How I learnt to swim in 8 lessons

As some of you may know I started swimming lessons at some point three years ago. These were group lessons and not too helpful. I went for 6-8 lessons and then I lost consistency. But I was not any closer to learning to swim. So instead, I decided to take 1-1 swimming lessons. Expensive, but I wanted better results. I took these lessons over a small 3 week period so it was quite intense. But I knew I would not be able to keep up consistent one lesson per week due to other commitments.

The first lesson was just about getting more comfortable in the water and learning to float on my back and front. This is something I had not been able to do before so learning this was a big confidence boost. My lessons took place in a shallow 1.2m depth pool. The second and third lessons focused on kicking my legs and learning how to tread water with my arms only. I was able to kick on my front but I was too scared when on my back so I hadn’t quite cracked that yet.

The fourth and fifth lessons the instructor had asked if I wanted to learn a particular stroke, we decided to go with front crawl. For front crawl a requirement is being able to twist your body from one side to another. So in effect, alternating between rotating left and rotating right. I haven’t explained this too well but I’m sure you swimmers understand. I was also beginning to get the hang of swimming on my back. The hurdle for me was being able to lie completely flat with my ears in the water and my hips fully up. The key here was to not tense up and focus on staying relaxed – easier said than done.

The sixth and seventh lessons focused on learning the arms and breathing for front crawl. I was able to swim for as long as I could hold my breath so that was good. I struggled with breathing as I was swallowing water. This was because I was not rotating my head enough when breathing. The eighth and final lesson I took in this period focused on front crawl and various other things like sinking, swimming underwater and twisting in the water from swimming on my back to my front.

One could argue I learnt to swim in just 7 lessons. But equally you could argue I’ve not learnt swimming because I haven’t nailed the breathing. My instructor said I picked up swimming in twice the speed as average, I put this down to my willingness to learn and putting my trust into the instructor.

It does have to be said I was not a complete novice as I had group lessons previously. Although these lessons I was using floats whereas in my 1-1 lessons we did away with floatations completely. I would definitely recommend 1-1 lessons and although it is expensive, I am sure it is worth it. I still have two more lessons which I’ve paid for but not arranged so I hope to pick up where I left off in the near future.