Hi friends,
On Friday, I took my first headfirst dive in 20 years! Then I took two more, and it was thrilling and perfect.
Let me back up a little.
When it comes to swimming, I always have a great time. Last April, when we had a mini-family vacation in the dead sea, where we enjoyed the warm weather and swimming with the kids in the pool. That is as long as my feet touched the bottom of the pool. Yes, I am afraid of swimming. I was, actually. Until I decided to take swimming lessons in March to prepare for the swimming season, starting in two days actually during our family vacation.
My family did not even know that about me because I could swim just fine from one side of the pool to the other using crawl and back. I'm not a total beginner you see, I learned some good enough basics due to swimming classes I took when I was a teenager. But those classes stopped at critical points, apparently. I did not learn treading water allows you to stay afloat in the same spot while keeping your head above water and your body upright, nor how to do chest strokes or so. I felt that fear of water whenever I was swimming and someone appeared in the middle of the pool on my way to the other side, even if my feet could touch the bottom of the pool.
During my swimming classes, I learned techniques that I simply did not know. Seeing people do them never helped me understand them.
For instance, it turns out that I moved my arms all wrong while treading water and my coach taught me how.
The crawl move was good enough, but I had to unlearn some moves because the breath technique was all wrong. Interestingly, whenever my body got tired, I "surprised" my coach and returned to my old ways.
On the other hand, the chest stroke was such a laughable matter. The moves were so foreign to my body because I had never done them before so I had no body memory. Trying to sync the moves as per the coach's instructions was difficult for me at first and a bit hilarious. I was so confused because I thought people moved their arms and legs simultaneously, not consecutively. I kept cheering myself "Go Bardees, you are learning something new, you can do this".
I did not succeed once during the first 45-minute class trying to learn the chest stroke technique. In the second class, I managed to do it in the last 5 minutes. And in the third time, I swam more than half of the pool using it. It felt so good.
What I love about swimming classes is feeling tangible progress happening from one class to the other. It's incredible to see what our bodies can do. It's been 20 years since my last swimming class and my last headfirst dive, but this move, my body remembered well. I had a few instructions from my coach and some (a lot of) probing to jump, think Mr. Bean's pool episode, then I did it, and my arms and belly touched the bottom of the pool, just like when I was a 16-year old girl.
What a win.
I still get scared a bit when I see I have a long distance ahead to swim, and I need to keep reminding myself that I learned how to breathe right, and I can use many options to help me, if I get tired, instead of stopping and going to the edge of the pool which I still do.
I still have six classes to go to finish my key learning goals with my coach. I love this experience, and I'm curious to see where I will take it from there and how I would enjoy swimming alone and with my kids even more from now on.
What about you? Do you have a skill that you need to get better at? Is there any way a professional would help you speed up your learning as I did in swimming?
I hope my story inspired you today.
