Been doing a bit swimming these past few weeks. It’s not really something I learnt to do until I was in my 20s, despite weekly swimming lessons at school (I guess there was a long period of time where I simply forgot how to do it). And still now, I’m woefully inefficient. As a fit cyclist, I can use all the power I’ve got and still be slower than your average novice, which is a bit disheartening really and takes some of the enjoyment out of it. I guess it’s the equivalent of pedalling into the wind.

So, I’m wondering if anyone has gone from that, and after a bit of practice, found themselves gliding through the water effortlessly, speeding along like a fish… Or is it more a case some people can do it, and others can’t? Just staying afloat is a struggle for me.

I know it’s all about efficiency and technique. But not so sure I can learn that coming up to the age of 40, and having never been able to master it in the past.

And by ‘swimming’, I mean breaststroke… So Far I’ve managed 25m front crawl, but looked like I was drowning the entire time, and not been able to repeat it.

I did with the breaststroke. Hadn’t swam since school until about 10 years ago I decided to go for a swim. Was going for about 3 months and one day it just clicked and I went from a bit crap, to I am alright at this, to holy shit I am actually good at this!

Different story with front crawl though.

I did.  In my 40s….got some lessons (total immersion).  Sorted.   Still find it tedious tho

I’ve been a regular swimmer for  ten years now. And had lessons.

I’ve learned that:

Pretty much everyone has a bad technique (me included)

You have to be bloody determined to actually adopt the proper technique if you’ve been swimming for a while (so may not apply to you)

Some women are natural swimmers and will pass you with their heads above the water like bloody pond skaters.

Men that swim crawl badly should be banned from all pools.

And as my swimming teacher that eventually gave up on me said “If you enjoy swimming, that’s what matters” She did teach me the value of feet position for breaststroke though, which stuck with me 🙂

TL;DR – no I didn’t but I still love swimming.

Yes, couldn’t swim a length of front crawl 4 years ago. After being inspired by my 6 year old son making full lengths look effortless (after 4 years of lessons) I booked myself some lessons and set a goal of being able to swim a mile.

very soon got my 400m time down to 8 minutes, then very soon 7:30 then finally about 6 months later broke 7:00. I’m now knocking out consistent 6:15.

Ive done several open water races including Coniston end to end.

The best thing I did was get a great coach (that was purely by luck)

6:15 is pretty good club level tri  time, excellent  improvement.

Yes. Swam a bit as a kid,  and back to it mid 40s, now early 50s. Hypermobile joints and back issues mean that I can only do front crawl. When I started 5 lengths was tough. I had some lessons and coaching around Shaw Method which is like total immersion stuff.

I now do a few sessions a week, either 1.5 or 3k per session. 3k takes about 52 mins, 1.5k just under 25 which is reasonable given I rarely tumble turn.

Thanks Caher. It took a lot of effort, for 2 years I swam pretty much everyday. It’s the most commitment I’ve ever given to any activity. But the initial improvements came very quickly. I was very much spurred on from going to the pool and being the quickest one there (untill I worked in Plymouth and went to the city pool there ! )

My wife only learned to swim (as in swim at all) in her late 20s. She swims way better than I do because she hasn’t had decades of poor habits creeping in since learning to swim as a kid.

Go and see a swimming coach (seemingly way more about because of the triathlon thing), it’s all about efficiency and good technique really reduces the effort needed to move through the water.

I attempted a couple of triathlons a few years back. I could swim fairly strongly for a “leisure swimmer” and then a friend gave me some very quick coaching (I mean an hour or so). That was enough to turn my crawl from that seen down the council pool on a Saturday to something half decent, and it felt way more efficient. But still, in the scheme of things, a long way to go.

TL;DR get a decent coach (as above)

Not sure my interest really goes far enough for private coaching. I can see the value in it, it’s just a big investment for something that I’m not even sure I enjoy yet, and I’ve no ambitions of triathlons, etc…

Really, I’d just like to spend some time in the pool, looking at my technique, and hopefully somewhere down the line turn into a competent swimmer.

I have always been fairly strong in the water (after being total crap until about age 8) but my technique has always sucked except backstroke where I won the odd race pre teenage years.

My crawl technique is especially ugly, partly because it was my fallen off/out of a dinghy stroke all my teenage years and beyond so I always kept my head up but mainly because I never got breathing right.

