Where did you learn how to swim?

Waterboarded in Guantanamo bay

On my planet we are hatched into the water and have to learn how to walk in order to venture out onto the land. I can hold my water pretty good and once walked nearly two miles along the beach before I had to dive back into the surf for a breath.

In the water! My dad would throw us kids overboard. After we got the ropes untied we would surface and swim to shore. He always seemed disappointed. But we sure did learn how to swim!

The details of my life are quite inconsequential ... Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a 15-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet . . . thus, swimming came easy for me.

Detainee wrote:

Waterboarded in Guantanamo bay

You deserved it.

Swimming was taught in school when I was growing up in New Zealand.

My parents and older brothers helped too when we went to the beach, but I'd say school was the main place I learnt.

Aged 7 - dad with the time honoured 'don't worry son I'm, holding you' then swim off routine

in the pool f***face

When I was 1 my parents moved to Hawaii. My mother had been a competitive swimmer and lifeguard. From age 1 to age 5 my mother took my sister and I to Kailua Beach nearly every single day. I do not remember a day when I was not comfortable in the water.

When I was 5 we moved to the Seattle area and I recall my mother teaching me how to swim on top of the water in the hotel pool where we stayed for a month while waiting for our house to be built. All the time in Hawaii I was not doing formal strokes or whatever, just riding small waves on a raft, wiping out, wading, "bouncing" off the bottom when in water over my head, and swimming under the water along the bottom. Before I could do freestyle or anything like that, I could get around really well under the water by going to the bottom and swimming along it until I had to come up for air.

I never got great at freestyle; I regret never doing swim team to get the technique, because now I think I'd love to swim laps and see how fast I could eventually get at some distances. I usually use the breast stroke if I am swimming now, but I rarely swim.

Sorry for the long story but I'd just been thinking of this today (watching my daughter try to swim) and the topic brought back fond memories...

The first rule of lifegarding is to remember what to do when attempting a rescue is, “Reach, throw, tow, row, and as a last resort go” —in that order of preference.

wonderingabout wrote:

My great instructor, didn't like to get in the water, and was out of the pool on the side. She sees me in trouble but still doesn't want to get in the pool. She grabs a long pole and and reaches for me to grab so she can pull me in. At this I have been swallowing water, I am in full panic mode and I can not grab the stupid pole. She has to dive in the pool, save me and pull me out. After the panic and coughing subsided it was replaced by deep deep humiliation. I refused to go to anymore lessons.

googlesearch for any number of articles to explain why this is the correct way to make a rescue.

i learned to swim in the water.

the deep end of the pool at my swim club.

I grew up on a lake, learned to swim by the time I was 2 1/2. Swimming as in, could paddle about and turn myself over on to my back. Took organized swim lessons starting at age seven, joined swim team two years later. Swam competitively for over ten years. Took my lifesaving and WSI courses so I could teach swimming. I am still a certified lifeguard and still teach swimming.

Teach your kids how to swim early. I live in a place that had a bunch of drownings this summer. Hot summer, lots of people at the beach who underestimated how well they could swim. Swimming, unlike running, is a skill that needs to be practiced regularly.

And the first post, the instructor was correct to try to assist you with a pole. A lifeguard tries really hard to keep themselves out of harms way during a rescue. The old saying was Row Throw and then Go.

bronco see my post 3 above for the correct order of exposure for a lifeguard. If you must go always remember get to with-in 6 feet and throw your can to the swimmer.I`d venture to say less than 15% of my assists involved touching the civilian in water over chest depth.

bronco wrote:

And the first post, the instructor was correct to try to assist you with a pole. A lifeguard tries really hard to keep themselves out of harms way during a rescue. The old saying was Row Throw and then Go.