How did you learn to swim?

[TallDude]

A lot has been discussed about swimming, but what was your path to learning how to swim and how would you rate yourself on a 1 to 10 scale? (1 being not good)

I started as a very little dude. Maybe 3 or 4 yrs old at a local indoor pool. Kicking with kick boards back and forth. Then on to the YMCA swim program where you graduate through various levels. I remember the 'shark level' where you had to swim across the bottom of the pool back and forth holding your breath the whole time. We moved to the beach when I was 7 yrs old. One of my first friends introduced me to surfing about that time. I learned how to swim in the ocean from my dad ( body surfing with fins) and my friends I surfed with. I didn't have a leash back then because they were more dangerous to use at first. Just wax and a board. I would say body surfing really got me comfortable in the ocean.
I just got back from a week in Lake Tahoe. The water is warmer this year, and the lake level is maxed. I did a good amount of swimming and just floating each day. Just relaxing and floating on my back reminded me of my swimming roots as a kid.

Swimming laps in a pool, I'd give myself a 4.
Swimming in the ocean, a 6.  A 7 if I have to chase my board.

[seadart]

I grew up in a small town in Utah and a lady with a pool taught lessons, she taught a lot of the kids in the town to swim. Later I did boy scouts swimming and lifesaving merit badges  and the guy who taught us used to be a life guard in San Diego.  I did the Y lifeguard training too as teenager.  I grew up swimming a lot in Bear Lake in Utah where I spent a lot time in the summers.   I am getting old, I  can do the side stroke all day, but would give myself a 3 swimming for my life in heavy winter waves / rips.   

[CascadeSup]

I also started very young, but don't remember much about it.  It was probably a YMCA summer program.  Back then, we went to the beach a lot, and I did a some body surfing.  Swam a mile in open water at a Sea Scout camp. 

In addition to SUP, I've windsurfed since 1979, and can swim far and fast enough to catch my board when it gets away in high wind crashes.  My usual windsurf spot is a lake, 1 mile across shore to shore, 5 miles upwind/downwind, and the water is cold.  These days, swimming in unassisted from the middle would be a challenge, but with my impact vest, I'm sure I could stay afloat long enough to get somewhere.

I've never done laps in a pool, but I do get some additional swimming practice in the lakes in the summer.

Open water, I'd give myself about a 3.

[SUPcheat]

My parents tried to drown me but it didn't work?

My father was in the Navy so there were nice pools everywhere he posted.  In grammar school, I won a few competitions, but didn't keep up the competitive part and became a nerd.

I would rate my pool swimming a 4 and my ocean swimming a 3 handing it to myself.

A proper swimming stroke can feel unnatural until you get used to it, so coaching is almost always necessary if you want to get past a certain point.

[Dusk Patrol]

My parents had my brother and I in the water very early... then later there were always 'swim lessons' ... on the Air Force bases I grew up on, then my junior high had a deal with a neighboring tennis/pool club, so lessons there. It seemed then that swim lessons were just a natural part of life... then later, with my own kids, I found them to be scarcer... not to be taken for granted.

[Bean]

I'm surprised you guys are rating yourselves so low...I'm a true 3 swimmer and next to me I'm sure you are 8's and 9's.  Maybe I need to place myself lower.

I learned to swim in a cold murky lake in Norway when I was about 5.  I had gotten too deep and it was swim or drown.  Swimming in Norway just wasn't big back then because there was such a short seasonal window. Unfortunately, kids drowned every year.  Now, virtually every school there has an indoor pool.

[hbsteve]

We lived in Santa Monica until I was almost 5.  I started sim lesson in a pool there.  I was terrified of the deep end.
Fortunately, my dads best friend owned a 56 foot schooner in Newport Beach.  He would only allow me to go to Catalina Island if I could swim in deep water.  Swimming from an anchored boat is different than swimming from the beach.  It's all deep.  I made it.
Then we moved to Newport Beach CA.  The swim lessons were at the beach.  Many summer afternoons we went bodysurfing.
For two years during high school I was on the water polo and swim teams.  If during water polo practice you let your feet touch the bottom, you were sent to the dive pool.  There they made us go thru treading water drills.  I wasn't the fastest swimmer, but I sure had endurance.
During this time I started bodysurfing by the point around 17th to 19th streets, in any size.  I used the rip tides to help me get out to the waves.  I always felt comfortable that I could get out of the rip tides, once outside.
I surfed for a long time, long boards before leashes, piapo boards, rafts, boogie boards etc..
I can still swim.  But,  today, I'm probably a 3.