I started to swim in a pool again a year or so back occasionally. I self taught breathing for breast stroke based on the Speedo videos on YouTube. I’m now much more efficient BUT to get there I had to slow my stroke rate down a lot and really focus on technique over speed. I’m still slower than I ever was with shit breathing but I can go longer and less breathlessly. I am still a bit crap though.

Crawl breathing next…

I’m really struggling with this at the moment.  I know this sounds ridiculous I’ve done a full Iron man and a full length swimrun but I can’t really swim. I’d definitely be banned from the swimming pool with my crawl.

I’ve had a few lessons and I know what I should be doing I just can’t get my body to do it  The timing of my stroke is completely wrong.

I’ve done a total immersion workshop which was a waste of time.

I’m planning to do Outlaw and Buttermere Breca next year so I need to do something.  I’ll try my local masters in the new year and maybe join the local tri club.

I was slow lane in normal swim shorts.

Got some cycling short style swimmers and immediately moved up to the medium lane.

There’s a lot of drag in baggy shorts.

I’ve gone from pretty much a non-swimmer to a pretty poor swimmer, if that’s any use to you 🙂 As a complete non-natural who sinks like a stone it took a fair bit of time for me to get to that level but I can now do indefinite lengths of crawl and managed 4 x 800m pieces on a guided open water swim day in the lakes this summer (wetsuit helps a lot of course).

IMO a useful skill to learn, even though I’ll never be good it makes a change from running and cycling and gives the muscles and joints a different sort of workout.

Coaching helps a lot, if you can’t find a proper one then a companion who can take a look (and maybe some video) is better than nothing.

I could only swim basic poor breaststroke with my head above water, which I was taught at school until about 3 months ago when I started some swimming lessons, I can do a good front crawl now but I struggle to do more than 4 lengths of a pool due to not pacing myself..

Also when I had just learned the front crawl I would swim one length and be hanging out of my arse, gasping for breath at the deep end, I can do it in 30 seconds now and not be too out of breath, that took me about three months including lessons and practicing in the pool 2-3 times a week, It’s not down to fitness that I am better so much as it is technique

I’ve found with swimming more effort does not equal speed, it’s heavy on the technique.

Not gonna lie I did find it wierd as an adult I’m 24, after work telling people I was off for ‘my’ swimming lesson.. it cost me £90 for 4 lessons at 30 minutes each one to one.. best money I’ve spent, I’ve now been open water swimming and really enjoy it.

edit: swimming caps are ace, it allows the water to run off your head and for you to take a breath instead of it running off your wet hair and into your mouth and the wet hair getting in your eyes

My friend went from paddling to being able to swim a 3.8km Ironman in 2yrs. She could swim breast stroke badly and no crawl at all without drowning. Shes more than happy on long open water swims now.

But my advice if you want to swim better is you have to swim 3 times a week at least.

Average swimmer when I was younger, had to give it up as I was plagued with ear infections.

Fast forward 30 years and got fed up watching my kids at swimming club and decided to join the club’s Masters group.

Initially it was awful in the Masters lane, technique really poor. Battered out a 6:30 in my first Club 400m swim, this is now down to 5:50 some 10 years later.

Since starting back I’ve done a few pool based competitions but I love the open water side of it, although I have a real fear of deep, dark water. I blame the 70’s public information films for this!

Did the 2.4km Lake Annecy swim this year and finished in the top third which was hilarious. Middle aged, overweight, milk white male getting out at the same time as all these bronzed Adonis’s.

So in summary join a club, get instruction and keep plugging away!

I’d second (or is it eighth) the recommendation to get some pointers. I know Edinburgh Leisure do some “free” drop in group sessions a couple of times a week. Your local leisure centre may do something similar.

I never did this, but in 2013/14 I decided to learn to swim. I started at not being able to swim a 25m length without feeling like I was drowning and taught myself to swim getting to a 3.8km iron swim in 1:06 which I was dead chuffed with. I am a belligerent sod so never got lessons and it took me best part of two years of looking like a complete plonker in the pool gradually getting up in distance. (In reality I was just training my body to get a couple of lengths in without breathing….)

I then went to one free drop in session where the coach pointed out I may want to breath and showed me how to breath. Unsurprisingly the distance went up rapidly from there….

So in short – go to a coach / drop in session. I held off for too long but in the end there were 6 others in the session who were just like me and I improved drastically

I can just about manage not to drown!

Never learnt when at school. It wasn’t taught. Annoyingly when we moved to central Manchester it was but only in the years now below what I was.

