I was never a great swimmer. After correcting a few common mistakes, I can now get a solid workout in the pool.
I’ve never been a good swimmer.
I mean, I can swim. But what I do in a pool feels more like a battle for survival than a workout — especially after the first few laps. My legs are too long, my stroke is uneven and I constantly struggle to get a decent breath.
It’s not fun, which is why I rarely swim for fitness. Plus, swimming culture is intimidating, with its caps and goggles and rules about lane splitting.
But it’s great winter exercise, if you have access to an indoor pool. So I recently set out to become a better swimmer, with the help of my first lessons since grade school.
It turns out that you can get a lot better with just few lessons. And once you do, you suddenly have another option for an aerobic workout that’s easy on the joints.
“That’s the benefit of swimming,” said Matthew Barbini, director of performance for USA Swimming, who came to the sport after an injury in his teens. “There’s really no impact. There’s no pavement involved. There’s really no equipment involved.”
Swimming lessons are remarkably useful.
Even though swimming is easy on the body, exercising underwater can still feel fundamentally unnatural. So it’s not surprising that you might need more instruction as an adult to do it well.