Learning to swim

I am thrilled to share that at my fairly mature age of 40, after many unsuccessful previous attempts, I have just learnt to swim, taught one-to-one by a lovely lady Irene in S Derbyshire.

Previously I was unable to float for more than a few seconds after which I sank steadily, and my attempts to move my limbs in water to propel myself forward used to provide abundant entertainment to the onlookers but no movement whatsoever. Over two days my teacher broke down the process of swimming into tiny and easy steps, and now after 9 hrs of teaching, I am fairly confident in keeping afloat, have experienced the delight of swimming (over a fairly short distance at this stage) and know exactly which moves to continue practising and improving.

What's special about Irene is that she used to be phobic of water and she taught herself to swim at the age of 56! So she has a really good idea of the difficulties that adults may have in learning to swim. I am lucky to have never had a water phobia (I always enjoyed water - though the most I could do in it was splash and paddle 🙂 - and I have even successfully treated quite a few water phobic clients) but I understand that many adult non-swimmers have had some water-related traumatic experiences in childhood, which may be difficult to overcome through standard swimming lessons.

There was an article in [url]The Sunday Times[/url] a few months ago mentioning Irene and listing a few specialist companies providing adult swimming lessons - if any HPers would like to learn to swim but are hesitating, I would wholeheartedly recommend giving it a go - it took me a while to pluck up the courage, and the one-to-one lessons are not exactly cheap, but I do not regret it for a second!

Masha