‘Learnt’ to do breast stroke after a fashion later on but crawl is just a thrashing mess. I don’t bother.

Its definitely something I’d like to improve. With work/life commitments I’d struggle to make more than one session a week at the minute and coupled with the embarrassment of being a near 40yo learning to swim properly means I’ve been putting it off.

I’ve just started swimming again after a long break.  Breaststroke is pretty good but I just can’t link up crawl arms and legs.  I can crawl pretty well without legs, but its like dragging a brick, everytime I try to add legs I end up messing up the breathing rhythm and gulping water / half drowning.

How much do coaching sessions cost roughly?

I was rubbish at swimming, same as many other folk here. Went to lessons again (two rounds) to get back some technique. That helped a bit but was still pretty splashy, hopelessly inefficient and stamina wasn’t great….

Then moved to Oz, where we had a pool and i could commit to swimming every day, probably an hour a day or so. I used pull boys, kick floats and paddles for different drills so you can work on different elements of the stroke. A lot of it is about learning to feel the water, when the catch is working (when it isn’t), when my my legs are being draggy and just learning to relax into my stroke. I am pretty proficient now and can happily swim up and down for an hour or so (i don’t really bother counting lengths as i always forget what number i’m on).

For me it is about where and how how to apply effort. I imagine front crawl as being about reaching up for water, grabbing a big handful and chucking it out behind me, like an exaggerated pull when climbing a ladder. Efficiency is about how much water you grab and how far you throw it behind you rather than how quickly you windmill your arms. My legs don’t do so much (unless i’m sprinting), they just keep my body position in the water.

I used pull boys

That kind of thing is frowned upon nowadays.

Funny this as I have very recently started swimming again, haven’t been for many years (and I always was rubbish).

Can do breaststroke and front crawl but suspect my technique leaves something to be desired. Anyway, I’m a bad swimmer who’s still a bad swimmer but hopes to improve!

What really annoys me is not being able to put my face underwater without getting sinuses full of water. Never have mastered going under without holding my nose.

Ask deadlydarcy. Used to swim like a brick, had a few lessons and now by all accounts he’s a contender for the Irish triathlon squad. ..

It can be done! I can still only swim breastroke, but I tend to do a mile when I do. Very slowly.

I was good as a kid but didn’t stick with it, now in the awkward place where I’m faster than the old ladies in the slow lane but slower than everyone in the medium.

I can crawl but never got my breathing technique right so I’d find myself needing a break after a couple of lengths.

I like backstroke and it feels far more natural to me, if slower, it’s a shame it’s not very practical in a public pool.

Ossify, Same here, it’s partly why I never learnt when younger. Now I just use a nose clip. Only problem is when I break one and don’t have a spare which wipes out that session. Doesn’t matter how much I blew out through it, I still get a nose full of water.

Thanks for the replies so far. Good to see plenty of adult learners in here. I have pondered standard group lessons, I think it would be interesting to go through the exercises and use the floats, etc. Maybe a set of arm bands will help me…

Related question: has anyone gone from uncomfortable swimmer to comfortable swimmer? For example, my swimming has come along to a point where I’m kinda comfortable with breastroke. I know I could swim 100 meters say. If you put me 120 meters from the shore however, I might get into a bit of a panic. Two reasons for that. Do I actually have the strength to swim that far in my own inefficient ways? Maybe, maybe not. But the freaky thing (and this gets worse the more exhausted you are), is what happens if I get a sudden intake of water? This happened in the shallow end of the pool the other day after a kid jumped in and caused a slight wave, leaving me standing up nearly choking. I think I’d have struggled to get out if I’d been in the deep end. I could not imagine swimming across a lake…ever. Do you ever feel comfortable doing that?

You’ll go from achieving various targets like 100m, 200m etc without stopping etc, then something will just switch and you will suddenly go to being able to swim endlessly – then your biggest problem will be having to deal with the boredom (in my case I meal-plan!)

And it’s awful when you swallow water at full lung effort! It’s rare it happens though and you’re only in the first few weeks – you  get used to avoiding it happening in the first place pretty quick. I’ll happily pop in the sea and swim out to a bouy and around etc, but then I don’t swim in the sea with the same effort as in a pool.

Swimming’s ace, stick at it. You will also one day experience the strange euphoria of wandering into the pool to realise nobody else is in there, and you can break the surface of the perfectly still water yourself 🙂 )

I couldn’t even swim till I was 14 (scared of the water) then coincidentally we had a sailing course coming up at school & the school had just had a new pool built. You had to have your 1st certificate to go on the course & I hated school, so I had to learn.

