Learning to Swim

Kiwong

Well-known member
I’ve spent a lot of time in the Coffs Harbour War Memorial Pool. I taught myself to swim there, with the help of a couple of the instructors and life guards.

In hindsight, I’m bloody proud of that, hell yes I am!!

It is funny how you can look back on the good things from a bad part of your life with a kind of fondness. I started there in about February 2006, when my knee was starting to get really bad, and the local doctors and physios were not helping me at all. I’d had a brief window of running my first Sawtell Fun Run and playing in a couple of games in the Woolgoolga touch football comp, but then exercise retreated rapidly away from me. My knee cap started to sublux, and the pain just got intolerable.

Stepping into the water.

Being in the pool was the only exercise I could do. I used to hang onto the side and try to kick my legs, and even that would hurt. I tried to swim a bit, but I could only manage about 40 metres, head out of water style. My legs would drag and eventually I would sink feet first.
I was fearful in water over my head and when I started to sink I needed to kick towards the gutter and hold on and drag myself to the nearest steps.


Lessons.

I had my first two lessons at the Sawtell Pool. I chose it, because I knew I could stand up in it, if I needed to stop swimming. My fear of deep water was very strong. I bought a pair of googles. It was an early morning session, and it was still dark when I arrived. There were squads doing laps, and the whole environment felt foreign to me. I was fearful and anxious.

At the first lesson, I put my googles on and the instructor showed me how to breathe bubbles out my nose while my face was in the water. This was a completely alien thing to do, putting my face in the water went against all my instincts. No one had ever taught me to do this when I was a child.

Then the instructor showed me how to swim by turning my head on my side and breathing in. Then he left me to practice. The whole lesson I couldn’t manage more than a couple of strokes, before I’d turn my head and take in huge gob fulls of chlorinated water, and putting my feet on the bottom of the pool in a blind panic.

I went home and googled information on how to breathe in water. I found a really helpful site that described how you can place your face in the water, and due to the surface tenstion water won’t flood into your nostrils and drown you. For a couple of weeks I praticed putting my head in the wash basin and blowing bubbles out my nose! I needed that confidence to actually try this in a swimming pool. Something as basic as that is not in any swimming books I could find.

So I started practising in the Olympic pool and Sawtell Pools. At the Olympic Pool I would get in the shallow end, put my googles on and practice blowing out of my nose. Then I would wade up in a lane to where I could no longer stand up. I would try to see if I could swim into the wall. Very often I would turn my head and swallow water after only a stroke or two before having to stop. Rarely, I’d make it into the wall.

I even tried in the children’s wading pool. I’d try to swim from one side to the other, and rarely make it. I’ll give myself credit for determination I have it in spades.

Once a regular lap swimmer said, ”I’ve noticed you trying to swim, you’re doing very well, keep it up.” or words to that effect. Looking back I appreciated those words so much. That sort of enocuragement and kindness is worth a million.

The lesee of the pool mentioned that they had swimming instructors that might be able to teach me. He also gave me some swimming tips, and said that I would run again.

I kept practising most weekends, but I used to crash into the lane rope.

“He’s hopeless, he’s tried every lane,” someone said. Yes I was hopeless, but I was damn well trying, and it was effing hard for me. I was hopeless because the people who tried to teach me to swim as a child, achieved zippo and only developed in me a life long fear of water. For most people when things like that are said it’s like water off a duck’s back, but not for me I take it on board too much.

So I booked in for lessons with an instructor at the Coffs Harbour pool.

“He stretches all the time,” I heard them say. I used to stretch my hamstrings and my ilio tibial band. My knee was hopeless by then, I could hardly walk to my car, without my quad tightening up and my knee cap running off track and threatening to dislocate.

I was anxious in the pool with the instructor. I remember I needed to step into the pool to be sure of its depth before I felt confident commencing the lesson. I bought some flippers and a kickboard and learnt to kick a length of the pool. Soon I was able to kick a length of the Olympic Pool.

Then she me taught me a basic survival technique, which I found invaluable. I was taught how to roll onto my back and bring my arms and legs in a position so I could float there as long as I wanted. Then I could roll onto my front and swim again when I was rested enough. I also learnt to float face down like a log and to kick.

Of course my anxiety annoyed her, and at the last lesson I couldn’t even do a simple side on kicking drill and she laughed at me. I felt embarrased and never went back. By then I had by some miracle I had started to run so I found learning to swim uneccesary. I could never get the kicking and freestyle action coordinated. I felt I was a failure as a swimmer.

Practice and learning to live.

That summer I pratcised some of the things the teacher had shown me. I’d get in the pool and float face down while kicking. Then I would roll onto my back and float, first on one side and then the other. When I was confident with that I would try to swim a few strokes. Scoop the water back close to my head, turn on my side and breath, float like a log, delay the stroke, remember to kick. Then I’d swim as far as I could before getting tired, and roll on my back, have a rest. then roll on my front and swim again. I slowly gained more confidence and felt more at home and less fearful in the water.

I started trying laps and number of strokes. It took me 40 strokes to swim 25 metres very slowly. I’d stop, roll on my back, rest, then roll on my front and keep going to the fifty metre mark, and have a rest. Eventually I could swim fifty metres without stopping or rolling onto my back. Then I could swin fifty metres and not be completely out of breath and then do fifty more.

I even ventured down to the Jetty and swam there. I felt much more bouyant in the salt water, and I even managed to swim out and back ninety strokes. For a non swimmer just months before, that was a huge achievement. It took guts to swim in open water like that. I am so damned proud of doing that.

I can almost sense what I was going through then, the continuous pain, the growing anxiety and I feel it in my guts as I write about it. There is a horrible pain I feel even now deep in my soul at the memory, but I also feel a strange fondness of the recall of a long battle and what I went through and what I achieved despite everything. I think, well done mate, you showed courage and determination. Well done mate, learning to swim, that was something. And in learning to swim, of beating knee pain and panic, I learnt to truly live. When faced with your own mortaility you are forced to fight and to find answers just to survive. Apathy goes out the window, and you realise how hard you want to fight to live. Living is all about the up and downs and in betweens. You know you’ve really lived when you ride that rollercoaster and have survived the dark days and come out the other end stronger.

Through being challenged by the nightmares life threw at me, I learnt to fight, and to run again and to live my brilliant running days, that mean more than ever to me because of what I had to go through to live them.

Then I started running in June 2008, and didn’t return to the pool until I injured my achilled tendon in October 2008. Then I started pool jogging. After each pool jog I would practise swimming.
I actually managed to swim up to 900 metres without much rest between 50 metres laps. I even thought about entering the 200 metre ocean swim.

But by then running by some miracle had returned to my life, which is part of my real soul, and swimming which is a foriegn thing to me went out of my life.
 
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MikeyC

Well-known member
Great story, Kiwong. Now if you want to go swim, you'll know how to. Pushing through your anxiety to get lessons is wonderful.

Keep up the good work, mate. :thumbup:
 
.....I can almost sense what I was going through then, the continuous pain, the growing anxiety and I feel it in my guts as I write about it. There is a horrible pain I feel even now deep in my soul at the memory, but I also feel a strange fondness of the recall of a long battle and what I went through and what I achieved despite everything.....
^That is a remarkably sad and inspirational experience, Kiwong. Thank you for sharing that. It is always good to read examples of the magnitude that the human spirit can achieve sometimes.:)
 
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