in to save kid.. couldn't swim, grabbed onto lifeguard... who couldn't come up with two people on her. Had to grab onto a pipe and haul the three up in one go.
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My parents insisted that I take swimming lessons until I passed the "Intermediate" exam, leading to perhaps 12 years of swimming lessons and the ability to swim 2-3 miles nonstop through a body of water, or swim across a pool with a 70-pound child on my back. (You'd be amazed how hard that actually is.)Damn, what the hell do they make you do for the advanced class?
I think the requirement was, "Tow a beached dolphin or whale back to sea through heavy surf."
I love to swim, although I do it very infrequently nowadays. Always loved the water (even after a near-drowning experience when I was quite young - fell backwards into very cold water and had to be dragged out).
When I was a kid it was mandatory at school (barring a medical note or parental objections) and I won a city-wide school backstroke/back crawl competition in 5th grade. Learned crawl, breast stroke and backstroke at school, although I could do them all already.
I'm not sure whether it's mandatory any more (probably not because of financial cuts).
I've been to the same Folk High School 3 times since 2006, this particular FHS has an emphasis on lifestyle changes (healthy eating, exercise, good mental health etc.), and have selected their water polo "class" each time.
This is also where I dived head first from the 5 meter platform for the first time.
I think the requirement was, "Tow a beached dolphin or whale back to sea through heavy surf."My parents insisted that I take swimming lessons until I passed the "Intermediate" exam, leading to perhaps 12 years of swimming lessons and the ability to swim 2-3 miles nonstop through a body of water, or swim across a pool with a 70-pound child on my back. (You'd be amazed how hard that actually is.)Damn, what the hell do they make you do for the advanced class?
I'm from WI, land of 10,000 swamps, where knowing how to swim is basic for safety (including during winter, for sport on frozen lakes). And my parents love swimming and canoeing, so getting us kids in the water was a high priority for them. I've been swimming with waterwings/inner tube as long as I can remember, and started lessons around kindergarten. I got up through basic rescue, but I was still too little to do lifeguarding—you had to be able to lift someone off the bottom of the pool—and I lost inertia with lessons after that, other than the basic course required for high school gym and a swimming test needed to graduate college.
I swim whenever I can, though since I strongly prefer swimming in lakes and rivers, I'm limited to visits home and Seattle's rare 80ºF+ days. And like Drejk, I HATE swimming with my face in the water (plus you need to see what's around you if there's boat traffic), so I use strokes/variants that keep my face out.
My grandmother lived on a saltwater estuary here in Rhode Island; learning to swim on a simple stay-afloat-till-help-arrives level was a survival skill, so, yes, I was taught to swim by my parents, back in the hazy days before conscious memory.
Being tossed in the deep end of the pool to see if you sink or swim sounds horrible; everyone who survived that nonsense has my condolences.
I started learning to swim about four or five and sort of slowly progressed off and on until about fifteen when I put some effort into being reasonably proficient in the main strokes...front crawl (head up, breathing every other stroke, breathing every third stroke), breast stroke, back stroke, side stroke, but never bothered with butterfly as I didn't compete. I was always a strong swimmer but, unlike my friends who competed, I was not nearly as efficient and smooth as I should have been. I also used to do a fair amount of treading water (10 minute to 15 minute continuous stretches) as part of my personal conditioning but never tried to see how long I could do so continuously before giving out. Now, I'm not in that type of shape and rarely swim. The gym I have access to at work is free but without a pool. I could go to another (free, due to work) gym with a pool but it is not on my work-site and thus more of a hassle to go to.
Learning to swim is mandatory in Australia... It is taught at school and there are swimming clubs.
I lived in a small town 10mins walk from the beach in the tropics, with nothing to do but swim, surf or sail.
Well, sure, but most Vulcans have probably been taught how to move in zero-gee, and how to deal with hostile atmospheres--that's swimming!
I could swim as a kid/teenager. I'm tall enough now that most home pools I can bounce along the bottom as needed to bob up and down to the surface, if not outright can walk along the bottom and keep my head above water (I'm 5'11", most home pools I've visited are either 5' or 6' deep).
I honestly haven't gone swimming in so long I don't know how well I'd do at it anymore. I weigh a lot more than I did as a teenager and I'm probably less in shape.
Weighing more is generally good for swimming - not competitively, but you float better.I could swim as a kid/teenager. I'm tall enough now that most home pools I can bounce along the bottom as needed to bob up and down to the surface, if not outright can walk along the bottom and keep my head above water (I'm 5'11", most home pools I've visited are either 5' or 6' deep).
I honestly haven't gone swimming in so long I don't know how well I'd do at it anymore. I weigh a lot more than I did as a teenager and I'm probably less in shape.
Good to know.
I learned to swim in childhood, so I have a few ranks in swimming. I can easily swim when prepared (wearing proper swimming attire and bare feet).
I don't know how well I would fare in say, an emergency (wearing street clothes and tennis shoes, carrying another person afloat, while injured, etc.)
As for being in shape, I gained a lot of fat since my early adult years which helped me float. Then I weight lifted and converted a lot of mass to muscle, which effected my buoyancy (yet still able to swim well in controlled conditions).
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I had a friend
he was in the Navy. He said that the first week there you have to jump in a pool and show you can swim. You were encouraged tell them that you can't swim before this event was to occur, but they usually had to have a few guys there to jump in and pull the guys out who wouldn't cop to not being able to swim, and would instead jump in and begin the process of drowning.
I use swim wings!!!!!
Gee, wonder why... =)
I can swim. Haven't done in years. Can you forget how to swim or is it like walking?
Well, like riding a bike, but more user friendly; you just keep walking into the water, and by the time your feet can't touch bottom you know how to be cool with it.
Yeah, I'd put it in a category like riding a bike. You don't forget, but you're much less graceful and efficient. I wouldn't jump in a fast moving river or big swells on the ocean.
I quite vividly remember my first time in the ocean. Waimea bay on Oahu, probably a couple weeks into January with 6 foot waves. It was a lot of fun except for a couple moments. At one point I got tossed under and had the thought "So this is what they mean when they say you can't tell which way is up." I wasn't expecting it right then, but at least being slightly mentally prepared made it easier. The other was when I realized I was being pushed towards some rocks and the waves were going to scrub up across them. It took a lot of hard swimming to get back to an area pointed at sand instead.
I grew up on the ocean (according to Lovecraft, in Innsmouth). I learned to swim very early and fairly well (though I have never been able to master that trick where you breathe out slowly through your nose to keep water out while your head is underwater) and during teenage years used to do rather foolish things like swim across the river mouth at mid tide on a dare.