I was never away from Durham baths after that & was offered a place on the water polo team but I didn’t bother. Would usually do 50 lengths crawl then just muck around on the diving board seeing who could make the biggest splash!

Learnt to swim aged 15, but at 25 could still barely do 50m, all of it keeping-my-head-dry type breast stroke.

Never had any lessons once I’d learned not to drown, but one day a total stranger made a passing comment to me along the lines of “slow down, you’ll find it’s faster” and it really clicked.

I started by just getting the hang of breathing. Sounds daft I know, but being able to breath rhythmically, on either side, and with long out-breaths and quick in-breaths is fundamental… and that’s really difficult if you’re breathing hard!

So I’d say start by seeing how slowly you can swim front crawl. I found that a really languorous stroke rate (about 3 seconds per stroke with a pause between each one) and a breath every 4 worked for me. I also found that leg muscles seem to use a lot of oxygen, so I was only kicking enough to stop my legs from sinking, at this stage (or using pull buoys, as above). It slowed everything down and gave me time to get the feel of how the water moves over the body. Turbulence is drag and at that speed any turbulence is pretty apparent – and easier to address. As you get more relaxed you’ll find you have time to think about things like arm entry angle, exit position  and body rotation. If it feels smooth, it’s probably efficient – the mtb analogy would be flowing down a trail vs hammering down it.

You fairly quickly get to a point where breathing is entirely subconscious, just like it is out of the water (which is when I made a determined effort to nail breathing to the left, too). By now you’ve got more time to think about technique and can exercise more aerobically as you’ll automatically compensate for the demand for more oxygen without noticing.

From there you can work on speed, HIT, endurance or whatever you’re after. I’ve never been a fast swimmer, but when I was 30 I did a 5k swimathon in 84 minutes, and each kilometre was faster than the previous one. I just kind of settle into the rhythm and build up slowly.

I’ve still never learnt to tumble-turn, but as most of swimming is now in the sea I don’t suppose I ever will.

TL:DR Slow down till you’re at resting breathing rate and work on technique first.

I honestly thought that this was going to be a thread about men’s fertility….hangs head in shame

I think there may be a physical issue with cyclists swimming – certainly is with me.  Big muscle development in the legs but little in the arms means along with reasonably low body fat % ( as muscle is more dense than fat) that I cannot float properly – my legs sink  and in a swimming pool I sink completely.  I can just sit on the bottom of the pool not moving  In the sea I float vertically and cannot keep my face out of the water

So swimming is always hard work for me as I have to also keep myself on the surface using muscle power and tend to drag along with my legs much deeper than they should be.

Of course proper coaching would help greatly but the body shape cycling has left me with acts to make swimming harder work than it might be.

 Big muscle development in the legs but little in the arms means along with reasonably low body fat %

It’s a nice sounding excuse but it’s sadly rubbish. I’m in a tri club, most of the people I swim with are <10% bf, and most are faster than me. Take a look at any elite swimmer – none of them are exactly fat.

Being fat in the pool may give you a slight advantage when it comes to floating, and of course you’re not massively disadvantaged as you would be on a bike (particularly in the hills), but when it comes down to it technique is far, far more important.

Oh of course good technique is the most important but sinking rather than floating especially sinking legs first does make it harder.  It was more a wondering out load if this is a common issue with cyclist swimming

Sinking legs are normally caused by poor core strength not ‘heavy’ legs.

Sinking legs are normally caused by poor core strength not ‘heavy’ legs.

That and poor head / shoulder position,

Maybe chaps – but in my case its simply due to the physical shape I am I assure you.  Many folk have told me I must be able to float and try to teach me to do so and then give up as I head for the bottom of the swimming pool feet first.

Maybe then its an irrelevant point.  IIRC its only a few % of the population that sink like this.  I just wondered if this was a common issue with cyclists swimming – from what you say then its just another of my oddities 😉

Floating is not swimming. I too can sit on the bottom of the pool unaided by additional weight and I can’t float. I can swim just fine though

I hate swimming. Most pointless mode of moving around there is. I can swim so as not to drown in most situations I’m ever likely to find myself in and have successfully proved I can rescue a small child disguised as a brick from the bottom of the pool etc so that’s enough for me.

If I could be arsed to get better I’d definitely look at getting a coach though as efficient swimming I think needs to be taught.