Opinion: The simple reason why so many adults can’t swim

Opinion by Melon Dash

(CNN) — My first job after college was a teaching assistantship at a small college in New Hampshire, where I taught beginning swimming every semester to around 20 undergrads. I noticed, however, that half of my students couldn’t follow my instructions. They were afraid.

My students needed a class before beginning swimming. I went to the dean with this problem. “May I teach a class for students who are afraid?”

“Changing the undergraduate curriculum takes a lot of red tape, but if you offer the course through the adult education program, you’ll get paid and the students can come,” he said. Sold.

The next semester, my class, “Swimming for Adults Afraid in Water” appeared in the community circular. It was 1978. Six people came from as far as 50 miles away.

A Gallup survey published two years ago found that across the globe, half of adults are afraid in water over their heads, and that’s just in pools. A third of American adults are afraid to even put their heads underwater.

If you’re an adult who doesn’t know how to swim, you may have asked yourself, “Why haven’t I been able to learn over the years? Is it me?” I’ve taught swimming to thousands like you who are afraid in water, and I can assure you — it’s not you. For most people who don’t succeed in learning to swim, it’s not for lack of trying.

I grew up swimming competitively from the age of seven. Inexplicably, when I was in college, I would swim my fastest times at the regional championships and slower at the nationals. (You’re supposed to swim fastest at the biggest competition.)

When I asked my coach what she thought about this, she recommended two books: ”The Inner Game of Tennis” by W. Timothy Gallwey and “Freedom to Learn” by Carl R. Rogers — which focus on the importance of being present to perform well and the natural, unstoppable process of learning when people are comfortable, respectively.

After reading those books, I still swam fastest at regionals — I’m not sure why — but they helped change my thinking about the emotional and psychological aspects of performing.

As I thought about teaching adults who are afraid in water, I asked myself a question: How does fear work? Forty years later, other professionals are starting to realize that something’s been missing from swim instruction. Swim instructors and their training agencies are, in general, flat-out clueless about how learning works, especially for the fearful. There’s no better way to see it than with adults who are afraid in water.

When you hear about lessons and drowning prevention efforts, they are almost always aimed at keeping children safe, but adults account for three out of four drowning deaths. We have virtually no beginning adult swimming lessons that really work. And if adults haven’t learned well enough to save their lives, they haven’t learned, period.

While there are many initiatives to provide lessons to kids, our society seems to have forgotten that kids do what their parents do, and parents who fail to learn swimming raise children who become adult non-swimmers. And for non-swimmers of any age, finding yourself in water over your head can be fatal. This is preventable.

Swim instructors presume that their students want to learn at least one major stroke, probably “freestyle” or what used to be called the front crawl. Even people teaching swimming have been taught to believe — mistakenly — that learning strokes makes a person safe in deep water. Adults who want to learn to swim often quit long before achieving their goals.

Comfort in deep water is essential and life-saving. The one simple reason that many adults in beginning swimming lessons fail to learn to be comfortable in deep water is their instruction — what is taught and what is not.

It’s clear that would-be swimmers and their instructors often have very different ideas about what the objectives are. When afraid adults register for swimming lessons, they presume that, at long last, they will be able to feel at ease in deep water. They hope to be able to tread water while chatting with their friends in a deep pool. They may have visions of being able to swim to a raft or jump off a boat whenever they please. What they don’t know is that most swim classes won’t make it easier to fulfill these dreams.

How does one address people’s fear in the water? Give them an environment where it’s okay to be afraid, where they hear that others’ fears are the same as their own, where they are warm not cold, where there is no pressure to perform and where they have time to slow down and feel what they feel.

They should be taught in an environment where their feelings are considered first and foremost and their concerns are respected rather than subverted. It’s not about what their arms and legs do. In such an environment, you will see people blossoming heroically and fast. Another way to say this is, define learning to swim as comfort in deep water — not swim strokes — and each and every student will become safe.

Year after year, decade after decade, students who have taken traditional swim lessons described to me how, over a lifetime, they’ve approached the water with apprehension. They went on vacation and couldn’t get off the boat to snorkel. Or, they did get off the boat and panicked once they were in the water.

They may have small grandkids who are more at ease in water than they are. Or, they want to be able to play with them in the water, something they missed with their own kids. Or, they never had a chance to learn to swim as a child and have tried five rounds of lessons in adulthood.

The problem is, no swim instructor ever knew what to do with their anxiety. Conquering fear has been the center of my approach to teaching swimming.

Committees that put together traditional swim curricula believe that confidence in the water comes from skills. The truth is that skills come from confidence. Skills cannot be learned until one has a basic level of self-reliance. A student cannot be afraid for their life and also be expected to learn. Swim students have to be comfortable in all water depths to be safe. In short, learning to swim must include deep water safety. If an adult’s swim instruction includes strokes, strokes must follow comfort and safety in deep water.

It’s important to acknowledge that emotional and psychological barriers prevent non-swimmers from becoming swimmers. Many adults have failed swimming lessons to the point of discouragement and even resignation that they cannot learn to swim. They often refuse to try again.

Most people who can’t swim are embarrassed about it. “What? You can’t swim?!” But they need not feel ashamed. No one has a silly reason for being afraid. They come by it honestly. It often starts with a scary experience, an afraid parent or unqualified teachers.

What’s needed is a foolproof, proven system that would become a national standard for swimming instruction, one that focuses on helping adults cope with their fears. And it should be paired with a national campaign to dispel shame and replace it with permission. People need to know it’s okay to be afraid in water. But it’s not okay to remain afraid: it’s unsafe.

The undergrads who weren’t served by my beginning swimming class in New England all those years ago didn’t get to experience my revised approach to teaching swimming.  I hope they’re searching for me now. Because if they’re taught to conquer their fear, everyone can learn to swim.

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