[stoneaxe]

Pono threw me off the dock at our cousins camp in NH...Camp Whatkeptya...when I was 3 years old. He got in trouble for it but it worked....I swam in and then never stopped. I was always 1st in last out when we went anywhere with water after that. Later my friends and I would routinely ride our bikes out to ponds and reservoirs in the suburbs to swim and cliff dive. We'd race across 1 mile reservoirs. I was never all that fast but i could swim all day. At night we would climb the fence and use the high dive (in the dark) at the MDC community pool. In the winter we would take the bus to dive and play water Polo at the Brookline Tank. When the Boys Club was built up the street from my house I joined the swim team. I could do 100m underwater back in the day and got my lifesaving and NAUI diving cert the same year when I was 15. I don't think there are many things that feel better than flying underwater, the feeling of being weightless as cool clear water streams over you....that's the part I love the most......I think I'll go dive in my pool.....

Pono and my brother Dave also got me hooked on snorkeling/spearfishing when I was a kid...and I hooked a friend who I used to vacation with on the beach in Marshfield for two weeks each summer....it was routine at 10 years old to be cruising the bottom in 30' of water with a sweatshirt to keep us warm and a home made Hawaiian sling spear.

Great memories.....

That said I can't believe how much of it I've lost.
Laps in a pool 3-4, I can still swim all day in the ocean but i just don't get where I'm going very quickly. Sprinting...6...its a sad short sprint though...

[JP4]

Took lessons at the Lewis and Clark College pool from this guy in the late 60's. You wouldn't know it from watching me swim though
I guess 5 Olympic gold medals didn't get you much back then.

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[nalu-sup]

Pretty similar to others on here. Started with the YMCA program when I was about 5. Went through all of the levels up through junior lifeguard. Also Boy Scout merit badges in swimming and lifesaving. Moved to a lake when I was 7, and spent much of every day in the water. Traveled to surf a few times when I was young, until about 1976 when I started spending all of my summers in Cali and later Hawaii to surf and windsurf every day. Got my lifeguard certification in the early 80s as part of a requirement at one time to teach windsurfing. For 25 years I kept up my ocean swimming by teaching a lot of windsurfing waterstart lessons; student would get up and not want to stop so they would go out a couple of hundred yards, and then have trouble getting up to come back, so I would swim out to help them. 50 laps a day of that is great for your ocean swimming. Technique is still okay, but at 66 endurance is definitely not what it used to be. The past couple of years I have been trying to tell myself to stay out of surf much over 15', because it would be tough at this point to chase down a lost board in strong currents. So far I have not been smart enough to listen.

[PonoBill]

I don't remember tossing Bob in. He probably fell in--the kid was clumsy. It's not the kind of thing I would do.

I don't remember how I learned to swim, but I did it all the time. When I was a kid the Boston city pools cost a penny. That got you in, plus you got a basket for your clothes and a number on a bungee cord you stuck on your wrist. A bus was a nickel each way, so for eleven cents I was set for the day. Pretty big pools with a separate diving pool with low and high dives. And every summer my Dad's summer vacation consisted of days at the beach. I was in the water constantly. My Uncle Al used to take us to the beach too--he was a lifelong bachelor and only worked minimal jobs. I was good underwater, learned to hold my breath long enough to swim the length of "Olympic" pools. Did a lot of freediving, and later lots of Scuba. I logged over 300 dives before I quit logging them.

Now my shoulders are pretty toasted--multiple surgeries on both sides. My stroke is fairly pathetic but I can keep going for a long time. I've swum in from some pretty long distances, but it takes me all day. Boyum is trying to improve my swimming, but I think he's pushing sand uphill.
 

[pdxmike]

Took lessons at the Lewis and Clark College pool from this guy in the late 60's. You wouldn't know it from watching me swim though
I guess 5 Olympic gold medals didn't get you much back then.

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I heard that, at least a few years ago, he'd occasionally show up to swim on friends' relays at masters meets, under the pseudonym "Donut Boy".  I bet he's still fast.  I also heard he could kick 100 yards faster than normal humans can swim.

[headmount]

PDX Did you see that Caleb Dressel came within .04 of MP's world record in the 100 fly.  49.86!

My Dad was thrown into Maliko Gulch when he was four.  I was 7 and learned from a Marine at the pool in Fort Belvoir Virginia in 1957.  This guy had swam in to do prep work at Inchon, Korea.

[yugi]

I don't remember tossing Bob in. He probably fell in--the kid was clumsy. It's not the kind of thing I would do.
...

I can see how years of practice saying that with a straight face prepped you for your success in marketing.

[Badger]

In 1964 at the age of seven, I took my first summer of weekly swimming lessons at our town beach which is on an inland tidal bay in NH. There were no pools in our town back then. Pretty cold water (60-65F) in July. By mid august it would warm up to (75F). It wasn't too bad as long as the air was warmer than the water. The instructor always said, if you fall off a boat, the water is going to be cold, so get used to the feeling.

Like all forms of schooling, I didn't like going, but I made through five summers which gave me a lifelong love of the water. I never was a strong swimmer. I'm probably a 4 or 5 on the scale. I really should spend more time just swimming, especially now that I'm entering my 60's and surfing a lot. Thanks for the reminder.